Journal of a Sabbatical

June 24, 1999

lethargy

Today's Starting Pitcher: Mark Portugal

Reading: Before the Dawn

The official definition of a heat wave is three consecutive days with temperatures in the 90's. This is only Day 2.

I'm hot. I'm cranky. I want to sleep for a year. Wait a minute I thought that "sleep for a year" thing only happened in winter.

Anyway, it has been a really long time since it rained. They keep forecasting rain and it keeps not coming. I don't mind that my lawn is brown 'cause it means I don't have to worry about my neighbor suddenly taking a weedwhacker to it at 5:30 in the morning. The ground is too hard for me to hammer in the edging along the walkway - to keep Pajama Woman's weeds or garden from creeping under my fence - and to pound in the pegs to hold down the weed mat around the raspberry bushes and the illegal maple tree - which despite the Busy Body's insistence really is not a peach tree. The yard looks like a barren desert. At least I get points for neatness. It's wicked neat and manicured looking, except the raspberries, and totally brown.

I nearly panicked when I saw two big yellow trucks and men with chain saws pull up to the tree across the parking lot. I was convinced the forces of neatness had triumphed over reason and the tree and surrounding thicket were doomed to be cleared. I obsessed about the mockingbird family - one of the young made its maiden flight the other day and landed bewildered in the parking lot - the starling/crow roost, the cardinals... and whoever all else lives in the thicket. However, when I got home tonight I observed that the men with chain saws had only pruned some dead limbs off the tree and mowed the grass around the basketball court that the neighborhood kids never use. Whew! The forces of neatness are held at bay at least for awhile.