The summer is half over, and I've barely spent any time at all outside on our expensive new patio. I figured it would go down like this- I can really identify with that Smiths song that has the line "spending warm summer days indoors... writing frightening verse to a buck-tooth girl in Luxembourg." Okay, I can't identify so much with the writing verse to a Luxembourg chick, but you get the drift.

Actually, I can identify with almost all of that Smiths song, which I believe is called "Ask" as in "I hate to ask, but can you check the inside of my pants and tell me what size they are?" Picture that being asked by Chris, to me, inside the pants section of the Target. Anyway, if for some reason you don't know that song, you should go listen to it. I'll wait here.

The thing about spending time on the patio, though, is that there's nothing to do out there. We have four of those canvas, collapsible sports chairs and half a table. We're getting the other half sometime soon, but I'm not in a hurry. We don't have a pool, we don't have one of those outdoor speaker systems designed as a bunch of rocks, we don't have anything interesting to look at except the other houses. So, all there is to do is sit. And read, I suppose, but I'd rather read indoors where I don't have to sit in a collapsible canvas chair. I guess some people get pleasure from just sun-bathing, but I'm Mediterranean. There's no need for that tanning nonsense. And what am I supposed to do while I'm sun-bathing? Just relax and think? Thinking is not relaxing.

We have had a few friends over a couple times this summer so far, but every time we've sat out on the patio, it's been because we've felt we've had to, because it's there. And without saying it out loud, we've always been pretty sure that we, and our visitors, are all thinking, "How much longer do I have to sit in this uncomfortable chair before I can go back in where the booze, the snacks, the music, and the Nintendo are?"

A couple times I've come home from work and have thought, "Maybe I should go sit outside and chill a bit before I start on dinner." But that thought is always passing, because, again, what am I going to do out there? And which direction do I face? The guy who lives behind us and to the left, he always sits outside and faces our house. I get the impression that he's watching us, as a matter of fact. His eyes burn into me like two lit cigars being pressed into the back of my skull. And I don't want to aggravate the situation by sitting out there and staring back. I don't want a stare off. And I'm not interested in staring at anyone else, either. So I just start on dinner instead, every once in a while glancing out the window at the patio and thinking, "Damn that's a nice patio we got."