Heat harvest

I keep trying to write a post - lots of drafts - nothing post-ready. I'll blame it on the (slowly abating) heat we've been having. I have been too warm for so long that my eyes feel like I got a sunburn and then stayed out too late. My office needs to be cleaned out and paperwork needs to be handled, but I'll need a day that isn't dripping with sweat first. As I glance around at things that need sorting and tossing and filing and such, I note that I put a post-it on the wall that says:

Office Needs
pencil sharpener (bring from kitchen?)
large wall planner
need not to be interrupted


Now where did I think I was going to get that last one, I wonder?

Memories of school clothes shopping and sewing always come to me in this sort of heat. It was hot work, sewing clothes out of Pendleton wool in the summertime. And that may only have happened once. Other years had less wool in them, I think.

The Pendleton wool year included my favorite color in the universe, though. It's a kind of dark aqua color - deep teal - a shade darker than my eyes - the color of deep ocean water and the sunset sky right after the purple fades but before the sky turns all the way to black. The color of these beads. I think we made a jumper that year - for wearing with white blouses.

My office holds summer's heat, and all this paperwork I need to do, and books I've been meaning to read. But it has started to hold something else, as well. It has started to hold prayer offices, said in full view of "my" mountains and trees and sky; and the consecrating blessing of struggles over the writing I've been doing for school and for my own clarity; and the echoes of conversations with my now-adult children, at college, in their own apartments, and even far away clothed in soldier's clothes.

Maybe that's what it takes for a place to become part of who we are. Maybe it has to witness our tears as well as our more benign and perfunctory work, and maybe a place cannot really belong to us until we have been there for refuge and triumph. My office is a mess right now. It's okay, though. Lots of organically productive things look messy - especially right before a seasonal harvest.

It will be cooler

I just saw this on the news this morning. The first one is today. One. Oh. Seven. In the Pacific Northwest, on the maritime side of the mountains, "cooler" is not usually a description of the upper 80's.

So, what do YOU do every day?

"Excellence is an art won by training and habituation.
We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence,
but rather we have those because we have acted rightly.
We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."

Aristotle

Did we wish too hard?

Okay.

I know I was tired of February by the end of March, but I did not mean that I wanted the next season to start with the Hinges of Hades. This is freaking ridiculous.

(Our soldier says it's this hot at night where she is. Somehow that information does not help me.)

The Great Husband does it again

Yeay, husband!!! He has rescued this keyboard from the brink of death. He took it apart and cleaned out all the soy-creamered coffee that was resting stickily inside of it ever since I up-ended my morning coffee into lap, keyboard, and desk calendar earlier this week. And it's working grrrreat!

(And if you click on the "male superhero." you can find a coloring page for getting one of your own. I doubt yours will fix keyboards at a single bound, but who knows?)

In other news, I had to work today, and there were too many things to do here for us to attend a family gathering at the beach. The beach would be a lot cooler than it is here. But on the bright side - the very bright side indeed - I saw a view of the side of Mt. Hood today that took my breath away. I'm taking my camera with me next time I drive to Parkdale to be the card lady at the store up there.

News from our Afghanistan soldier: This is the magazine worth reading if you really want to know how things are going over there. (She's borrowing Major Curtis's copies - she said she knows he doesn't have time to read them right now, so she volunteered to do that.) She says the enormous scarf she sent me for my birthday is a pashmina, so now I'll know how to clean it. It's such a gorgeous piece of fabric - woven in shimmery golds and burgundy in an intricate pattern. It will be wonderful when the weather cools down in the fall. She also says this is the book keeping her sane right now.

And I've gotten a few more chips off the huge block in the road that seems to morph into The Great Unscalable Mountain every time I think I might write something and send it to a real live editor. But what about? But what about? You can't. Not yet. Wait. Wait. Wait. Over and over, like a kind of nasty, mean-spirited crossing guard who never does want anyone to cross at her corner. At work at the library this week -- Reality Dude pointed out that the demented crossing guard doesn't have any real authority over me and I can cross whenever I want to.

I did cross at the Sartorial Crossing this week. For once, when I tried on something that fit perfectly, I didn't second guess myself and I actually bought the thing. Maybe that's a good sign. Dress today, essay tomorrow - or something like that.

(Man, it's nice to be able to type again! Did you know the computer has an on-screen keyboard you can use with your mouse? I'll try that again someday if I want to imagine being seriously injured and unable to use all my fingers.)