It finally feels like summer after a long winter and conflicted spring, like summer in Wisconsin specifically, muggy and buggy and sticky and heavy-aired, all of the things that I think about when people ask how I can stand the harsh winters.

Standard replies: a) I’ve never been much good at being from California and/or b) it’s not the winter freeze that gets to me, it’s the summer stupor. But in any case, there are always at least several days of fall glorious fall to make it all worthwhile. Days of which I mean to make the most this year, storing them up in squirrel-like fashion for whatever (likely urban) setting awaits me in 2014. Summer has never really been my time of year.

But there was a sweet spot around the time I was middle-school-aged, when most of us were old enough to at least partly get into the spirit of my mom’s summer programs. Those involved doing chores for rewards, which ranged from candy bars for sweeping the patio to picking out the “Movie Tuesday” feature from a selection of classic Disney non-animated (at least partially) films for taking on a more labor-intensive project, like Dewey-Decimaling the library.

I always tried to earn that reward first so I would get to pick, though it was a tough decision – Hayley Mills and Burl Ives in Summer Magic, the many splendors of Mary Poppins (totally starry-eyed, I pleaded with my mom to let me sweep the chimney as my chore to earn repeat viewings, but alas for that method of begriming my face like my newfound idol), Bedknobs and Broomsticks, The Apple Dumpling Gang, Pete’s Dragon. All the greats.

Over this holiday weekend I felt my annual happy anticipation of fall stir to life, spurred on by the heat increase which has me wishing for this season to end but also by that “last-time” impetus which makes me want even the things that aren’t my favorites to linger a little longer.

4th of July through Thanksgiving is my most wonderful time of the year – it has the best holidays, with so many decorative opportunities for houses and foodstuffs and selves and so much less pressure to conform to strict widespread expectations than those “big names” that come later/earlier in the year.

No presents required, just presence at mellow, fun-filled festivities, at least for my family. It has recently become necessary to factor the burgeoning of the next generation – 6 and counting – into the calendar, and all of their birthdays so far fall between mine at the beginning of May and my favorite day of the year. So I’ve got a new sweet spot, a sweet season in fact, that will come around every year, and right now I’m smack dab in the middle of it. Loving every minute.