Summertime

Garrison Keillor of Prairie Home Companion often says that "heat makes you stupid."  As a Southerner living in a hot clime, I should be insulted--or at least protest.  But I can't, in any honesty.  I can add that it also makes you lazy.

It's just that as the temps climb into the 90's and nudge the three digits, you really just don't feel like doing anything, including thinking.  Yes--air conditioning exists.  But for the most part, to save the environment  (that's the noble excuse--the real reason is to avoid sticker shock when the power bill comes in) the thermostats are set high.  So you're not exactly comfortable cool inside (except for those places who get too carried away with the AC and you find yourself shivering).

For the past six weeks I've been teaching in the mornings--I teach, do any grading or prep for the next day, have lunch with Bob, and was usually home by 2:00.  In theory, this gave me my afternoons to do anything I wanted--I could spin, weave, sew, read, whatever.

What I did was take a nap.  I was usually in a stumbling stupid, walk-into-walls state by the time I got home and just wanted to get flat on my face for awhile.

Hence--not much to blog about.

About the only good thing about summer is the fresh tomatoes.  Bob's done a great job with the garden, and before I've fallen on my face with I get home I usually stumble out to water the plants.  We've been gorging on tomatoes as much as possible--sliced, on pizza, the famous BLT salad (the components of a BLT sandwich in salad form--croutons, bacon (with the bacon grease poured on the croutons), tomatoes (some of them fried briefly in the bacon fat to bring out the juices), chopped romaine, and a bit of vinagrette.  Despite all of this, I've had to make one batch of roasted tomato sauce, and will make another batch this weekend.

So that's about it for the last couple of weeks.  I've spent a couple of days at the farm at the museum, spinning cotton, have started winding the warp so that I can weave the cotton, done a bit of knitting on Mom's sock (I had finished one, and then got halfway through the next before realizing tha I made a bad mistake and had to rip it all out.  Just threw it aside for awhile but it's back on the needles again.  School is out and I'm doing programs for the musuem.   The little opposums are out in the release cage--they're be on their on soon.  But mostly it's been tomatoes and naps.