Summer Morning Tableau

Buckhead Betties and Power Moms

I wish I had a picture... the route I take at least 2X a day through Peachtree Battle over to Peachtree, the one where I pass through on over to the other side of the tracks on the way home, must have more Buckhead Betties per square foot than any other piece of real estate in America!

The droves of ladies along the way are literally all highlighted blonds (like I'd know a thing about that), perfectly fit (sure wouldn't know a thing about that), jogging in the least skanky workout attire you will ever lay eyes on (not a ripped "The Only Bush I Trust Is My Own" tee in sight), and of course prancing alongside a Golden Retriever or behind a MacLaren stroller. It is soooo out of central casting, for some production I hear, that it's a genuine hoot.

I hope to snag some snaps or vid for you soon. Or tool along Peachtree Battle yourself for a stroll these fine spring days. But you gotta catch a sighting now. School lets out soon, and then it's off to St. Simons for the lot.

Sure gets hot and empty around Buckhead starting first of June.

Paris' Threat

Some mean boy said on his blog that I can't tan. Can so, dammit. And I never fake bake:

Oh Summertime

I know you're out there somewhere...

The Unbearable Lightness of Summertime

I am greedy for summertime. Even in the midst of the hottest, most humid Southern day, when all desire seems tangled in the lushness of a grove of overrun Palmetto trees and magnolias set alive with the whine of afternoon cicadas I bicycle slowly by on the way to visit with ghosts wandering the fiery batteries of Ft. Moultrie, I am consumed with the inevitable - summer will come to an end. There is nothing I can do about this.

And so I throw myself into another summer. Or wish to, rather, when waking every morning to any day promising to be a really hot one. I want to feel baked concrete on the soles of my feet as I moreorless fall from the lounge chair into a heavily chlorinated pool. I sniff Coppertone like it was glue, high from the beach-as-a-child memory surge it powers in my nostalgia-ridden head.

I wish I was a painter so that I could paint the drops that rise up in my head that once rose up on the aqua-striped Tom Collins glasses with the little frayed wicker cozies around the bottom portion my grandfather would present to the guests, remarkable only for their dullness, who invariably stopped by the beachhouse late afternoons all through June, circa 1968. The country was on fire; Isle of Palms was not.

So I steal gardenias to fill the house with Eau De Blanche (DuBois), and to place in Ava's braids, from untended bushes laden with blossoms along Volberg Street in the city, no longer at the beach. This has been a prime year for gardenias; ignored, lovely shrubs of blooms just beckoning to be plundered, just like the purple, not blue, hydrangeas I covet from people's yards who never seem to gather them for themselves. Why not me.

So much wickedness just waiting to rise to the surface in summer, all in a state of air-conditioned arrestedness. I loath air conditioning. It forces Southerners to do way too much, to multi-task for instance. Southerners should never be forced to multi-task. That's not in our blood. What is in our blood is a desire to exist under huge rotating fans outdoors on porches near oceans, with mere ice-ridden glasses to cool our heated tendencies. We are hot blooded people. If only we could live that way.