drawback to living in the midwest

I'm not one to speak against the Midwest.  I'm more the ever-ready cheerleader for this woefully misunderstood part of the country.

Heck, part of my senior thesis was on the Midwest:  representations of the Midwest in the musical, if you want to know the whole, not just the part.

{And coming up soon, right in this space, my entire thesis, in 500 word chunks.  Who says you have to post new stuff that you write?  And publishing on your blog counts as publishing, right?  Oh my word, I'm kidding.  I wouldn't actually make anyone read that whole thing, but I will, if you want, call you and sing songs from musicals about the Midwest.}

But today, I have identified a drawback to living in the Midwest.  In August, you do not feel like drinking red wine.

This is only a drawback if you prefer red wine, like I do.  August is probably the best possible time to drink white wine:  it's chilled and it pairs well with things that come out of a garden, such as zucchini.

I am a red girl, and when the August weather gives me the mean reds {thank you, Holly Golightly, for that just-right description of how it feels when you can't let go of anger or frustration}, there is nothing I would like more than to sit still on my balcony with a glass of Medoc.

However.

The humidity.

The mosquitoes.

The sweating even while sitting still.

When it's hot, the last thing I want to do is drink something warm, something that will make me a little flushed.  No matter how good that Medoc is, one step outside and I'm thinking of pink lemonade.

Not that that's a bad thing.  It's just that no one unwinds from a twisted day in the cubicle with pink lemonade.  For that, I want red wine, and I want to drink it outside.

I know.  Such demands.  Such ideas of how things should be.  But August humidity makes me a more demanding person than I normally am.  Weather has bizarre effects on me.  Some people feel rain in their arthritic knees; I feel humidity in my cranky soul as it threatens to take down my Pollyanna spirit.

To redeem the Midwest {I'm telling you, ever-ready cheerleader}, I should point out that it isn't just the Midwest that becomes nothing more than a ball of humidity in August. The South, I hear, is no peach, and humidity is probably why they invented sweet tea.

But I live in the Midwest and so I want to honestly say:  there might be this one drawback to living here. Just one.  And it's one I'm working to overcome.