• Summer, not fall, is the season of death. I saw a drowned girl when I was 9, a dead nun at 12, and my father died when I was 19. All in summer.
• Heat. Humidity. Sweating.
• Bug bites
• Poison Ivy
• Power-killing thunderstorms
• Sunburn
• Late light
• Heat-stroke

• Acceptance of certain family members by other family members
• Health for all of us
• More time
• More travel (Business-class, please)
• My car to last another three years
• My sister to move closer
• To lose weight without this endless struggle (without an unhealthy cause, thank you very much)
• To write something I'd like to read
• World peace (*fans eyes with fingertips*)

• Middlemarch
• Moby Dick
• Bleak House

• Chicken with Broccoli Cantonese
• Eggplant Parmagiana
• Spaghetti Alia Olia
• Cheeseburgers
• Chilean Sea Bass (please don't add yourself to the list of people who have informed me that this fish is endangered)
• Spare Ribs
• My Macaroni Salad
• Mashed Potatoes
• Baked Brie
• Pumpkin Pie

• The Philadelphia Story
• Dark Victory
• Stage Door
• Mrs. Miniver
• Waterloo Bridge (with Robert Taylor/Vivian Lee)
• Now Voyager
• Undercurrent
• Arsenic and Old Lace
• Holiday
• All About Eve
• Ball of Fire
• An Affair to Remember
• Random Harvest
• Madame X

This summer I seem to be fixated on the noble bulb. I have recently made and adored:

• onion soup
• savory onion tart
• hot dog onions
• onion rib sauce

• the woods in autumn
• the shore
• fresh bluegills, fried
• new books
• Antaeus
• Emporio Armani Per Lei
• bread baking
• new car
• honeysuckle
• canoli
• clean babies
• the art room
• grilled rib steak
• pesto
• snow

• Skully
• Knucks
• Sorry

• Gone With the Wind
• Vanity Fair
• War and Peace
• Jane Eyre
• Wuthering Heights
• The Old Curiosity Shop
• The Great Gatsby
• The Odyssey
• Anna Karenina

• Bye Bye Birdie
• Meet Me in St Louis
• Guys and Dolls
• South Pacific
• Into the Woods
• West Side Story
• Gypsy

• hot weather
• mugginess
• big quadruple-hate for heat and mugginess combined
• being expected to drop MY shit to carry someone else's load, even if he IS tired
• gum chewing
• chronic lateness
• being interrupted
• putting away laundry
• bills
• crappy writing (talking published authors here)
• liars
• big egos
• bullies
• know-it-alls
• last-worders

• Olympus Pen
• Repaint house (inside)
• New mattress and boxspring
• Big TV for zz-nonno

• True Blood
• Real Housewives of New York
• Real Housewives of New Jersey
• House
• Bethenny Got Married