When I was a child growing up on Cape Cod, August was the best month. The temperatures were the warmest of the year, but not so hot that you had to stay inside to protect yourself from the heat and humidity (thank God, since we didn’t have central air back then!). August meant summer was in full swing and all the kids in my neighborhood, Merrywood, were golden brown and running barefoot from yard to yard. Since August was the height of the summer season, my dad, who was in the hotel business, was rarely home. When he did get a day off, we loaded the car for a day at the beach. And I mean a day! I’m not sure how much of this I actually remember or if it’s a collection of snippets from family photo albums and 8mm home movies.  Either way, the memories that float around in my mind are divine. August was a happy time.

Jumping ahead to my teens, which were spent in Naples Florida, suddenly August became another experience. First, August in South Florida is hot. So hot! My family usually took the first two weeks for vacation and got the hell out of the state. The second thing that began to chip away at my fondness for August was the fact that in Florida school started the third week of the month. Maybe it was the fourth week, I don’t know, but for a girl from the Northeast, who never went to school before Labor Day, it was tough. This back-to-school-in-August nuisance followed me until college and I begrudgingly got used to it – until it got obscene (more below).