It seems to happen suddenly, but really it just kind of sneaks up on me. In May it gets hot, but at night it cools down quickly. Maybe 90s in the day, but 50s at night. As June begins to wear on and summer gets nearer, that 50s at night becomes 60s. And the sun stays up in the sky until almost 9 around here. The house begins to have trouble losing the day's heat and midnight comes without much of a dip in temperature.

Because I tend to have the idea that the body has the best air conditioner around, throwing on that aging swamp cooler isn't always on my mind. But around midnight, when sleep is coming on, the heat becomes almost overbearing. Windows, doors and vents have been open for hours, but the house has not cooled down past 80. Fans slice the air, moving it around, if not actually cooling it. Sheets, covers, and clothes are thrown off the bed in an attempt to cool the night down enough to sleep.

So it's almost summer and the only thing I can think to bitch about is that it stays hot longer. The last few days have brought cloud cover, cooling off the afternoons and evenings. Even though actual rain has been scarce, the clouds at least dampen that late day heat. Summer is nigh in the high desert.

There is a certain amount of narcotic to summer here in New Mexico. The afternoons take forever and sap the energy. Watching the sun go down is better than doing anything else. Leaning back in the back yard with my feet up on old railroad ties, a glass of water or sun tea or beer waiting near my toes, I wonder if there is anything else important going on anywhere.

And I'm sure there is, but it doesn't matter to me.

Everything falls to the wayside in the summer. Things get put off for no other good reason than it's maybe a little too hot to concentrate on anything too hard. Sure, I still go to work, play racquetball and stand for five minutes in a cool shower to take that heat stink off, but anything else is optional.

I think back to all those summers where I managed to skip the daytime almost completely. Living the life from 2 or 3 in the afternoon until 5 or 6 in the morning when the sun begins to make its encore appearance once again. It was a good system, staying away from the heat like that. It didn't matter that the bad novel I was working on was going nowhere, it just mattered that it was summer and the next batch of thoughts could be put off if necessary.

Cool drinks, good friends and the melt.

The thing the summer does most (as evident by this column) is make everything else less important than surviving and cooling off from the heat. Nothing comes close. Presidential election? Are you kidding? Mergers, acquisitions and instant trading? Call me in September. Social injustice? What about this heat? Isn't that constricting enough?

Which is why baseball works so well in the summer. It lasts all the way through that melt from the afternoon into the night. A few beers, a few cheers, a few trots around the diamond. Sure it's slow, but so is the summer. It's dark for maybe 8 hours, but bright and hot for almost 16.

So let all that other stuff drift from your mind. Get yourself a tall glass of your favorite cool beverage, prop your feet up and watch the sun go away one more time. It's summertime and there's nothing else to do.

Matt Worley might have been born in the winter, but his heart beats best in the warm breeze of summer.