You Know It’s Summer When:

1.Suppertime is random as well as the food you serve. Five thirty one night, seven thirty the next. Well-balanced meals become off-balanced meals, sometimes in the form of pure additives and preservatives. (There are vitamins in preservatives, right?)

2. The mommy is joyfully the last to awaken and usually it is to a poke in the forehead rather than the beep of an alarm.

3. Your children’s attire chosen for the day resembles that of fugitives, but you are too hot and too unconcerned to put together anything remotely resembling precious.

4. A highlight of the day is retrieving the mail. You watch for the mail truck like a child watches for the ice cream truck, and you begin to seem borderline creepy and stalkish-like to the unsuspecting mailman.

5. You crave barbecued anything like a pregnant woman craves pickles and a glimpse of her swollen ankles. Suddenly everything tastes better grilled and topped with a little barbecue sauce including deviled eggs, mashed potatoes, and summer squash.

(I’m kidding about the mashed potatoes.)

6. Your calls to your husband at work increase ten fold. Highlights of The View are surprisingly not received warmly from your spouse even if the segment on bikini waxing was highly informative.

7. You see canning jars at the local grocery store and for a brief moment consider canning vegetables for the upcoming winter. That is, until you remember you don’t know how to can and wonder how canned vegetables can be better than the miraculous “steam in the bag” vegetables found in the frozen section. Not to mention that it is tough to get the daily summer dose of preservatives in fresh vegetables.

8. You reluctantly put on a bathing suit for ALL to see, all in the name of taking your children to the local pool, even when normal, every day modesty prevents you from allowing family members (or friends for that matter) to EVER see you in your undergarments.

9. Every time you glance in the mirror you see a multi-colored ring around your lips because you can’t seem to stay out of the children’s popsicles.

10. You realize the enormous amount of “summer grooming” that has to take place after the ongoing neglect that has occurred during the school year. Appointments attended for highlighting the hair, pedicuring (I’m sure this is a word) the toes, and waxing the eyebrows begin with your “specialist” saying, “So exactly how long has it been since your last visit?” After wiping your eyebrows out of your eyes, you lie, and say just a few weeks.

That's how you know it's summer.