There are many things I hate about August.  The name, for starters.  August has a slow and dull sound to it, like rhubarb or oatmeal.  And, maybe it’s because I was forced to read August Strindberg when I was in school but, for me, the whole month of August is imbued with a sort of Nordic melancholia.  There are, of course, other months whose names I love:  April is probably my favorite because it sounds more or less like what it is:  A good time for tulips and puddles.  I also like July which has a Yankee Doodle summer’s here have a hot dog! quality.  And I love December because it’s long and sounds like wintertime.

But August.  Please.  This is the doldrums.  This is a month of lethargy.  Unfinished books.  Text messages that disappear into the ether like dying fireflies.  August is the beginning of the end.  It’s the month you realize that you’ll never be a sunburned kid playing on a beach again.

As some of you know, I run Little Airplane, a small New York production company and, for us, August, is not a time to relax.  Over half our business now comes from Asia where they do not take summer half-days on Fridays nor do they spend two weeks drinking Ouzo on Crete.  If Asia’s working, we’re working.  Since the U.S. is now the only country with electricity that doesn’t subsidize animation, studios like mine must be totally global if we want to keep making our shows.  Please don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to be busy, but I can’t recall the last summer I dozed on the grass, sat on a porch, or posted an “out-of-office” reply on my e-mail.   August always reminds me that I (still) need to get a life.

Other things I hate about August in no particular order:  I get flashbacks of having to return to school and I didn’t like going back to school;  I must accept that I’m just as fat as I was when the summer began and I swore I would lose ten pounds;  My mini-Aussie, Buffy, gets overheated at the dog run in August so I hose her down and she gets mad at me for doing that;  I don’t like beer and, for some reason, men think it’s important that other men drink beer;  My therapist goes on holiday in August which is not good news for me or anyone within a quarter mile radius of me;  I am very sick of Andy Cohen and Bravo by August, and, finally;  Mary and I broke up in July so this is the first August I’ve been without her in five years and that sucks most of all.  I apologize if I’m out of sorts this week but even your favorite preschool TV blogger gets his heart broken now and then and takes it out on the poor month of August.