Social Sunday

Sweet to have a layer of soft cloud to gentle the morning after days of miseryheat. BrotherB sits at the kitchen table relishing his oatmeal (raisins! pecans! raw honey!) and banana and milk and dish of supplements (calcium, vitamin D, and so on). I'm in the next room with my own version of breakfast, and doing this instead of what I wish I was doing - lying in bed with a book.

Sunday was my day for that, a recharge day after the crazy Saturdays when I work hardest traveling after used books at sales and then cleaning and repairing them, and finally adding them to my online inventory. Blessed Sunday, before scary Monday and resumption of social responsibility.

Not lately, though, and I'm a little wistful about it.

But I do get to see the friends who could not visit otherwise. A couple of lovely ladies I have not seen in ages will arrive in 90 minutes, quite by surprise. I have nothing but hugs and words to give them, but I am so pleased and grateful they think of visiting me. Then at noon come GameDay friends, for whom only Sunday meetings will work.

When you're a little high on the autism spectrum you take your social life where you can.

Had I awakened today, as yesterday, at 6, I would have had hours of quiet time in the rear yard with my coffee and cat. But that extra visit this morning, unexpected as it is (hastily arranged just yesterday evening), had to be rehearsed to death through half the night, and so I struggled into sleep, and then slept late.

Now I have barely an hour to vacuum the joint and spruce myself up a little. I don't know how normal people do it.

Like a bicycle

I'd almost forgotten how to sign in and post text to this thing.

I suppose I'll climb back on and see how far I can go. I'd despaired of ever writing again, but now I think - maybe ...

It's 7:23 here at the start of what will surely be a very hot Saturday. Thunderclouds and scent of rain passed over in the night, to our delight. The air is sweet and still a little cool at this hour, with cacophany of sparrows and persistent coo of dove. They always are so happy to be alive.

I awoke to a handful of book sales in the online chute, and that is a very good thing. Sales have been spotty for months, and four titles at one go is a gift indeed. We'll keep eating.

I see the blooms on the volunteer hollyhock (grown lush and tall in the doorside half-barrel of melissa and catmint) finally reveal themselves, opening a dark glossy blood-red. Well, surprise! no frilly pastels for this family!

Now to the little stack of packing slips: a science textbook, a vintage paperback on hunting jungle animals, a Christian tract (my first sale to Guam!), a first-edition 1066 and All That. Hope I can track them all down.

The little family that moved into the neighboring rental after Jewell&Deaven's group departed were not there very long. The mother complained that nothing was repaired, the place was a shambles, and they packed up and moved unexpectedly and overnight only a few weeks after moving in. The place sat empty for six or eight weeks. Then ten days ago a crew of laborers swept through it, hammers and saws banged and rasped day and night, and I awoke yesterday morning - 5:30! still dark! and a Saturday! - to a cacophany of shrill echoing excited little-dog yelps and barks that lasted for an hour. At some point I did get up and close the window, but the pitch of the barking was such that it penetrated anyway. The walls. My skull. Later in the day while moving sprinklers about I noticed a flat-bed trailer laden with rolled-up carpets and upended tables and chairs parked in the driveway there and heard the barking again, now muted, from within the house. At some point the trailer was emptied and everyone vanished.

They're back now, this morning, late, and so I guess they're moving here from somewhere far away - Los Angeles, maybe, or Portland, or Boise. The dogs are barking in the delirious and anxious way small dogs do. I finally see them. I was guessing Shih Tzus but they seem a little thick and closely clipped for that. White. Two adults and three pups. Five disoriented Shih Tzus. In the chain-link-fenced concrete-floored enclosure. Next door.

"Maybe they'll give us a puppy," I said to husband. He was sleepily preparing his first cup of coffee. It took a minute for my words to sink in. He expressed alarm.

***

I've started reading a novel by A. S. Byatt. The Children's Book. Three halting pages in I finally have to stop altogether and look for the dictionary. How my vocabulary has shrunk. I love how Byatt's vivid worlds consume me. Yet I must stop once per page, at least, to look up and note down words that probably are commonplace in her milieu.

The terminus of an arch. I think I know what that is. Kobold figures - no. (I find the dictionary. And remark how few words there are in English, apparently, that start with the letter 'k' . . .) I love holding this heavy cloth-covered volume with its clean ivory pages deckle-edged and dust jacket newsmooth and cool in both my hands. And I don't mind having to dredge up my Webster's from deep within the bedside midden. Still, I sigh to think of my Kindle with its helpful cursor that generates in the margins automatically the definition for any word it stops at.

We forge ahead.