blue skies

Summer is here, people. I know this, because right now I am drinking a tall glass of Crystal Light raspberry lemonade. For me, that artificially sweet chemical-tang is the taste of summertime . . . the taste of long days spent lying in front of the AC, reading books, watchin’ crap daytime television, and wondering why I was still such a lard-ass. I was drinking the effing Crystal Light, goddamnit! Eff swimsuit season. Pass the Cool Ranch Doritos.

That’s “What I Did Over My Summer Vacation” from roughly age 12 to age 20. The formative years of Tea Guarie were a sarcastic, bitter, indie-comedy kind of time. I’ve always been a sass-mouthed and salty, even as a small girl. One of my mother’s favorite stories of my sweet babyhood is when, at age three, I walked up to my grandfather with my hands on my hips and said, “Grampy, you’re pissin’ me off!”

Get to the point, girl. Ok – this month, I’m going to attempt to recapture all the promise and excitement of a childhood summer . . . minus all the moping around whining and refusing to wear a bathing suit. This June, my goal is to practice Optimism. Sure, the world is a crazy place. Yes, I am preparing to be laid off any day now. No, I have not yet developed a taste for cat-food and government cheese . . . but I’m not going to let all that “doom and gloom” business spoil my good time.

I have never been a particularly “optimistic” person. Hell every time I get on an airplane, I prepare a Will. So this might be a bit of a stretch here -- but for the next 30 days – the glass is gonna be half full. Half full of an “artificially flavored lemon drink”, perhaps. But you know what they say: when life gives you lemons, use them to garnish your pitcher of powdered lemon-flavored beverage.