Summer seems so far away. It felt like just yesterday that I was perched precariously atop a mule with a penchant for running, scaling the side of a rocky mountain, in Morocco. Those two weeks breezed by so quickly. When I got back home, I not only had a new-found appreciation for travel and indoor plumbing but I had a newly-acquired tan. Sounds good, right? Not when you’ve been traipsing around the desert in 3/4-sleeved shirts for two weeks. Yeah, it was that kind of tan.

Enter the beach. Oh, what a love-hate relationship I have with the beach. I love the heat and the soothing sound of the waves. But I hate sunburn and bodies of water that I can’t see the bottom of (yeah, irrational fear…so sue me). And up until recently, I wouldn’t be caught dead in anything other than a t-shirt and jeans.

But within the past year or so, for various reasons, it’s been more love than hate. But now that winter’s almost upon us once again, beach memories seem so hazy and distant.

How I long for those hot summer days of lying lazily under the sun.

At least my now-even tan (although now also somewhat faded) thanks me.