august is just like february, except hot

August is just like February.

The obvious weather differences aside, these two months can be lumped together for me because they are when the charm of the season has worn off.

By February, you—if you live in the Midwest, at least—are thinking: For the love of snow boots, can I have a day where I don't have to wear 16 layers of clothes? A day where the sky isn't gray? A day when I don't have to worry about black ice?

These are surprising thoughts, considering that the first time it snowed, just a few months before, you thought: SNOW BOOTS!

And by August, I am done with the heat of summer. You may have been able to tell this from my writing recently because I mention the heat ALL THE TIME. For something I'm done with, it sure does occupy a lot of my thoughts.

Maybe the August doldrums hit me because I no longer have school to go back to. Back in the day, August was a season of anticipation.

Buying school supplies and new clothes.

Planning my first day of school outfit—and later, when I got to high school, planning my outfit for the locker decorating party. They must not be the same outfit, and they are equally important in establishing your entry into the year; everyone knows this.

And of course I got nerdily excited by all I was going to learn that year in physics or chemistry or English or American History. {I can really only remember stuff from those last two. Please don't quiz me about any physics formulas, unless it's about force. That one, for some reason, I remember.}

I, as an office dweller, no longer get back-to-school excitement. I get back-to-school envy, and those are not the same thing.

So what to do when you become a grown-up who isn't a teacher or a professional student? When August doesn't mean NEW but instead means HOT AND THE SAME?

You create a little excitement of your own, that's what you do.

My little excitement for this week was re-designing my blog.

This is the online equivalent of re-arranging your living room. By just moving around a couch, you feel like you've stepped into a new life. The light looks different in the room somehow and you never noticed how pretty that side table would be with a vase of flowers on it.

A new background and a new font on the blog and look at that: excitement during August.