Dog Days

     You know what I'm talking about. Especially if you live in the south. Those days when you don't want to get in the car and go anywhere past noon, because you know when you get back in the car to go home, you'll be roasted to a perfect medium rare in just five minutes. It's especially hard for me, because I can't drive at night due to night blindness. So if there are any necessary chores to be done or appointments to be met, they'd better be done and met by lunchtime, or else they ain't gonna be done nor met. 

     Which leaves me with these long, heavy afternoons to fill. Reading? I'd love to, and I try, but my eyelids start drooping after only twenty minutes. And I hate to take naps. Why? Because I always wake up from them groggy, draggy, and discombobulated, then, even though I remain groggy till I go to bed at night, I have a hard time falling asleep.

     Watching movies/TV? A better choice. Which is what I was doing earlier this afternoon, until I got tired of sitting on my duff. So now I'm in front of the computer, sitting on my duff. From one screen to the other. Hardly progress. Well, at least I'm doing something creative, even it's creating pointless ramblings such as these. My only defense is that I'm certain there are lots of people just like me, lazing around on an oppressively hot Saturday afternoon, going through the same motions, or some very like.

     Someone suggested I try going for a walk. Ha! I laugh at the very thought. In this heat? Uh-uh! In this neighborhood? Not in ANY weather! I do go for walks, however, when the temperature is more agreeable, and in much more agreeable 'hoods.

     That same "someone" also suggested I go swimming. She doesn't know I can't swim, and I didn't have the heart to tell her.

     Sharp, sudden turn to the left ....

     In case you haven't noticed, I've started another blog (see shameless plug and link in right side bar). I decided I needed a space where I could just write about spiritual things. I know this blog is purposely called "A Spectrum of Perspectives" and that one of the colors in that spectrum is my monastic vocation story, but I realized not too long ago that, in those posts, I wrote very little about my interior struggles and growth, and perhaps that was a huge oversight. I know there are so many women out there discerning a religious vocation, and I want to help in what little way I can by sharing everything I've experienced in my own discernment and subsequent experience. I also simply want to share my spiritual musings, such as they are, and my love for God, the Church, and my faith. Hence the new blog. I'm presently mulling over a few posts in my head. Those kinds of posts, with that kind of material, are so much more difficult to write. I need to pray and meditate over them, unlike posts like this where I just type as I think. On the fly. (I'll have to look up the origin of that expression—"on the fly." If you think about it, it's sort of bizarre. It conjures up images of sitting in a tiny saddle on top of a fly and buzzing around to random places.)

     Well, it's been nice chatting with you. In case you're interested in what I'm reading these days: Time Enough by Emily Kimbrough, my favorite travel memoirist, and of course Elisabeth Leseur: Selected Writings.

     Stay cool!