Post #3250: Heat Wave

Apparently we are heading into some of the hottest temperatures on record over the next few days which terrifies me a little bit because I don’t like heat much, and I’ve already lost one freezer this week. On the other hand, we have wind and lots of it, coming right off the ocean so where we are is going to be much less exhausting than many other parts of the coast and interior.

I’ve become more productive at work this week, after a long slow spell of recovery from a hectic spring. I have developed a research plan, an inventory, followed up on project approvals and finally feel like I’m waking up intellectually again. I think part of my issue was a lack of B12 since I stopped taking my supplement and that pretty much gums everything up after a few months. I never used to have to worry about it, but something changed a couple of years ago and I started testing dangerously low on the B12. It makes me feel like I have some form of dementia, and that my brain has stopped working. It’s gradual so I don’t notice it until I’m deep in the fog and then it takes me some time to figure out why my brain isn’t working right. By then I’ve been losing brain productivity for some weeks or months. At least it only takes a couple weeks of supplement to start feeling more normal again. The shots work immediately, but since I can get along with the sublingual tabs, it’s just as well I do that.

Anyhow, feeling a bit sharper means I get more done, and its relieving because I hate the feeling of falling behind, even if it’s just in my writing or textile studio, the non-paid labour I feel called to. I managed to get Issue #21 of Comfort for the Apocalypse out the door this morning, with a poem instead of an essay this morning. A poem! This feels much more vulnerable than my usual offering because I haven’t written a poem in a long time and it seems much more interior to me. I had forgotten how poetry makes you reflect on language differently, and how difficult it is to get it right.

I’m going to put up a full Summer Textile School post tomorrow with pictures, so I’ll save the craft chit-chat for that except to say that I am fully into the dye stage of things and it’s exciting! Pictured at the head of this post is some Osage orange sawdust being strained after making dye with it. I am learning so much these last few weeks, and the idea of getting to weave, sew or stitch with what I’ve dyed over the summer is ridiculously compelling at the moment. More compelling than almost anything else (I am side-eyeing my untidy studio as I say this).

At Birdsong this weekend we have our first outdoor house concert since last September – and then a whole series of them coming up in July and August. We have a lot of RSVPs for the show (but not too many for the current health restrictions) and I’m looking forward to seeing many faces I haven’t seen for awhile. When we first booked this show months ago I wasn’t sure if Covid or the weather would allow it – but at the moment we seem to be good for both (unless the heat tomorrow fells people) and there is really no better place to be on a hot summer night than outdoors with a beer listening to music.

We’re also starting to book shows for the fall, with fingers crossed that we will be able to have indoor shows by then. Everything still feels so tentative even though second shots are happening and case numbers are way down. I look at the rise of the Delta variant and think – who knows what fall will bring. But for now we can meet outside and the warm weather will facilitate that nicely.