Estival.

If there is shame in neglecting one’s craft, I have likely felt it. Felt it and ignored it, as I do most everything that’s not sparkly already. Diamonds-in-the-rough no longer interest me; I need immediate gratification straight from the packaging, and lordy help you if I can’t get that open, like, yesterday. I want what I want but I am a fickle, fickle girl.

But, oh, the wanting. Once it was Desperately Wanting, a smoldering fire that consumed me leaf by leaf. Once I yearned. But the problem with that, as you might have guessed, is that eventually one runs out of foliage. And there one stands, barren, and alone. Nope, yearning’s not for me.

Couple weeks back I told Pete the secret to my success, that in fact I’d simply stopped wanting things. To which of course he shook his head skeptically and then let pass, so little did it resemble the girl he once loved. I was a peach back then, soft to the touch with a heart of stone, but I wasn’t what he wanted. I am so rarely what anyone wants that I wonder sometimes why anyone ever bothered. Did they even bother? But such is the secret to our successes, that we rarely have a handle on what it is, exactly, we do want. Desperately or just plain regular.

The regular wanting I can handle. Behold, a list of my immediate wants: (1) to be at the Shore today not Wednesday; (2) a basket of clam strips; (3) followed by a scoop of cardamom gelato; (4) a weekend in New Orleans on my calendar; (5) more NewsRadio reruns; (6) the end of this infernal summer. The end.

For now, anyway.