Weather, Or Not

Monday I didn't go outside at all. There was no mail delivery of course, but I had planned on emptying my trash cans. Somehow I lost track of time and before I could do the task the neighbor who puts the cans out at the street had done his task, so I never got around to it. Then I took a nap and didn't wake up until deep dusk had settled on the world. The trash can wait until the cans return sometime this evening.

A nice, cool day is coming, and there is still a slight chance of showers this morning, as well as Thursday. Rain or not, I'm just happy for the coolness. I really don't even care if I end up needing the furnace Wednesday, when the high will be 66 and the low 53. I probably won't be needing to use the fan for cooling for a few days, and I'll be happy not to have the draft for a while. In fact I've already turned the fan off tonight, as the apartment got down to a pleasant 71 some time ago. I'll be closing the windows when I go to bed, which will be shortly. There's no bird to listen to tonight anyway. I guess it's too chilly out for them. It's just right for me. I just can't sing well.

It might be the fact that it's now getting dark so early in the evening that has me losing track of time and not getting an entry posted before midnight. Now my brain full of lint felt the heat leftover and went quiet quietly. I have eaten toast instead of dinner, as though a bit of butter could make up for the blandness my slacking has brought. Now that I think of it, all the day's tasks went undone, and so am I. Maybe I'll do better tomorrow (today now) and if that bird singing through the night outside my window has anything to do with it I'm sure I will. I'm pretty sure it's saying that tomorrow (today) will be cooler than today (yesterday now) was. That should help.

Ooh, chocolate for bedtime. I feel better already.


( Sunday Verse )

Shopping pickup has been arranged for Friday, but it's going to be fairly early and so I'm going to order before I go to sleep, if I go to sleep. I slept poorly Wednesday and then had a very long nap this afternoon and didn't get up until eight o'clock. I might not need to sleep again until Friday afternoon. Weird and distressing but there it is.

And I got my May utility bill and it's way less than I'd expected, so maybe I'll indulge myself with something special. Maybe creampuffs or something like that. After all I can't take it with me, unless I take it as extra weight on my fat ass. And of course they say that eating well is the best revenge, don't they? Yeah, creampuffs, or maybe a cake. A whole cake. All for me. Living my childhood dream. Carpe diem! And a shot of brandy.

A while ago I was attempting to prepare some dinner and managed to drag a plate full of food off the counter down my front and onto the floor. Some triage and cleaning followed, and a somewhat diminished meal is now simmering on the stove. I suppose I should be grateful I didn't impale my hand or other body part, or slice off a digit, as I was using a knife at the time of the unfortunate event. The plate, being Corelle, did not break on impact with the floor, and is in fact indistinguishable from other plates of that brand which have not endured such misuse. A well-made product then. Who knew?

Monday night passed without recourse to the fan again, and it is currently cool enough indoors that I suspect tonight will remain fan-free as well. My good fortune is unlikely to persist beyond tonight though, as the daily highs will be returning to the nineties starting tomorrow.

Oh, and I'll have to go out into that heat briefly Thursday, as I have ordered some items of clothing from J. C. Penney's that are to be delivered that day. There was a a BOGO sale and I am in need of new boxer shorts, and still hope to find some tank tops that don't ride up on me. I ordered on four pack of tanks and three four packs of the boxers, for which I have paid slightly over half what they usually cost and about double what I think they are worth, but that's just late stage capitalism.

If I were going to be alive two or three years from now I doubt I'd even be able to find underwear amid the general collapse, unless I took them from a dead guy's corpse. But that will be then and this is now, and Friday will be shopping day and maybe I'll get my donuts again, after a two week drought. Much more enjoyable than stripping cadavers in the blazing streets.

Gusts of wind are now and then rattling my windows and booming in the various vent pipes. The wind and its consequent fore warning will remain through Sunday night, along with cooler temperatures. Saturday night I didn't need to use the HVAC fan to keep the place cool, the open windows alone being sufficient to bring the temperature down to 70 degrees before dawn. The serenity of the fanlessness was nice for a change. I doubt I'll get many such mechanical-racket-free nights between now and autumn.

Either the wind or some sort of animal invasion or perhaps a combination of both flattened the poke weed in my back yard, and now it won't be providing late afternoon shade to my back window. I will also miss the lovely display of shadows the plants use to cast upon the blinds. This apartment is sadly lacking in aesthetic appeal most of the year, and I've looked forward to the shadow painting ever since the poke weed began volunteering in the yard, some years ago.

There was a fairly large one-pot dinner prepared entirely on the stovetop Saturday evening, and so far very little indigestion has resulted from it, so maybe I got lucky. Tonight's dinner will be one that frequently gives me some discomfort, but it is cheap, quick, and uses minimal heat, so I keep buying it. With advancing age one makes ever more compromises, and I suppose I've been lucky to escape even worse problems so far. I hope I'll appreciate the luck while it lasts.

The predicted high today is only 76, which means I'll be getting another fan-free night tonight. Heat will return Monday, and by mid-week we'll be getting highs in the nineties again. At least we're only five weeks from the summer solstice now, so such things are not unreasonably beyond the norm, as they were back in April. Lets hope the meteorological reasonableness continues.


( Sunday Verse )

It was a bit cooler Thursday and the apartment peaked at 78 degrees this evening. I just got the windows open and the fan on and expect it will cool of quickly. Outdoors it's already down to 73, heading for a low of 59. More like June than May, but I can live with it.

Last night I only got about four hours of sleep, and had hamster wheel brain for quite a while. I'll be headed bedward earlier tonight, and hope to catch up with the loss. A sandwich might be devoured first, though I downed a large malted a couple of hours ago and might be able to get by with some cheese and crackers.

Down to my last two donuts and I still haven't arranged any new substitutions. I'll probably just try to make do with cookies. I have a lot of those on hand, though few are of the highest quality. I miss the convenience I enjoyed in childhood of bakery trucks plying the suburban streets. Helms Bakery had some great donuts, and cream puffs of a quality that is simply unavailable in our fallen world. I'd gladly sacrifice half of Congress to a white whale for one of those.

I still don't have the cadence of summer, though its weather has arrived early. I checked the temperature at ten o'clock and it was cool enough to open the windows and turn on the fan, but then I forgot to do it until just a few minutes ago. So it's still 79 degrees in here, and it could have been down to 75 by now had I been focused. I could also have been fixing dinner now, instead of waiting for the kitchen to get cooler before firing anything up. I'm so getting a whole bunch of fruit next time I shop. I need stuff to not cook.

I spent a lot of time Tuesday watching a video that took me back to the late 1960s, when I used to spend nights listening to a Los Angeles FM station that played less popular new music. It was the first place I ever heard Gordon Lightfoot, and last night I came across this recording of one of his early songs that I hadn't heard for decades. Now I'm temporarily obsessed with it. Damn, those were the good days. I think I knew it, even then.

Somehow I managed to drag my sorry arse out to the sultry laundry room to do one load Sunday afternoon. The day was quite unpleasantly hot, and once again I avoided cooking dinner even though there is stuff I need to use up. Exhausted by the unaccustomed activity again, I took an evening nap which only ended a short time ago. I might attempt some cooking now, even though the apartment is still too warm for me.

One result of the nap was a temporal displacement, with me waking up to think an entire night had passed and the sun would soon be rising. I'm glad it won't. The thought of bright light at the moment appalls me. This photophobia happens now and then. I'm hoping I can stay awake until the night's last hour, then get to sleep before sunrise, and then won't have to see daylight until Monday afternoon. In the meanwhile I have the windows open to the coolish night air, and I'm finding consciousness not entirely unpleasant. Weird, I know.

Time to mess up the kitchen, I think. I'm actually feeling sort of hungry for what there is to eat. Still not looking forward to cooking, of course. The corollary to you can't always get what you want is sometimes yo get what you don't want. For me, cooking is pretty much always that. But the laundry is done. Yay.

Once again Joe Albertson's evil empire has stabbed me in the back, not having my favorite donuts in stock even though Safeway's web site said they did. Not only that, but they didn't have my preferred backup donuts in stock either, so I'm stuck with my third choice. As I was given the misinformation that the donuts were available, I didn't order any substitute foods for my breakfasts for the next two weeks. I'll have to make do with what is on hand, which isn't much.

They were also out of four other times I'd ordered, so they effectively screwed themselves out of about twenty extra dollars of sales which they were screwing me out of my menu. And they'd already crewed themselves out of another twelve when they didn't have my beer in stock, and I chose not to order any backup since there was nothing else I wanted either. I wish I could still get out to buy stuff myself, so I could fill in the gaps with stuff from other stores, but I just don't have the energy anymore.

I've been up since first light Friday morning, and I didn't get a nap, so I'm exhausted, but I haven't had dinner yet and I'm actually hungry, so I guess I'll have to fix something before I go to bed. I could do something fairly easy, but I really want to get started on the more elaborate meals I bought. It's going to be getting way hotter over the next several days, and cooking will become more and more unpleasant.

And damn, I forgot the BOGO deal they had on small watermelons. I'm starting to crave summer fruits, and have none. Just one mango, and the mangos have been disappointing lately. I hate to pester the niece and nephew to fetch more stuff for me, but I'll probably think about it, and then probably not do it. That's my usual way. I wonder if I've got some canned fruit? Awful stuff for the most part, but maybe better than nothing or being a pest.

Now that it's getting very balmy, it would be a good time to hang out in the back yard, but I don't do that anymore. The shrubbery has grown so vast that there is barely room for a chair out there, and certainly no room to move around. Plus the bright sunlight splattered through the leaves hurts my eyes. I also suspect my sneezing would get worse if I spent time out there in the plant-spooged air. It's bad enough indoors.

And speaking of sneezes, I'm done with Kleenex. The last two boxes of that brand I've had have been nightmarish. I can't pullout just one tissue. They are all in a string, and sometimes a light pull will bring out three or four. It's almost never les than four. Previously I had a few boxes of Safeway's store brand (I think they're called Softly) and this issue didn't come up (accidental pun.) They almost always came out o the boxes one at a time. They are actually cheaper than the Kleenex, too, except when the Kleenex is on sale. In the future I intend to stick to the brand of tissues the don't stick to each other. The tissue must issue!

It's going to be warmer tomorrow, and then get warmer still. A high of 97 will arrive next Tuesday. I shall rue Tuesday, I'm sure.