The Heat of a 'Cool' Night.

 was awake/woke up again around 5 am. Temp was down to 73F so I thought I'd go outside for a while. Water my poor baked roses and make sure the lilac wasn't dehydrating (as if I'd be able to see that in the crepuscular predawn.) Get my clean laundry and the rest of my pop out of the car before the world starts heating back up.

Walk in the grass, wiggle my toes in the dirt, stuff like that.

Now, since it was still dark I just put on my spaghetti strap black sheath dress. This weather has my hair looking like a toilet brush (or a large bottle brush, if you prefer a different image.) So there I am, wandering up and down the fenceline, barefoot in black, scrub brush hair sticking out all over, randomly pouring water out of milk jugs, talking to myself, the water, the sky, and the green of summertime.

It's probably a good thing there was no one out, although it would have been delightful if one of my neighbors had come out and lifted the clothes hamper from the bottom of the steps to the porch at the top. One car came down the alley. No one up or down the street. No one was at the The Plane Street Coffee House and Cafe yet. Or at the childcare center. They usually start trickling in about 5:25. 5:20. It felt like I'd been out there an hour. I had planned to type this up while setting (not sitting) on the porch, but I gotta tell you. I sat down twice to catch my breath and slow my heart (and sweat) rate, and they ain't no way I'm staying out there. Hottest 73F I've been out in for a while. I'm getting worried about my trip to the dr Thursday, but at least I'll have some minimal air movement while the car is moving. Worse comes to worse, I can ask my sisters and we can put our heads together and patch together a Plan D. (One sister is plan B and the other is Plan C)

I believe my neighbor(s) have been watering for me, though. Either that or my tightly capped water bottles have sweated themselves back to full.
They are wonderful people, are they not, and I am blessed to have them and grateful for them, believe me.

And 73 degrees with a hot humid hazy headache high-pressure dome is not, I say NOT, a comfortable temperature.

Stay cool.
I'm going to.

Starling Road on a rainy night

I wish I could have taken pictures on my drive home. The shiny road through the dark trees, the huge sky with rolling clouds and intermittent sparks and splashes of lightning; orange and blue and white. I pulled off a couple times to try to get a video but of course the lightning stopped when I did, or just wasn't as impressive. My motion going toward it somehow added to the visual drama. It was beautiful and otherly.
At one point on the road, I slowed way down. It appeared that I was approaching something like a large pillar, just a wide dark shape, going up and up. I wondered at first if it was the water tower, although I was pretty sure I hadn't come that far yet, and also I thought the tower was farther off the road, and NOT on a sharp curve. Also, didn't it have multiple legs, not just one column?
I passed a house with porch lights, and there was a street/yard light farther on. The top of the column seemed to spread.
So maybe it was a tree?
There are some massive trees along that road, but again none that I thought were that huge and that close to the road.
The streetlight shone down from above the top.
The top of the hill.
The pedestal was the wet road rising up a hill, through normal sized third or fourth growth trees. The spread at the top was rising above these trees to open fields, and the plowed and tumbled sky with its flickering and inconsistent lights.