Last night's bean soup, which was very good.
Dora examining a drainpipe on our walk yesterday.
She would have crawled all the way down if she'd fit. The tragedy of being Just Too Big to go down holes where . . . things . . . might be lurking. Anyway, we spent a good five minutes on a drainpipe up the street before we even got to this one. I can assure the neighborhood at large that all drains have been or will be thoroughly inspected.
Today's high is 86F: warm, but bearable. I see that next week we'll be back up into the mid-90s, which is kind of gross, but oh well. The coast seems to have gotten a somewhat reduced but still catastrophic Hurricane Idalia last night, with flooding in places like Charleston, SC, four hours southeast of us. I'm gathering that Wilmington, NC, got a taste of it last night as well. We just had episodes of rain and a soft, damp night, wonderful for a late walk. People like to retire to the coast --- we have friends building a house right now somewhere south of Wilmington --- but no. thank. you. Give me the Piedmont and the mountains. I prefer the hills even when there's not a hurricane, but I especially like that we don't have to evacuate on the regular and then dig our house out of the slime. People love the ocean enough to choose all that. Not me. I've lived in tornado zones --- we get tornadoes here, in fact --- and in earthquake zones, and sometimes in both at once, but again, I'd choose those perils any day over the hurricane-vulnerable coast. But everyone is not me, obviously, and today a lot of those people are in need of prayer and material aid, which I hope reaches them quickly.
But here, again, the sun is shining, and it's looking like a nice day. My agenda of things to do is pretty much the same as it is every day, but I have pub night to anticipate at the end of it, calloo callay.
Wearing:
Brooklyn, to finish the month, with Kosher Casuals "jeans blue" crop top and these Birkenstocks which I promise you I don't sleep in. More enjoyable color-blocking: tealy green, dusty blue, dusty plum. Nothing matches, but every color harmonizes with every other color. It's supposed to be cooler tonight, in the mid-50s, so I might add either a long cardigan or a denim jacket to go out.
The August tally, by the way, which is pretty simple:
4 wears: Audrey, Brooklyn, Fiona, Maggie B, Sierra, Willow
Not a bad rota at all, I don't think. Everything gets worn, but nothing gets worn to a frazzle. At the moment I'm riding out my end-of-summer-doldrums desire for something new in the knowledge that I have clothes to wear, and I really love wearing them. I've promised myself a new dress in November, and that seems like a long way away, but honestly . . . I don't need it. I just want it. And that's okay, but it's not bad to make myself wait a while longer.
And as always, I feel great in this dress. I might bathe and wash my hair again before going out tonight, or I might not. Either way, I'll do. I've taken shots from multiple angles ---
--- and already I feel that I'm seeing some subtle results of my added workout regimen. Walking is good, and I want to continue to work on endurance (did ten minutes of aerobics yesterday that should not have felt as exhausting as they did!), but it's motivating to feel that targeting muscle groups in exercise yields some positive consequence, and fairly quickly. I like feeling stronger, but let's face it --- I also like looking stronger, even if it's only in tiny incremental increases.
Of course, as today's Mass readings reminded me when I read them earlier this morning, we do not know on which day the Lord will come. I don't know that this very night my soul won't be required of me. I don't know that today the Lord might not say to me, Relinquish all of this into my hands. I do know that the correct answer, in every instance, is Fiat voluntas tua. Or, as the old priest says in Elizabeth Goudge's The Scent of Water:
Your God is a trinity. There are three necessary prayers, and they have three words each. They are these, 'Lord, have mercy. Thee I adore. Into Thy hands.' Not difficult to remember. If in times of distress you hold to these, you will do well.
These are the necessary prayers, and I think when I go walking in just a few minutes, I'll repeat them as my morning prayer. Into Thy hands.
Meanwhile, although I know that at any moment my soul may be required of me, my body at every moment up to that point is a gift, and part of my job in the world is to steward that gift in joy and gratitude for its marvels. Because the body is marvelous, just as all creation is marvelous, and it does deserve our care --- not to the point of idolatry, obviously, but as any gift generously given deserves our attention, our thanks, our tending.
So that's the plan for today: Tend the gifts.
LATER:
Well, looks like I'm not going to New York in September after all. That was a nice prospect while it lasted, though I felt a little anxious and am not entirely disappointed. Still: fiat voluntas tua.
So far today I've written some more lines of verse and walked 3+ miles with the dog, then talked to the Texasgirl on the phone for quite some time. I think now, having eaten some lunch, I'm going to take a bath and wash my hair, then once again turn my attention to John Donne.