Now that I’ve had some transition time and a weekend, I’m ready to dive back in to book 9. Over the weekend, I read a book with some motivation techniques, so I feel all armed and ready to stay focused and get my work done. We’ll see how long that lasts.

Summer isn’t my favorite time of year, which makes it the ideal time of year for me to get a lot of writing done. I can hide in my cave and write while it’s too hot outside to do anything else. My bedroom becomes my office at this time of year because it’s the coolest room in the house. It’s the first vent off the air conditioner, so it’s cooler in that room. There’s only one relatively small window that’s under the shade of the front porch. The ceiling is high, and there’s a ceiling fan. Some adjustment of the bed base, a backrest pillow, and my lap desk, and I’ve got an office. I’ve even considered getting one of those hospital bed table things.

I’m also trying to remind myself of things I like about summer. One is fresh fruit. I may turn into a cherry at some point. I love fresh cherries, and at this time of year, they’re cheap. Any other time of year, and they’re ridiculously expensive. I eat cherries with yogurt at breakfast, use cherries as my word count reward while I write, and I’ve made a sort of mock cheesecake with cream cheese, Greek yogurt, some vanilla and a little honey that I use as a topping for cherries for dessert. I also have blueberries and peaches, and I snack on watermelon in the afternoon.

And there’s the swimming pool. I keep forgetting about that. We have a community pool that doesn’t get a lot of use during the week, so it’s like having a private pool. On hot afternoons, the water is just the right temperature because it gets morning sun. It’s still cool enough to feel good, but not so cool that it’s shocking. There are trees to the west that block the afternoon sun, so I can swim comfortably without getting a sunburn.

I kind of like that it’s in between TV seasons, so there’s nothing much on. That frees up time to catch up on all the stuff that’s streaming, or my DVD collection, or DVDs from the library, or read.

There are fireworks at the lake every Friday night during the summer. That’s nice to hit every so often, and it means getting a firework fix without all the crowds of July 4.

So, there are a few things to like about summer. Still, if I ever get wealthy, I may become one of those people who “summers” elsewhere, like the mountains, or Alaska, or Maine, or above the Arctic Circle in Norway. I like my community here, so I don’t see myself permanently relocating without some specific reason, but I could imagine spending extended amounts of time in other places.