Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

It started that August week when it was in the mid-90s and your thoughts were filled with ice cream and sprinkler-jumping and parades and alpenglow at 10 pm.  Then a glistening in the corner of the eye, and a sudden facefull of filament when you turn a corner.  You swear you heard it snapsnapsnap as your bumbling offhandedly destroyed one of nature’s most remarkable edifices, a moment of guilt followed by the notion that evolution should favor arachnids with a better sense of urban design and seasonal decency.

Those early August web adopters have outlasted your offended sense of denial, and they and their silk-spinning brethren have burgeoned into a dewy morning gauntlet to run between the front door and the car.  Fall is now implacably here, in the chill underlying every warm zephyr, in the startling darkness on the walk home from the gym, in the fact that bowl matchups are already 80% set.

There’s a vigorous fall schedule of rehearsals and concerts and work projects, and your tribal back-to-school urgency reluctantly craves this renewed bustle of activity just as the weather moderates enough to encourage it.

However, the memory of summer still lingers, like that girl at the pool who said, “Hi” and asked your name and you were sure she’d be there tomorrow so you played it cool.  But now the pool is closed, the lifeguard chairs of whistled admonition are empty and silent and the inviting chlorinated depths have given way to canyons of yawning stuccoed dessication.

One more weekend with the Keens, then it’s time to remember how to layer your polypro tops.