Still July. Temps in the 90s, heat indices in the 100s. The dew point hovering around 77 (note - above 75 is officially "miserable" and over 80 is "dangerous.") Just out of curiosity I checked the weather app last night when I got up to answer the call of nature. Heat index 95 - at 1:00 in the morning.
I'm getting cabin fever. I have my museum work two mornings a week but I come home knackered. I've done a tiny bit of yardwork a few times in the morning before breakfast (this morning I was out a 7:00 a.m. cleaning the chicken coop.) I've been down for a quick visit to my stream a couple of times, but there's no lingering with a coffee and book. A honkin' big oak tree came down just past the cottage (now I have to go around it to get to my stream path). In cooler weather I would be taking it apart and having a fire. Now - well, it will have to wait. It's all crazy-making.
Poor Hamish. I don't know how long he had been living rough before we adopted him, and for his first few years with us he was mostly an outdoor cat. But that changed after he almost died in 2021 from the tick-borne illness. So now he's strictly an indoor cat, but not happy about it and often tries to sneak out. He succeeded a few days ago when I was carrying a large bale of pine shavings in. I've learned that if I try to chase him immediately he just runs away. If I wait - he'll come up to me. So I put my shavings on the back porch, and then drove the car down to the barn so that I could offload the bag of chicken feed (it weighs 50 pounds and I'm not carrying that across the yard). By then he's in the barn with me. I finished that, and then did a few other things, and by then he's getting fussy. I had to move the car back to the house, and didn't want to try to keep an eye on him, so I was able to grab him and toss him in the car and listen to him yell the whole two minutes it took to get back to the house. I opened the door - and by the time I walked to the house he was on the doormat crying to go in, where he sprawled on the cool tile floor and gasped for awhile. I warned him that it was hot outside.
Rob, Amanda and Zeke came up last Saturday for the local comic con. I've been a few times; I didn't go last year because it's mostly the same stuff each year, and pretty expensive. But Rob and Zeke are both into gaming now, and Zeke wanted to go. So we did, and it was fun (I especially like the battling robots). I didn't dress or take a puppet this time - and I sort of regret it. Afterwards we went to a couple of gaming stores, where I got to see a world I had heard about but not seen. Tables of grown men with sprawling elaborate tabletop set up, throwing multi sided dice and apparently following elaborate rules.
Tuesday I had an evening coffee shop meetup. A woman I "know" - the quotations are because I met her once at a group gathering many years ago, but we're FaceBook friends, we have friends in common, and we sort of widow-bonded after she lost her husband. Her story is so sad - her husband had a congenital heart condition, which got to the point that he was a candidate for a transplant. That would have to be done in Nashville, so Beth packed up the house, pulled the kids out of school, and moved. She had to find a place to live, get the kids in a new school, and find a job, while Andy was in the hospital. Then some side issues came up with him, and he passed away before the transplant could be done. He was only 42. And there she is, in a strange town, trying to build a life for herself and her daughters.
So Beth is in town for a short visit and wanted to see as many people as possible. Four of us got together - myself, Beth, my spinning friend Adrianne, and another woman I know, Jen. Of course, the subject of widowhood came up a little, but didn't dominate. The highlight for me was one of those non sequiturs. Beth said something about her daughters going horseback riding with friends, and riding a passo, which felt really weird because they rock from side to side. I was familiar, but Adrienne was confused. A passo (passofina) horse has a pacing stride, different from other horses (very smooth and pretty to watch). So eventually we ended up talking about horse movement: walk, trot, canter, and gallop. I tossed in amble, done by Icelandic ponies - a strange looking but very smooth fast walk. we
Thing is - it's offbeat conversations that I almost painfully miss. Bob and I had them all the time.
Jen was staying pretty quiet, working on a quilt square she had brought with her. I've known her and her partner Tracey off and on for 20 something years. So not exactly direct friends, but we've always known people in common (she's also in the medieval group that Adrianne is in). I didn't think anything of it, because she's not the chatty type. But when we were getting ready to head out, she mentioned that her cancer treatments had gone well and she appeared to be in remission (I didn't even know that she had had cancer). I commiserated, saying that until you experience it, you don't understand just how amazingly time consuming it is. She agreed - time consuming, exhausting, and really had to deal with when you're also coping with breaking up with your partner of 30 years.
I was stunned. They had always been Jen-and-Tracy. You rarely saw one without the other. But apparently Tracy couldn't handle the fear and stress of having a partner with cancer. I stuttered for a bit, said I was sorry, and then blurted out "I just want to hug you." Thing is - I know that Jen isn't a hugger. But she looked at me and said "I'd take that" so we stood and she hugged me hard while I held her.
That's had me thinking about hugging - how sometimes it's a deep need. A week or so ago on the Highway 20 FaceBook page someone posted asking for towels and especially if anyone had washable urine pads. I had a stack of the latter; I put them under my litterboxes but with fewer cats I don't need as many. She came by to get them. We chatted for a bit. It turned out that her son had surgery to remove a cyst from his spine, and was going to have a drainage tube for awhile. He's a teenager, autistic, and 6 foot plus tall. To say she was stressed is putting it mildly. And once again I made the offer - "we don't really know each other, but do you need a hug." Her answer was "Oh, God Yes"
Other flashbacks - the morning that we had to put Fiona down (just before Bob was diagnosed). He saw with her in the waiting room, and I was at the front desk, trying to keep my voice level while I paid for her euthanasia and arranged the cremation. The woman standing next to me said "may I hug you?" (we did)
And, of course, living in the hospital. A sadly common sight would be a visitor - family or friend - leaning against a wall outside a room, crying. Arms would be offered. One time, when I was taking a break, someone was playing the piano in the atrium (volunteers often did this). When he finished, I thanked him, told him that music helped, and added "maybe some day I can bring my husband to hear you" and I think something in my voice and face told him that I knew that wasn't going to happen - and I got the hug.
There's just something so secure feeling about holding onto something and being held (these days, I can't sleep without holding on to "cuddle pillow".) I don't think that it's humans only - our animals often want contact. Poor RedBug without Stumbles is still being very clingy.
And that turned into another ramble. July brain. 12 days to go. Not that August (or September) will be any better, but for some reason every year if I can make it through July then I think I'll survive the summer. In the meanwhile, I pace indoors.
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