Dancing in the Rain

Shortly after Doug returned from in-patient rehab in Hawaii over a year ago, I gave him the card pictured. I knew I had to get him this card, both for the obvious reasons of trying to gain perspective on our suddenly changed lives, but also because we’ve had a long-running joke about Doug’s lack of innate dancing ability. He’ll be the first to admit it – he just doesn’t have great rhythm! We darkly joked that his stroke might actually improve things a bit. And then there’s the rain piece – as the boy absolutely hates rain, which I find mystifying since he chose to move here of his own volition 18 years ago from California. Maybe he had some sixth sense about what climate change was going to entail.

Speaking of which, remember when we used to have “Juneuary” a few years ago, freezing our tails off? And now it’s as hot as a cat on a hot tin roof – or:

What? I can’t perspire, you know!

In addition to dramatic felines (we call this particular pose “boudoir kitty”), the chickens have been panting all day while hunkered down in the coolest part of their yard. As for our geriatric dogs, their nights upstairs with us have been hell. I finally decided to leave them in the basement last night until one of them started howling at 3. Luckily, by then it had cooled down to 75 or so in our room and they could manage okay.

After reading Cliff Mass’s latest blog post “Heat and Thunder,” I was really hoping for some rain but wasn’t sure it would happen in Seattle or further east. When it started clouding up this morning, I thought, let’s do this! And it did rain – enough to give the thirsty plants a small drink and cool the air a bit. I was so giddy I ran outside and did a little dance in it! Doug said he used to do that growing up in Phoenix when the monsoons would come in August. This wasn’t a monsoon but I felt like that, a sense of relief and excitement. See what growing up in the Northwest will do to you? But as Cliff and all the weather forecasts show, it’s another super hot week and weekend on the way. Guess we’d better learn how to dance in the baking sun instead.

Listless Listlessness

List is an interesting word. I looked it up because I am feeling listless today, in the sense that I can’t figure out what I feel like doing and hence I’m doing very little. This happens occasionally when I find actual moments of unprogrammed time. It makes my brain go haywire because I know I should be doing many, many things, be proactively tackling things to stay with the curve (there’s really no getting ahead of the curve around here), but I’d really rather sit and read, write, think…the freedom to do that isn’t really there, it’s just an illusion.

These times happen occasionally because I neglect (or forget or don’t have time) to make a list of things to do. The list is there, I just didn’t write it down. And so I have nothing to prompt me to keep moving and then I slowly lose momentum, all the while knowing that this lack of initiative will be regretted later.

In any case, looking a word up in the dictionary is doing something, right? I remember reading the dictionary for fun, when I was young and carefree. Words and their origins are almost like friends to me. The commonly used ‘list’ describing our organizing tool is not the same as that of the ‘list’ in listless, which is about desire (Middle English ‘lysten’ related to lust). So being listless is having a lack of desire. The concept of choosing is also in the origin, which makes sense, as being listless feels to me like having too many choices but not wanting to pick anything at all.

List has many other meanings as well. There is of course the still used sense of leaning to one side, as a damaged boat in the water. This also rings true for me today, as I messed up my left side the other day doing who knows what. The twinge has traveled from my neck and shoulder down into my lower back. I’m definitely listing a bit.

So I’m calling this a listless, list-free, listing Saturday. Perhaps I’ll pick a few things to get done and set my ship slightly more aright. In the meantime, I must also point out that cats really have no problem with listlessness (they don’t make lists and they are totally okay with it) as documented by this photo montage of Pablo. Oh, to be a cat…

What should I do today?

 

Maybe this sun needs some basking in…

Yup, totally made the right call