August the Ditherer

I am married, but during the Dog Days we allow each other some time off the leash.
While other months boast direction and purpose — single-mindedly hustling us from one season to the next each replete with its own bundle of busyness and todos  — August is, by comparison, idle. A slacker and lollygagger among the year’s hard-working weeks, a month low on ambition and energy and accomplishments, August seems to hover rather than progress; marches in place; marks time.
“All that effort involved in ushering in autumn — solstices, back to school,  pumpkin ripening? We’ll leave that hard work for September and October,” August thinks as it ho-hums its way through another still, humid afternoon.”Those months have always been a speck too goal-oriented for my taste, anyway.”

The Dog Days may be so-named because of some heavenly phenomena, but we all know its really a matter of being under the influence of August’s contagious lethargy.

Say, is that hammock spoken for?