The backside of summer

So many ways we add up the coming of the end of summer. It gets warmer and warmer. The children go back to school, often in the thickest heat. 

And of course, nothing is what it was. I've lived through several tornadoes. They're what happen here. A derecho? I never heard the word, until this year. A line of intense and fast moving windstorms. It carries on for a great distance and is characterized by damaging winds.

Cedar Rapids, a little town in Iowa dear to me, was devastated recently by an eight hundred mile derecho. Coming now on another part of the country, in my mind's eye, a hurricane derecho. Two systems may touch down fairly simultaneously, in Texas and Louisiana. Too much summer.

Back in NE Ohio, I'm just looking at the usual indicators of fall. Yellow leaves.

After three months of solid blooms, the yellow leaves begin.

 And the solid blooms continue. The weather isn't mid nineties anymore, but ninety is hot. Temperature, they say, is proportional to the length of the cat:

Poor fellow. Bad angle; makes him look chubby. I think he's lost a pound. If nothing else, half a pound of hair.

I had another haircut last night. I should stop complaining about going nowhere, doing nothing. This is my fourth haircut since lock down ended, and I know a lot of you sport pony tails.

Melanie, my hair cutter, is getting married in September. I realized last night, September is mighty near and asked her when. "September 12th," she said. "My sister's birthday," I responded.

I've known Melanie for years, since before she and Lindsey opened this shop, but both worked for a major chain. One day I went in with all three grands for haircuts, and wondered if I were in the right store. Every station had a new face, and no one was talking.

Apparently the old lot walked out en mass. Perhaps two months later, whatever time they had to let pass to avoid legal problems, one of the operators called me. Never knew how she got my number, but it was good to have them back. That's where Laura got her hair dyed deep red and Emily had hers done teal blue.

I've spent a pleasant half hour looking back for a picture of Melanie. No luck. I don't see the post with magenta and teal hair, and that's probably where I had Mel, too. I'm glad to have a real date to pin her wedding to. Not long now.

Thanks to Yael, I found the post about the red and blue hair, with pictures of Melanie, Lindsey, and Beth, who called me with the new location.