The Summer of the Skunk

When I was about seven or eight we had a Swan come and stay on our pond one summer - it just showed up one day in June, and walked out the driveway one day in September and we never saw it again. But it was enough to make it the Summer of the Swan.  

When I was just re-booting Grinder Productions in 2017 we had a pesky raccoon that insisted on disrupting rehearsals - that was the summer of the raccoon. 

This summer, well... let's just say that much of the food for the barn cats that we've dished out has been inhaled by this thing, having now taken up permanent residency under the deck:

This is the summer of the skunk.

I have hated this summer. Not for the sake of anything that I've put on stage - my evaluation of that will be much more nuanced, and will come much later, when there's snow on the ground once again. No, I have hated this summer because of the weather. 

It has rained, interminably. The hay crop is ruined for the second year in a row. In between the rain the humidity has robbed me of sleep, and has produced effects on me eerily similar to what my friends who are recovering from traumatic brain injuries describe as their day-to-day lived experiences. 

I've also been on "staycation" most of the summer, this being the only time of the year things are slow enough for me to use up my mandatory vacation days. Being "off" but not really "off" is something that I can manage, and have done successfully in the past - but the weather-induced chaos this summer managed to sabotage even that. Any attempt to make plans was disrupted by the forecast, or an equipment break-down, or a backlog created elsewhere. My time was not my own to organize as I saw fit, something that I think is essential to a successful respite from the demands of regular employment.

We lost half our meat chickens to the heat this summer - weeks of work and worry just to come out just ahead on what turned out to be some large, excellent-quality poultry. 

I haven't had time to get back to my writing this summer - the black notebook remains only partially filled, its two companions still unblemished. I want to learn how to write music for a musical I want to write, and I haven't had time to do that. I have a great idea for a new play that might finally let me say something worthwhile about what's happened to the world in the last five or ten years, and help me (and maybe others too) close one sad chapter in the human story and move on to something else. But no, the weather robbed me of even that - I can't write on the tractor, I can't write if I haven't had a decent night's sleep in days. I can't write if my brain feels like it's permanently inside an oven. 

I haven't even had time to sit outside on our Adirondack chairs this summer - we actually have two sets of them, one for the sunny side of the house, one for the shady side, and only the barn cats have managed to get any enjoyment out of either set of them (except when the skunk shows up to eat their food). At this rate the only times I will have touched those chairs this year will be taking them out of the garden shed in the spring, and putting them back in the garden shed this fall.

I haven't gone fishing. Every summer I promise myself I'm going to, and this year all the extra rain must be making great fish habitat (or food - lots of standing water to breed mosquitoes), but again, there just hasn't been time.

Happiness has proven elusive this summer. I don't like to admit that, but it's true. Moments of happiness, sure - every rehearsal we had this summer was a high point for me, and on more than one night just what I needed to lift my spirits, recharge my batteries, and remind me that there were still some things that I could do, not just things that I couldn't. 

So my staycation ends much the same way it began, on a stormy summer night, with major work projects still to be done, hay still to be cut, plays still to be written, and me struggling to make sense of an increasingly surreal world. I hope that next summer will be different - I hope the weather will be better, because that would make more of a difference than anything else. But I also hope that I will be better too. I am an optimistic person - that often surprises people, but I really am. It's a guarded optimism to be sure, but the signs are all there - I do think we are all on the cusp of better and brighter days.   

At the very least, I hope that next year isn't another summer of the skunk.