This may be the hottest of the hot days yet. I walked over to the Farmer's Market, and before I even got to the end of the second block I was sweating. Actually, noticeably sweating, with liquid sweat running down my sides. Pretty unpleasant. But I continued on the few blocks more, and did a short walk round at the Market -- looking at jewelry and drinking pineapple juice and then heading home. But I was so weak and damp and enervated by the heat, that I stopped off at the library on the way. Two hours later, the air-conditioning has completely changed my world-view, if not my life.
For the past two weeks, the weather has been so dreadfully hot and still that the most I have ever been willing to do in the house has to be done while sitting still. So I can read and write and occasionally wrap a package, I can talk on the phone a bit or send an e-mail, I can watch a movie or drink some juice. But I cannot take out the garbage, wash the dishes, vacuum or put clothes away, cannot make the bed or fold towels or iron things. Easy to tell this, all you have to do is look around the apartment, where piles are rapidly accumulating. The dining room and the bedroom, in particular, are disappearing under piles of various types.
As a result of this world-view change, now, I feel as though I could easily go home and fold the laundry from the various piles in my bedroom, sort and throw away the various vegetables and what-not left over from the food box, and definitely take the basket of newspapers out to the recycling bin. Who knows, though. My energy level has risen as my body thermometer descended, but the opposite might just as well be true. They might even occupy the same container inside me, so that the absence of one guarantees the presence of the other. I am so looking forward to the lovely grey cool rainy autumn which is just around the corner. And I am not looking forward to the idea of a globally-warmed globe.
Today is September 11th, the ten-year anniversary of the terrorist attack on the United States by al-Queada. The comics page was full of references to it, and so was my Facebook page. I'm not about to forget it myself, since it was not only the first time America has been attacked by a foreign power since the 1940s, and cost many citizens their lives, but also because it was the beginning of the end for me at the MAC, thank you, Michael, who could not resist the opportunity to fool a bunch of people whom he had never met, through me, so that I would look stupid and take the blame. I still cannot believe that he called me at the office, from the den where he was watching television, and told me that the latest news was that Disneyland had just been struck by an airliner, killing hundreds of children and their families, and when I had passed this along to my co-workers and bosses, burst out laughing and said he had made it up, and weren't we all stupid to believe such a ridiculous story. I didn't pass along that last, but they all felt it anyway, and turned their obvious and justified anger and offence onto me. After that, my firing by Elda was merely a matter of time. So it is hard to think of this tragedy without also remembering Michael, which I am able to go days and never do.
Yesterday was Second Saturday, so I headed out to the Westside office and set up the food for the class. I took along some canteloupes and muskmelons from the Box, and sliced them up, and they were all eaten, so that was good thing. Then I went out to a brief breakfast with Mickey, and then we went to begin getting ready for Mavis's birthday party, which Monica throws at Mickey's but is supposed to completely cater herself so that Mickey is only required to provide a locale and some tables and chairs. It started out very miserably (I felt) since Billy was very grumpy and crabby and Mickey was not helping at all, but being very in-his-face. The temperature kept rising and rising and there was nowhere cool to be, even though the house was so much cooler than the outside. After I had sliced the remaining melons, a watermelon, a pineapple, celery and peppers and a roasted chicken, I couldn't hide indoors anymore and went out to join the horribly hot fray.
The children were the only ones who enjoyed themselves, it seemed clear to me, even though there were a great many people there. There was a sprinkler and a slip-and-slide, and they were running around in the bamboo forest, which must have been cooler than the open field. I listened to one remarkably stupid conversation between two mothers about what they would, and would not allow their children to do by themselves, because I was too stunned-by-heat to leave my chair. When finally the last person left, and we dragged ourselves into the house, I was a little more cheerful, and much cooler, and ended up staying until nearly eleven.
The woman on the computer next to me has a habit of sighing loudly every few breaths and muttering curses under her breath, even though she looks totally normal and intelligent and a lot like Elizabeth Moss. Don't know what the problem is, since it doesn't look like she is finding out that her child was killed, or that she owes someone a huge sum of money, or anything, so I think I will merely draw this to a close and go on home. See if my bright and vivid energy lasts beyond the three blocks and into the house. I am determined at least to take the newspapapers out.
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