When summer's end is nighing

Goodbye, July. 
Goodbye, summer.

We’ll still have hot days, probably right up until Thanksgiving, but the kids are already heading back to school.

That always signaled the true end of summer for me.

School starts way too early these days.
When I was a kid, it didn’t begin until after Labor Day.
Somewhere along the line, the calendar shifted, and summer break got shorter.

Some of the country kids in this area board the bus at 6:30 a.m. and don’t get home until almost 5 p.m.
The buses aren’t air-conditioned.
Sometimes I think people forget there are still kids out here riding those long country routes in the heat.

Cowboy and I went to town to grab Badger’s antibiotic and came right back home.
I stayed inside with her the rest of the day, behind tinted windows with the air conditioner running.
She’s still wobbly and had a few dizzy spells that really scared me.

At one point, she yelped, “I feel funny!”
I told her, “You better not faint on me. I can’t exactly catch you.”
She nearly knocked me down at the hospital.
She clutched the gate that separates my hall and the living room, took a shaky breath, and shuffled on to the kitchen.

I don’t know what Cowboy got into today besides going to work.
Knowing him, he probably found something to do.

He always has to get the eggs.
His birds have to be fed and watered, and the eggs collected, sun, rain, snow, or tornadoes.
Chickens have to be taken care of.

There really wasn’t much else going on today.

Tomorrow we’re going to attempt to go to town and get our groceries in.
Badger will go with us.

There are things she needs that we can’t just grab for her.
Badger knows what she likes, and she likes what she likes.

Then Saturday, she’ll go get that nose ring out and start the process of letting the hole close up.
Or at least, we hope it’ll close up.

Sunday will be church for Cowboy.

It’ll be a rest day for me and Badger because Monday she has an emergency room follow-up.

Badger is camped out in the living room on the couch.

It’s rapidly approaching midnight, so I’ll finish up and head on to bed.