Another week...

...another post.

I've read all your posts, but haven't had time to more than comment here and there. I am working my fingers to the bone with work. And there have been movies to watch, friends to see and hobnob, not to mention books to read. Doesn't leave time for much of anything else.

So, here I sit on another Saturday morning with the fresh cool breeze beckoning to me through the windows while cars cruise the quiet streets looking for a parking space to get close to the Farmer's Market. The Mexicans are singing in the pit across the street where a house will be going up. I counter their voices with my own, raised in joyful celebration of another day. The skies are clear but they won't be for long if the weather casters are right. It has been raining for three days, off and on but mostly on. The breathless heat has given way to 55-degree temps and the cool wet touch of nature-laundered winds. I'm relaxed and I can't help smiling.

Last Sunday was a blazing day. In shorts and a halter top I took an armload of books, journals and various bits and pieces of crystal paraphernalia downstairs to sit on the deck and bask in the morning sun. I wanted color on my pale legs. When I got downstairs I realized I forgot my tanning lotion and I was too comfortable so I left it upstairs for later. I got down to the business of a quick journal entry and dove into my book on scents. Nello came down to do her laundry and Pastor restlessly shifted from one patch of shade to another to find some semi-cool spot. The sun felt like a warm balm but it was insidiously venting its spleen on the left side of my neck and shoulders, something I didn't discover until much later in the day.

By the time the landlady came back from her jaunt in my old neighborhood, lolling around on a massage table while someone else worked for a change, basked in lake spray on a cabin cruiser and dealing with 71-year-old Victorian boarding house owners who have only the worst traits of Basil Fawlty, and fending off her friend's perpetual motion of talk and walk hoping to find a few moments of quiet and peace, the warm pink skin of my shoulders, neck and back were an angry red. I finally had a chance to meet the landlady's friend out on the deck under the fading rays of the insidious sun over a glass of Merlot. After her friend left, we sat out on the deck in the gathering shadows and cooling darkness talking and enjoying the fragrant cooling warmth of the summer breezes that kept blowing out the tea light on the table. We quit relighting the candle and sat companionably in the darkness and laughed and talked until nature called me to the porcelain to release some pent up fluids and head up the stairs to another night of work.

All night my body battled against the prickling itching and burning untiL I was forced to check the damage. My blood-red skin was tight and swollen and hot. The next morning after I took a little nap when I finished working, I gingerly put on bra and shirt over my roasted flesh and headed for Mountain Mama's for lavender oil. By the time I got home all I wanted was to rip off my clothes and dive headlong into an ice bath. I opted for two drops of lavender oil gingerly soothed into my thirsty hot skin. I put the rose water and glycerin and the lavender flower water in the fridge, anxiously waiting for it to cool down enough for me to feel its cold dripping comfort. For the next two days I soothed a few more drops of lavender oil into the burn and gladly winced under the cold touch of spray from the fridge. And it worked. I now have soft bronze where angry red stretched from neck to shoulder.

In the midst of my agony I enjoyed the delicious sound of falling rain, at first a thunderous pounding that put out the lights and then the steady susurration of hours-long, earth drenching rain. Around here people pray for, talk about and praise the moisture. To me moisture is dampness, a little bit of spit. Rain is drenchingly, soakingly wet with winds that take your breath away. It rained for three blissful days.

Last night the gray skies and veiling clouds that hid the mountains outside my windows from me muttered and grumbled as they grudgingly let more rain fall on the thirsty earth while I opened a box Beanie sent me. I already knew what was inside. She didn't tell me. I just knew. When I asked her if she had sent me Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince she told me to get out of her mind. Some people would be grateful for a connection like ours, but she was feeling bratty that day and ordered me to stop reading her thoughts. I couldn't help it. The info was just there in the air between us. I had ordered my own copy. I know someone who will enjoy their own copy when mine gets here. Can't give them the copy Beanie sent me since it is inscribed with a beautiful sentiment from one sister and best friend to another. Having the book does change my plans for today a little.

As soon as I finish here, I'll get a quick shower, put clothes on over my bronzed skin, go to the Farmer's Market and bring back some of its summer color and heady aromas, get in the car and drive over to the theater for a feast of Sky High and Must Love Dogs while I eat cheddar popcorn or trial mix full of nuts and fruit and sip water from home, and then come home and finish HP sitting outside as I do the laundry downstairs and enjoy the tantalizing tastes of summer.