Summertime, Summertime, Sum-Sum-Summertime

I had an especially rough day at work last week. Customers were being assholes. Coworkers were being annoying (seriously...who clips their nails in PUBLIC?!). My hair decided halfway through the day to just quit cooperating entirely, and at the end of my shift I had an especially infuriating conversation in which someone repeatedly said to me, "You don't understand, this is a mute point."

You mean "moot" and you're still using it in the wrong context...f#%!er.

I was full on raging as I walked to my car. The kind of intense, misdirected rage that if you tried to explain, would seriously make loved ones consider putting  you away. I dropped my book while I fumbled to unlock my car door, and it lead to the following inner monologue,

"You've got to be f#%!ing kidding me! No wonder everything in my life is shit! What the hell is wrong with me? How hard is it to unlock your f#%!ing car door?! You should just leave it there. It's not like you were enjoying it anyway. Nicholas Sparks is the worst. How is he this successful?! I'm probably never going to be as successful at anything as Nicholas Sparks is at writing idiotic, sappy, melodramatic love stories for middle aged women who hate their husbands. It's almost like he gets off on making people cry. What kind of man feels that way? He's a broken human being. Plus he's wearing a dumb shirt on the book jacket. God, I hate Nicholas Sparks! If he were here right now I would tell him too...and then I'd spit on him...I do kinda want to know how this stupid f#%!ing book ends though. Just calm down, pick up the book, and go home. There's no reason to get this upset. Everything is fine and no one is--WHY THE F#%! IS IT SO F#%!ING HOT IN THIS CAR?!" 

Toward the end, my inner monologue became more of a loudly shouted, hysterical outer monologue.

After taking a moment to collect my emotions, I realized something. It was hot in my car. Like legitimately too warm for comfort. Ummm...wait a second, is summer actually going to happen this year?!

The snow is gone, the grass is green, there are buds on the trees, last weekend we actually experienced three entire days in which it was above sixty degrees without a drop of rain, and I'm pretty sure I saw two squirrels banging the other day. This heinous bitch of a winter is over, we're fast forwarding through spring, and summer is right around the corner!

It made me so happy, I almost cried.

Then I remembered all of the shit I have going on this summer, and how much money all of it was going to cost, and I really almost cried. I leave for Vegas in three weeks. Pride weekend is a month after that, and then a month after that I'll be making the trip back home for TCD in the VoB (and my 10 year high school reunion...gulp). I started imagining the budget I'd need for each event, wondering if my car is even capable of making the drive home, freaking out about needing to fit into the perfect class reunion outfit, and just generally flying off the goddamn handle.

I needed a plan. Grown ups handle stressful situations because they come up with plans. I've got plenty of time to work through this, and if I just take things one at a time, everything will be fine. My most pressing issue is clearly how I'm going to pay for all of these things. So I was going to sit down, take a deep breath, and make a budget.

I got out my notebook, made sure my pen worked, poured a glass of early afternoon wine, and I thought... 

"I should learn how to grill."

Jump to an hour later, and I'm at my friend Emma's sitting in front of a fire pit with a glass of wine enjoying the amazing smells wafting over from the grill.

If ignoring responsibilities was an Olympic sport, I'd be the Michael f#%!ing Phelps of the event.

Let's be fair though, grilling is super grown-up-y, and it's something I definitely should know how to do. So the afternoon wasn't entirely wasted (until the part where I was wasted in the afternoon).

On the way to Emma's a swung by the grocery store to pick up some supplies. As I was browsing for things that I was pretty sure you could put on a grill, I stumbled upon some prepackaged asparagus spears touted as being "Great for grilling!"

So that really couldn't have worked out any better for me.

The stupid thing was like $9 though, and I was broke as a joke. It looked like it was just asparagus, some garlic, and lemon slices. I already had some garlic, so I just bought some asparagus and a lemon, and I saved myself $5.

See...I'm totally responsible.

Preparing and seasoning my own meat would probably have been more impressive, but I really didn't have time for that nonsense, so I grabbed a bacon cheddar hamburger, and a cilantro lime chicken breast. I reasoned that I needed to learn how to properly prepare more than just one kind of meat which made me feel just slightly better about mostly just wanting to eat a truly unhealthy amount of food that night.

I got there, Emma and I threw our stuff on the grill, and I turned to her and asked, "Okay...so now what?" to which she responded, "I dunno, what do you think?"

"You mean, you don't know how to do this?"
"Well, when you suggested it, I kind of thought you knew what you were doing!"
"Umm...no...I assumed since you had the grill that YOU would know what YOU were doing."
"No, I've never done this before..."
"I came over here for you to teach me! Are you telling me we're flying blind here?!"
**We both retrieve our cell phones and start frantically Googling**

The theme for the evening quickly became, "I dunno, what do you think?"

"Should we flip this?"
"I dunno, what do you think?"
"Is it supposed to sizzle this much?!"
"I dunno, what do you think?"
"Will I die if I eat under-cooked chicken, or just get really sick and lose 15 lbs from all the vomiting...'cause there's this class reunion coming up?"
"I dunno, what do you think?"

It was stressful as f#%!, but we did it, and everything tasted delicious!

So after my first ever cookout, I've officially kicked off summer. I've broken out the "Summer Jams" playlist, and I'm prepared for all of the shenanigans the next three months will undoubtedly bring. I can't wait to share them with you!

**Update on last week's post**

One of the matchmaker guys emailed me to introduce himself. He was all, "I love snowboarding, playing hockey, frisbee golf, and hiking"

I was all...

Soulmates, obvies...