It is mid-August and I am wearing a heavy fleece and wool socks, the fuzzy kind you keep in the drawer for the ski lodge. Wrapped around me is a blanket that trails behind like a cape as I scamper from room to room in our Victorian row house, searching for open windows. I haven’t yet tackled the hot-water heaters, and I struggle to turn them on with the onset of dark. Rain pelts the windows and I sit deep in the sofa cushions, my children on my lap. I am not trying to soothe them. This is an act of self-preservation – their bottoms are warm.

Yesterday it was a sunny delight. No more.

Even rain can't stop punting on the River Cam.

My mobile voice mail is bleating. I listen to a message from my friend Kristine who’s in London. “I’m calling to ask if it’s f–king freezing in Cambridge because it’s absolutely freezing down here. I don’t know why I’m surprised by this.”

No, but I am surprised. The fates torture me as I flip open my laptop and read an email from my friend Julie. “It’s gruesomely hot,” she laments  “both in DC and Dallas (where they’re into their 47th consecutive day of triple digit temps) and I’m just totally over summer. Never thought it would happen but it’s true.”

I consider putting my jeans in the drier for a tumble as I  shuffling to the kettle. This is it, my first genuine discovery: tea, the national salve, is also….hot.

I wonder, with a wince, what the weather will be like when winter approaches. Because last I checked, we’re in prime shorts-wearing season here.

Shorts, accessorized with a Snuggie.