High summer, and dandelion wine continues to ferment gently on the sill in the hall. After a late night last night, I'm tired today --- got home around midnight, then was awakened at 3 by a county-alert-system phone call informing me that we are under a heat advisory. DULY NOTED. I lay awake fermenting thoughts in my mind for a long time before dropping off again, to get up at 9 to drink coffee, then walk the dog.
It was already getting hot, but not too hot yet. We meandered down to the grassy place three lots up from us, where a neighbor's house stood until the community college bought her property and knocked the house down. Their plan was to put a parking lot on that lot, but fortunately that got shot down in a City Council meeting --- the corner lot next to it is already a largely unused parking lot, for one thing. The actual campus lot covers what used to be a football field, when the community college was the town high school. It's an enormous lot and rarely full. Then there's another largely unused lot across the street on the far side of the campus. There's ample street parking. Anyway, they didn't need another parking lot, so now we just have this grassy place, as my children used to call it. I took Dora out to sniff there and derp around before we started walking in earnest. Here she is sniffing out some kibble in the grass:
And waiting for more:
We walked the shorter segment of the greenway trail today, since it was heating up so much. Our street bisects the greenway, right at the railway crossing; if you turn right, you can walk about 2.5 miles to the end and back; if you turn left, you walk maybe 2 miles round-trip. The shorter end takes you to the dog park, which today when we got there was empty, so we spent about ten minutes off-leash, running, sniffing, jumping the hurdles and climbing the ramps. Now she's passed out in her crate. As with a toddler I'm trying to enforce something of a regular routine, with periods of fairly intense and purposeful activity interspersed with some quiet time in the crate, which is about the only way to get her to calm down and take a needed nap early in the day. Like a toddler, she gets overtired, then wired: barking at me, biting at me, wanting to play, but so wound up she doesn't even know what she's doing and loses all control. Sure enough, she's flat out on her side in the crate now, and I'm trying to set my mind to some tasks.
Wearing today, near the end of this week's July 4/3 Challenge lineup:
Suh-WING, batter! And it's the fourth installment of the swing-dress default for Week 1 of this challenge. I was just too tired to think of anything else. Here we have the bamboo dress I dyed a couple of weeks ago, a little faded after its last wash but still kicking. Lazily, I went for a blue-on-blue outfit, because these Birks are so easy to slip my feet into and walk in. It's matchy, but do I care? Not I, today. As always, after a sweaty walk, I'm cool and dry in bamboo, which I appreciate.
Tomorrow I'll have to think of something else to wear: shorts again, maybe, since we are under this heat advisory and all. I'd like to try them with a gauzy off-white tank I haven't worn in a while, though that tank is sheer enough to need a layer under it, so . . . we'll see. But that's another feminine element that I think would pair very well with the uber-basic shorts, elevating them to a summer date-night or party look. Not that I'm going to any parties or on any dates this weekend, since my standing date is visiting his mama in Memphis. But this could be a good opportunity to do a test-drive for that combination (also, blue Birks would be really on point --- I love them with the sage-green shorts).
Meanwhile, today, we're just a-swinging.
PS: Some more literary news. I've just signed a contract with Belle Point Press, located in Fort Smith, Arkansas, and dedicated to literature of the Mid-South, for a limited-edition chapbook printing of my short story, "The Cool of the Evening," which appeared in an online journal called the Agonist two or three years ago. That journal appears to have gone defunct, and the website is gone, so I'm very happy for this story to see the light of day again.