Youth Trapped in Amber

Dear Viola: It’s hot here today, in the mid-eighties, and sticky. Not the California Valley sticky of my youth, where it hurts to breathe and your head feels as though it is stuffed with wet cotton, but sticky like wearing a cocoon of plastic wrap. I pulled another tick off the back of my neck this morning, so there’s also that on top of the unpleasant temperature. The little vampire bug hadn’t gotten his fangs in me yet, so disposal was quick and easy (plucked from my skin and straight into the toilet), but still: what a fucker. June has felt like swimming in molasses. The days have just sort of blended into one another without a real clear demarcation between one day and the next. Is this how summer in the end times goes now? Is it even summer yet? Quick internet search reveals that no, it is not; June 21st will be that day. Spring should not include 84 degree days that make your lungs ache. Here is the usual farmer update from our vast expanse of land: the ticks are everywhere…