ok fine let's look forward to things

to a tepidly hopeful summer

Happy Friday. I know it is not technically summer yet, if we're going by the Gregorian calendar of it all, but I am currently sitting outside drinking a very large iced coffee, it is a steamy 83 degrees, and I am (gracefully) sweating. So happy summer, too. 

It has been a very strange year thus far, and I wanted to write about things I am looking forward to this summer, in part to convince myself I have not become so cynical as to have nothing to look forward to. 

I was thinking it would be a Silly Little Post—and fret not, it might still be!—, but then I started thinking about how odd and uncomfortable this year has been. In a few weeks, it will be six months since my family lost my grandmother. I still think about calling her whenever something even remotely interesting happens to me — she always thought my life was much more fascinating than it actually is, and every time I talked with her, she made me believe it, too. I find myself wanting to ask her what book she's reading, what show she's watching. To call her to complain about my parents, or to show her an unhinged comment someone left on my most recent video. She was equally receptive to both.

It's weird, this accumulation of new memories and experiences without one of their usual, most interested witnesses. (If a tree falls in the forest and your grandma's not around to hear about it, etc.) It feels bitter, like my life is missing one of its best participants. Like I can't fully experience or enjoy something if I can't tell her about it.

I suppose what I'm saying is that it's been harder to look forward to things. They're less meaningful without one of my favorite people to share them with.

But we're trying! Sorry to be bleak on the first Summer Friday! I never said it wasn't Sad Girl Summer! Nevertheless, here is a list of things I am cautiously optimistic about.