Short letters for Tuesday.

Dear the heat of the summer,

not our actual weather, but
close enough.

I know you have not quite yet fully arrived, but damn, I sure could feel you coming around the bend today. What was it? 92, 93? After a morning and early afternoon at the park, then the library, then the bagel place, getting in and out of a car and helping a toddler do the same, with the car seat factor also in play, I had to come home and take a nap. And ponder the fact that the heat really takes it out of me.

I made a vow to myself that I would not, the heat of the summer, use you as the trump card in every conversational opening, as when the guy at my gym smiled at me and said, How are you doing today? in the nicest way, and I replied, h o t. As if the heat of the summer were not already evident. As if he, gym guy, and everyone else in the gym and in the valley and pretty much all over the west, weren't already feeling it.

Nope, I won't. I won't moan on about you and bore people and bring them down. With boredom. But I gotta tell you, the heat of the summer: it won't be easy.

(just one last time: h o t !)

htms

*

Dear my craving for sweet things,

straight up sugar. that's just how it is.

Yes I went to Target tonight to get this and that and finally a case for my phone so it won't break if I inevitably drop it. And yes I bought an item or two in the food/snack aisles. Of course, yes, I considered buying cookies.

I didn't, but that just meant I went home and thought about making cookies.

Luckily, I was instead seized by the imperative to make granola. This means that I will have something sweet--but not too--for breakfast, and I know what's in it, because I made it myself.

Just for the record: oats, pecans, sliced dried white peaches, dried sweet cherries, some maple syrup and some safflower oil. Baked at 300 degrees for 45 minutes, stirred every fifteen.

Yes I still have some butter softening for oatmeal cookies and YES I might make the dough tonight. But I might not, because self-discipline, obviously.

Breakfast is going to be swell,

htms

**

Dear the NBA Finals 2015,

Oh how splendid you were, epic and beautiful and hard-fought and wonderful.

it was great. but now it's over. #emptyspace

I so wish you weren't over yet.  What is there to replace you?

Okay, Wimbledon. And the U.S. Open, I guess. Right, right now: women's soccer--the World Cup.

Still, I will miss you hardcore. And I'm feeling un peu désolée at the moment, for LeBron and Cleveland. I wish they had won tonight, so there would have been just one more game. And also because I found myself rooting for them.

I will get over it, I guess, but first I need to be alone to feel my feelings, okay?

htms