1. I am hot. Do you know the southern saying about how horses sweat and men perspire but ladies glisten? I am glistening up a storm. Usually our house stays pretty cool in the summer, courtesy of the big trees on the south side, but not this week.
2. Something is wrong with our AC drain and it has been emptying into the middle of the basement floor, pouring silently under a little carpeted area where my husband stored his ten or twelve linear feet of LPs. Something is also wrong with the expensive system we had installed last spring to deal with the water that leaks in from outside when the rain is heavy. Both repairmen are coming in the early afternoon. Here's to quick easy fixes. Cheap or free would be good too. (The perimeter system is supposed to have a lifetime warranty, so it had better be free.)
3. When I was in college, I lost my passport. I needed it to complete paperwork for a new job, but it was nowhere to be found. In the search for it, I wound up doing a thorough tidying of my disaster-area desk. I found the passport only after I had put away all the other odds and ends. I remember thinking that it seemed providential for the passport to disappear temporarily, because I needed the kick in the pants to clean my desk.
I am trying to be cheerful about the basement leaking water from two different sources. We have long talked about making better use of our basement, and now we will have to get down there and do some work on it -- throw out the carpet, probably, and find a better place to store the LPs, and set up a dehumidifier and hit the mildew-y places with bleach or something (any suggestions for green antifungals?). We might as well do some organizing while we're at it. A providential kick in the pants, just like in college.
I'd rather have a desk to tidy, I'm just saying.
4. On the happy side of the ledger, I am going to see a dear friend this weekend for the first time in a year. I am done with my seminar and it was fairly painless. I think I might take next week off from school and dive back in after the Fourth.
5. In further happy news, the bulging tooth I mentioned last week is through. The boys are all excited about it and have been reaching in to feel the little nub. It's just barely above the gumline, not far enough to do any damage. I'm guessing her first good chomp will cure them of sticking their fingers in there.
6. My boys have asked me to plan a Dungeons & Dragons campaign for them, and some temporarily insane version of me said yes. I played a bit when I was a kid, but D&D is more complicated than it used to be. The last game I played featured a dragon that said "Cowabunga!" when it burst onto the scene. My boys are not so interested in the whimsical -- they are asking me if the hostile zombie wombats will have titanium armor and if the dragon-born paladin can invoke the assistance of a [brain overload here].
To their questions I replied knowledgeably, "...ummm...?" This could be a time sink.
7. On our kids' bookshelf we have a 70s version of Robinson Crusoe in which the men have Leif Garrett hair. It is fairly true to the original, with lots of text and old-fashioned language. Pete, surprisingly, loves it. He told my MIL that she shouldn't just describe the pictures; he wanted to hear all the words. I am ending this post to go read it again. I suppose I should be grateful that I can deal with my glistening problem by calling a repairman, instead of making my lonesome self a goatskin parasol to keep the tropical sun away.
More quick takes here.
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