Just a few charts to get you through the blue-blazing heat of the summer.

Hey! Did you enjoy winter? How about that fifteen-minute breeze we called spring? Whelp, I hope you’ve had your fill of being cold, because from now until October you’re going to be one unshaded moment away from spontaneously combusting. YAY!

It’s time to get excited about sweating through everything you own.

More importantly, it’s time to get acquainted with someone–anyone. really–that owns a pool.

Pools are imperative during the summer, because the summer months are when all of those days you spent as a kid pretending the floor was lava pay off. Because in the summertime EVERYTHING ACTUALLY IS LAVA.

Take my neighborhood for example. During the fall, winter and spring it looks like this:

But in the summer, my neighborhood looks like this:

Befriending my neighbors is going to be a pretty big challenge, since I’m fairly certain they hate me on account of how much I hate them (and all of their friends who habitually park in front of my house and/or mailbox and their dog and their music). But I plan to rise to the occasion.

And in the meantime, I’ll be sucking down Slurpees like it’s my job.

This post is not endorsed by lava or slurpees. Summer, however, is literally and figuratively sponsored by the surface of the sun.

So I’m at the age where a lot of my friends are getting married. And this is cool. Weddings are a super fun time, because often sealing love for eternity-ish in front of a room full of friends and family often involves an open bar and someone playing Journey’s “Faithfully” (I’m still YOOOUUUUU-UUUUUURS!)

But before the wedding comes the bridal shower. For those of you who are not familiar with what a bridal shower is, it’s basically the thing where pastel colors throw up on a room full of women and cupcakes, and then everyone has to watch the bride-to-be open a bunch of wrapped gifts and act like owning a standing mixer is the same thing as winning Miss America. (I’ll give you this much: A standing mixer is way more useful than a Miss America sash.)

And somewhere between the introducing yourself to the bride’s distant aunt Muffin part and the part where you finally get to leave, someone will hand you one of these cards:

You’re supposed to write down advice to prepare the bride for marriage, and at some point during the shower, the bride will read the advice–or you will read your advice to her–aloud while everyone giggles. And it’s pretty much the biggest farce in the entire wedding-bridal-marriage process, because everyone writes flowery, romantic things like “Always accept a kiss from your hubby, even if you’ve just applied your lipstick. Tee hee.” Which I’m thinking is about the same as teaching someone to SCUBA dive by saying “make sure you look at all the cute fishies!” and then pushing them into the ocean.

Don’t we owe each other a little honest? I’m not saying bring the transcripts of a divorce arbitration to the shower, but say something helpful, something sage-y.

Here are some suggestions: