I'm in the process of changing hosts for my website and blog. My old host, who was brilliant but more than I wanted to spend, is going to cut me off tomorrow at my request. My new host, who I've already paid for a full year of hosting, is down. Has been down for a couple of hours now. What extraordinary bad luck.

It's not gone. Just in the process of moving. Should be done by tonight. Hope to see you there!

I'm not quite at that magic point where I can speak without erupting like a coprolalia patient. Maybe when the vein in my neck stops pulsating.

I've been dragging around all day going from one thing to the next. Not really accomplishing anything. The higher the heat index, the lower my ability to focus. It doesn't help to have the kidlet coming around every 3 minutes announcing that she can't wait to go to Grandma's house. The husband is home as well. Recuperating from a doctor's visit last week. My brain can't be still with the constant soccer vuvuzela background or wii noise. He had two tvs going today with the same thing on them. I thought my head was going to explode. I went outside and tried to read for awhile in the swing but the bugs started attacking like lions after wildebeest at the watering hole. There's just no place in this shoebox house to go to get quiet.
It may not be just my heat soaked brain though. I'm reading The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho for bookclub. For the life of me I cannot figure out why the book is so popular. So far it's dry as toast. I'm not even halfway through though. Maybe it gets better. But sitting in the swing in the furnace-like heat with invisible mini-beasties gnawing on my flesh is not conducive to concentration. Perhaps I'm spending too much effort in trying to find meaning and symbolism in the book. Maybe I should just let it wash over me like art. Maybe I should move on to another book from the humongous TBR pile next to my bed. I need to read a good nail biter. I just finished Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell. It was her first. It won a bunch of awards. I hated the ending. You pretty much knew what was going to happen but learning the identity of the killer was anticlimactic to say the least. Hardly whets my appetite to dive into her other tomes if she follows the same MO. Meanwhile my own work of utter genius lies dormant in my little red bag. I need to get everything printed out. If I see it, can shift it, and play with the flow of action, then I'm sure the rest of the story will come rushing out in a flood, spilling onto my computer screen. I'll look into that this week...when the temperatures soar to 100 degrees or more and my attention span shrinks to nearly coma-like levels.

The laundry is splooshing away. Again. I haven't done any in awhile since the threat of rain has been looming. The kidlet had a meltdown this a.m. because I wouldn't let her wear the same dirty clothes to school that she wore yesterday. Not that it would make any difference. I'm surprised the other moms haven't taken up a collection for her. The poor little street urchin. I imagine too soon she'll be locking herself away in the bathroom for hours on end gazing at her reflection in the toothpaste spattered mirror like Narcissus at the lake. Wailing about freckles or blemishes or imperfect teeth when apparently water and soap are the enemy at the moment. I remember that age. That air of homelessness. But I had an excuse. All the kids in school looked like that. We were farm kids and everybody had cow shit on them. You couldn't avoid it. Every once in awhile we'd take a proper bath but we had a creek that seemed sufficient during the summer months. We didn't think about the dairy farms up river with their bovine flotsam. I don't ever remember my parents forcing the issue either. I know we had a bathtub because water froze in it one winter. Having a bath in the winter was a big deal apparently. Ah, the good old days.

The laundry is churning away in the washing machine. The kidlet got off to school with the usual petulant look on her face, her clothes wrinkled, her hair uncombed. The breakfast dishes, if they even made it to the dishwasher, are piled haphazardly. After ten years it's hard to believe that I'm the only person who has seemed to master the art of filling a dishwasher. The hunt for the great unwashed was a bust. The heap of clothes at the foot of the kidlet's bed is anyone's guess. They may have been clean at one point but now have a patina of cat hair from her useless lazy cat. I think I'll just wait for her to grow out of them.
I'll heat up a cup of tea left over in the pot from last night. Maybe have an english muffin. Worry that I'm not getting enough protein. Worry about why I can't remember words anymore and then be self-conscious about speaking because the words just leave. Take a couple of ibuprofen. For now I sit and absorb the relative quiet of this empty house. Except for the splooshing sound coming from the washer. The spin cycle sounds like a jet engine gearing for takeoff.
I think about what I was doing yesterday at this time and so far the day has been a carbon copy. In fact, it seems, everyday is a carbon copy of the one before. You'd think that the copy would degrade after time, get a little frayed in the margins, maybe lose clarity, get just a little bit harder to understand. It's like this book I'm currently reading. I'm two-thirds of the way through it. Nothing has happened. I've started this same book twice before and given up on it. I'm determined to slog my way through it this time though. It can't possibly get any drier. And such is life....determined to slog through it, hoping something exciting will happen, and that all of the excruciatingly dull minutiae of this particular story will have meaning at the end.

The fragrance of blooming privet hangs heavy in the still air of a hot hazy afternoon. Almost suffocating in its sweetness. Like being coated with honey. The smell permeates everything including the long haired cat poised beneath it's branches. Waiting for a bird to swoon, overcome, to land at his feet. The morning light glows through the fluffy white panicles. The petals fall like rain with each bee that visits. There aren't as many bees as there used to be. There was a time when the hedgerow hummed like a distance racetrack. Perhaps the crush of progress has sent them to lesser developed areas. There are still sufficient numbers to send the kidlet screaming in hysterics when she walks home from the busstop. Ah, the dreamy sweet sounds of summer. If you click on the photo and zoom in you'll see one of the little beasts in action.