Top 12 signs Summer is coming

12. My Mom is done with her Christmas shopping. Good Friday is my mother’s Black Friday.

11. I watch the 1975 cinematic masterpiece Jaws. I mean, this is MY list.

10. Here comes the sun. Thanks to climate change, it seems like every year the sun returns with a vengeance. Kinda like an upgraded terminator.

9. You’ve been thunderstruck! With warmer weather comes the almost daily thunderstorms. But, you can stand under my umbrella, ella, ella, eh, eh, eh.

8. The tourists are coming! Those selfie snapping folks every local loves to hate start invading sleepy towns everywhere like a plague of locusts.

7. Vacation, had to get away. Hordes of tourist means it’s officially vacay season. Or as it’s known in my house, “Hello Disney, my old friend.”

6. Boom goes the Summer blockbusters. What we discovered in the 70s was that going to see a Summer movie was a great way to beat the heat and lose your hearing.

5. Summer TV shows. What used to be known as rerun land is now the zenith of TV programming.

4. Break out the Summer playlist. The songs of Summer are the perfect antithesis of Christmas music; radiant, sexy, and sweaty. Glory be to The Cars, and to The Beach Boys, and to Jimmy Buffett.

3. It’s both the heat AND the humidity. It’s time to turn up the sweat glands to eleven and lower your hand because you’re sudoric.

2. Flora and fauna and flies, oh my. The landscape’s palette changes from S.A.D. gray to vibrant green, and the bugs come marching in.

1. Schools out, pool in. Ah, the sweet aroma of cookouts, vinyl floats, chlorine, and freedom.