Summer Meme

I found this meme at St. Casserole, and I kind of liked the questions. She says, "Toby Brown at Classical Presbyterian created a Start of Summer meme ..."

1. What first tells you that Summer is here? For me, that would be the heat. I love love love the perfect days of spring, when the temperature is that perfect 70-ish level, the breeze is blowing, and the sky is perfect blue. The hot, sticky weather that follows is summer.
2. Name your five of your favorite distinctively Summer habits or customs? We've been grilling out, whichi s a summer custom to me. Other summer habits would include vacation, not taking the kids to school, not worrying about homework, and carrying a summer purse. (Just as a sidenote, a summer purse has room for a paperback book inside.
3. What is your favorite smell of Summer? Grilled steak. Beach. Garden grown herbs. Roses.
4. What is your favorite taste of Summer? Watermelon.
5. Favorite Summer memory? When you go through childbirth classes, they teach you to have a focus image to think about when you are breathing through contractions. My focus image for childbirth, and what I think about when I think of the beach was a sunset walk at the beach -- perfect weather, perfect lighting. Great memory.
6. Extreme heat or extreme cold? Which would you choose and why? Hah! Hah Hah Hah! If you know me at all, you know the answer to this question. I would always choose cold over hot. I hate to be hot.
7. What books do you plan to read for the season? I told my Emmaus reunion group that I was going to pick up a book to read that dealt with God and faith. I was standing at a bookstore that day, looking at the books, when I realized I was buying a book because I thought I SHOULD. I did eventually buy one, but I kind of let go of the idea that I NEEDED to be reading what I thought of as a book for spiritualn growth. Maybe that's not where God wants me to be right now. I did pick up Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea, which I'm going to start reading, I think. I may also read some of my son's summer reading books.
8. How does the Summer affect your faith? Is it a hindrance or an ally? I'm not really sure how to answer that. If I'm hot, I can't concentrate, so I imagine if anything, the heat of summer is a hindrance.