hummingwolf | (no subject)

I dreamt last night that several of my friends came knocking on the back door to ask why I hadn't posted in LJ lately, so I guess it's time to make an entry here (though if those friends, who do not have LiveJournal accounts and didn't have them in the dream either, would bother to get their own journals, they might find out that I do leave comments on occasion and thus would reassure them that I am, in fact, alive).

Anyway, have been very tired and achy for the last few days, so not much has gotten done. Well, I've gotten some walking in each day, usually around sunset. On Friday when the weather cooled off a little, the sky actually had some blue in it, which may not sound impressive to those of you who didn't deal with our air pollution last week but was certainly a big and welcome improvement. Yes indeedy, Friday through Sunday the haze lightened up enough for individual clouds to become visible--and every one of those nights had a sunset worth going out of my way to see (especially Friday).

Yesterday, sadly, had heat, humidity, and haze again for most of the day--not as bad as last week's wave, but enough to remind me that I hate summer. Later in the day, the first rain shower brought a rainbow, faint but unbroken. Aside from the bow, the shower mostly just added to the humidity without decreasing the heat. Later on, though, some cooling rain came through. Today might even be pleasant.

Hmm... what else is there to say? Sunday night I had trouble getting to sleep because of my guilt over having accidentally killed a click beetle. No, really. I'm not an entirely nonviolent person--I'll destroy mosquitoes, fleas, ticks, or wasps (not bees) in a heartbeat--but I do not kill beetles. I especially do not kill nifty, familiar beetles like fireflies, ladybugs, or click beetles. Poor li'l guy. In other wildlife news: the local goslings are now nearly indistinguishable from the adults, the annual cicadas are giving us free concerts all day long, and the housemates are still not very good at washing dishes after they've used them.

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"the housemates are still not very good at washing dishes after they've used them."

Oh, I hate that. It's bad enough when my own dishes are piling up but when someone else's nasty, crusted-over dishes are sitting there in the sink I get quivers.

You don't hate summer. You hate D.C. in the summer!!! LOL. Seriously, though, think about it. If you could take away the air pollution and the urban heat island then you might have beautiful sunsets every night and blue skies every day ('cept when it's raining, of course).

I love to hear the cicadas. It's so relaxing to me. And the crickets at night...I open the windows just to hear their song. The sounds of summer make me a much happier person. I'm dreading fall. After all, fall is little more to me than The Gateway To Winter. And I hate the winters, here. Winter is so...desolate. Plus, I usually get pretty sick at least once every winter. It never fails. There is something about cold weather that makes feeling bad feel even worse. Maybe it's just me. But I'm ready to move farther south. I can't believe I'm saying that. All I would have to do is witness one hurricane and I'd be like, "O.K. It's back to the mountains. Move along."

Dishes piling up in the sink really do get annoying. It's like, "Hey, guys! Have you completely forgotten that other people in this household might actually need to use the sink while you're out?" Even when the dishes haven't been around long enough to be truly nasty, just the fact that I can't find the frying pan I want to use (because it's buried under half a dozen other things) or wash any other dishes I might use is enough to get on the nerves.

You don't hate summer. You hate D.C. in the summer!!!

Well, that's like telling you that you don't hate winter--you hate every place you've lived in the winter. It may be true that the summer I hate is the weather of every place I happen to have visited on the east coast or Texas during the summer months and there might be someplace I've never been which has wonderful summer weather I'd love all to pieces, but that doesn't do me any good now. :-)

There is something about cold weather that makes feeling bad feel even worse.

No no no, cold weather makes it more bearable. It's hot weather that makes everything feel worse! (Okay, any extremes will make a sick person more uncomfortable. Part of my problem is that heat & humidity all by themselves will make me sick even if there are no known pathogens around.)

Isn't it strange how one person can tolerate heat better than cold or tolerate cold better than heat? I wonder if it's physical, like body chemistry, or if it's psychological. Maybe it's a little of both. For instance, I rarely get very sick in the summer. I almost always get pretty sick at least once in the late fall or winter. And my fondest memories are of events that took place in or around the time of summer. In that sense it might be psychological:

Summer = happiness
Winter = isolation and illness.

Well, I'm sure at least part of it is physical. Most people are more likely to get sick in winter, since that's when we're more likely to be crowded indoors with other germ-laden folks. For me, summer is bad because (A) I'm already overly susceptible to fainting and (B) I tend to become potassium-deficient more easily than most people. Combine those two things with me sweating out lots of water and minerals (including sodium--which would ordinarily keep my blood pressure up--and potassium), and you've got a prescription for sheer oogieness. But I never did like Triple-H weather even as a (relatively) healthy kid.

Psychologically, I should probably like fall best. My birthday's in autumn, and almost all of the really bad times I can think of offhand happened in winter, spring, or summer.

Heh---do you still want my dishes, to potentially give more to wash?

I am going to box them up tonight. If you want, pop down Thurs during the knitting circle and grab them. :)

Hmm. I'll have to think about that. While having extra dishes around for the housemates to mess up might not be a good idea, having a stash of dishes for me to use when I can't find any others could work..