Summer 2017 is officially declared a complete write-off.

We're pushing toward the end of August, and we've yet to see any prolonged spells of good weather. May and June might as well have been April. July brought violent, even tornadic activity and twice the usual amount of rain. August has been slightly kinder, but still soggy and moody and cool. Several times, in July and August, I've worn capris to run in, when normally shorts and a tank top would be considered sweat-inducing. We had the furnace on several times in early June, and we're in for possible frost on Thursday morning. The only thing we *have* had in abundance, it seems, is biting insects, who generally love cool and wet conditions.

Summer is a big deal around here, not only for the tourist trade that is the bread-and-butter of many people who live in the region, but also at the existential level - it's the reward we get for making it through a long, snowy, cold, dark, onerous - did I say snowy - winter. Now we're headed back toward that part of the annual trajectory, and it feels, simply put, like we've been ripped off, swindled out of our recompense. And we can't do a damn thing about it.

This morning, it did not just rain, it teemed. Relentlessly and irretrievably. There was a momentary softening of the downpour midmorning, and I used that opportunity to get the dogs to the park. The picture above is not post-swim. It's post-park. It began to pour again while we were over there, and there comes a certain point where you can't get any wetter, so you cease even to care. Arwen bit me by accident; she was chewing on her rubber ball as I went to prise it from her jaw, and a lower canine caught the edge of my thumb. I bled, copiously, but the water coming down from above washed and cleansed the wound.

It was a thoroughly miserable day, yet watching these two play in their carefree way reminded me that sulking about things out of your control is just not worth the effort or the energy, when it could be better spent simply having fun, come hell or high water.