When I was a kid, we didn't have air conditioning (or cable, an answering machine or a microwave).
We did have a really enormous metal fan that took up the entire window at the top of the stairs, with metal bars that covered the front in concentric circles. It was no where close to being child safe. As a child I would give myself the heebie-jeebies by standing in front of it and imaging what would happen if I slipped my fingers inside the bars while the industrial size fan, big enough to power a small plane, noisily buzzed. Then I'd slide down the wooden railing to the living room below. Cause that's how we did back then.
At night, the whole neighborhood would sit on their front stoop, fan themselves and yell across the street to each other while trying to catch the occasional breeze. Ah, the 70's.
Anyway, today is really muggy. Here's a definition of muggy, if you want. But really it's like someone threw a warm, wet blanket over you and held you down. UGH.
I also found out today that a dear man from church is dying. Now the weather is matching my mood. I'm mad, mad at myself, for not getting to know him better, not spending more time with him. He is a wise and kindly person, I think I could have learned a lot from him. And now it's too late. That makes me feel sort of the same way, like I was blind sided by a big layer of hot fog and it's settled down over my whole being. And I had a fight with the husband, a discussion that turned hotter by the minute because neither of us backs down. I'm so tired of doing everything, including working on things. Couldn't I just have a day or two on autopilot, where everything is nice and lovely and goes the way it should.
So I laid down in a dark, hot room with the fan blowing on me and contemplated my existence. And I really missed my grandparents. I wish I could have known them as an adult. A middle-aged adult, not the selfish, always in an emergency, always busy snot of a 20 year old that I was then. I think by the time my grandma and I started to get to know each other, she was dying and it was too late. She knew, though, she finally knew what I was all about before she went, and accepted me, so that's something.
It all goes so fast. Sorry to be a downer, but it does. I am now at the age where I can look back and see things I should have done DECADES ago. God, I was so depressed. Why is life so complicated? Why do we fight? Why do we have to lose something before we see what it means to us? But, as usual, I got up, figured out some stuff I needed to do and did it, ate and drank something and got back to the business of living, muggy or no.
