There are ways to have fun without sun

There’s a chance it could be sunny and warm today to kick off summer vacation.

Hey, anything can happen.

But, considering this year’s weather, a whole day of sun and warmth would be nothing but a cruel hoax, a promise made to be broken, a hint of things not to come.

Back in April, we got a good wry laugh out of snow on the first day of spring break. It was an oddity, a fluke, one last wintry insult to daffodils.

Or so we thought.

Spring was so unseasonably awful that, when the Daffodil Parade came around, we still had yards full of King Alfreds. When’s the last time that happened? It was almost eerie.

Since then, we’ve had snow in the mountains, sleet in the foothills and general shivering at sea level.

Could be that whoever’s in charge of the weather just gets a kick out of making hapless television news reporters drive to the top of Snoqualmie Pass for 11 p.m. live shots of snowflakes falling through the beams of highway lights. There’s nothing wrong with that, prank-wise. But it’s tough on the rest of us, the less well-coifed, the innocent bystanders.

We look out the window, see cottonwood seeds drifting by and have every reason to wonder if they are arboreal propagation or unseasonable precipitation.

We have our sunscreen ready and waiting. We found our sunglasses. We are pitiful in our optimism.

It’s time to step away from our dreams of beach blankets and iced tea. It’s time to embrace the clammy reality we face.

Here, then, are 10 strategies to make it through the dark, dank days of summer.

1. Recast parental threats to turn the big chill to your advantage. Start with, “Clean your room, or you have to go outside and play.”

2. Celebrate Christmas in July. With real snow.

3. Rethink your garden. Have mercy on your old sun-dependent favorites.

You want to plant summer squash? Tender, peppery basil? How about sending a dust of bunnies and their buddies, the newborn lambs, out to play with the thresher?

Don’t be so cruel.

This is a root vegetable year, and even the baby carrots are begging for blankets.

You want some variety? Sow a plot of irony: Snow on the mountain. Ice plant. Snowdrops. Snow peas. Frost peaches.

4. Figure out how to spin Aquafina bottles into fleece. Set up a cottage industry employing neighborhood teenagers who would otherwise be working as lifeguards.

5. Convert all outdoor pools into polar bear rescue facilities. They may be endangered, but here, at least, they won’t be sweating it.

6. Parents, celebrate the death, or at least the public disappearance, of the skimpy tank top and skimpier shorts.

7. Convert Owen Beach into a rowboat-scale theme park based on that real life Arctic adventure hit, “Deadliest Catch.”

8. Forsake the ice cream man. Patronize, instead, the jolly vehicle peddling cocoa and hot soup to blue-lipped kiddies.

At Cheney Stadium, spring for a commemorative Rhubarb afghan and a round of hot toddies.

9. Shift Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium’s emphasis from the Pacific Rim to the Arctic Circle. Launch a capital campaign to build the continent’s most elegant and comprehensive penguin exhibit. Its central feature, an ice floe, will require no auxiliary refrigeration.

Mobilize a simultaneous drive to collect hand-knit sweaters for the tigers and elephants who yearn to nap on soil warmed by the sun.

10. Repurpose the new spraygrounds installed at Tacoma’s neighborhood play fields.

Liability lawyers would cringe at the danger to shivery tots, who cannot resist running through a sprinkler no matter what the weather. The risk that they might slip on ice formed whenever the pale sun retreats behind a cloud is unacceptable.

Better to use the pools as community bubble baths by day and fire pits come evening.

Kathleen Merryman: 253-597-8677

kathleen.merryman@thenewstribune.com