my work the sauna

For a few weeks every summer, Manitoba draws about as close to the sun as it concievably can. The big prairie sky of which I am so fond unleashes the heat of our closest star without mercy onto the unprotected vistas and the hairless, defenseless mammals called humans. Forests dry to kindling, all the while praying that the storms that always follow the scorching heat won't smite them with lightning to ignite their vulnerable branches. Animals hide in what shade they can find, reducing their movements as much as possible to survive the weather's onslaught. Crops dig deep with their roots, sucking up as much moisture as they can find there while they sway and twist in the wind in a kind of rain dance.

And people, well, people are the most vulnerable, with only the things they (or others) have built with their hands and devised with their minds to protect them from the blinding summer sun. In the 100-year-old building in which I make my living, everything is sweating - even (or especially) the old wood bannisters. This is my fourth summer working here and I am not unfamiliar with the way this place turns into a sauna for at least two weeks during the year so at the beginning of the summer I always ask for my favorite technology to be installed in my office - an air conditioner.

I wonder sometimes what I would do if I didn't have a way to escape the summer's vicious heat or the winter's brutal cold. How did the native Canadians who used to roam these lands survive the crazy extremes? Did people acclimatize faster? Did they simply shut down and not do any work during days like this to preserve their energy?

I admit that I'm a total wus when it comes to extreme heat or extreme cold. I admit that I'm a slave to technology and revel in my climate-controled environments. I admit that I will look at you funny if you tell me you don't have or don't believe in air conditioning. You know what? I don't care. I don't know how else to get cool (or warm) without my gizmos and gadgets. I think I might actually be cold blooded in the end.

Anyway, I can't wait for the summer storms that'll follow this heat wave and then the break in the heat that usually follows. Five or six degrees cooler, that's all I ask - and hold off on the humidity, please and thank you! The pressure of this hot, muggy weather is giving me a headache.

feeling alone in the blogging world

I'm a little sad because it seems like my blogging friends have all gone on summer hiatus. Well, not all of them, I'm being a little dramatic, but that's beside the point. And, I do know that Corrie is taking a well-deserved laziness break, Heather is having an uber-busy week, Michele broke the internet and Sheri can't figure out how to type on a non-laptop keyboard.

But then again, Whippersnapper is managing to keep up with her blogging in spite of having what might turn out to be West Nile Virus. She's taking bets on whether or not that's what she actually has, so if you're a betting person, you can go over to her blog and place your wager.

Does anybody else want peanut butter toast? I want peanut butter toast. Perhaps I'll have to make myself some.

How's that for random?

Anyway, I don't have a lot more that's very interesting to say, I just wanted to post my two cents up here just to say that I did. So there. I did.

tired

I'm starting to wonder if my vacation did me more harm than good. I have not been able to sleep well since we got back. I feel like all I do is dream the entire night - that annoying 'just asleep' place where your body is completely paralyzed but your mind won't shut up. It's very frustrating.

Then again, my brain has been somewhat preoccupied with the misadventures of an old college friend of mine. These new, on-line social networking sites like Facebook lend themselves to surreal experiences sometimes. Saturday morning I get up, go on-line to check on my various email accounts and friends' activities on Facebook to see that this guy I went to college with had written a note that essentially amounted to his final 'good-bye' to his friends and family. At first I thought he was being dramatic - he's a writer, and most of the good writers I know write some of their best work in their most melancholy moods - but then I notice in one of the comments that his (ex?)wife was pleading with people to help her find him. He'd been missing for an entire day already.

He was eventually found alive somewhere near Thunder Bay, I think, but his letter still kind of haunts me. When I knew him, I always found him to be one of the most gentle and sweet human beings I knew. The darkness of that letter, the absolute hopelessness he expressed there, the declaration that his death would be his gift to his young daughter, as though she would be better off without him... it still makes my soul ache.

I wonder if it's lingered with me because I have come so close to that darkness. My own grief and misery exposed me in a very real way to some of those blacker human emotions. I don't know what the world has done to him, so I can't presume to understand where he was coming from, but the despair from which he wrote did have a vague familiarity to it.

Fortunately, I have a very real light to which I cling. I can only hope that some light finds him too.

home again home again

Well, that's that. Another vacation come and gone. We had a great time doing absolutely nothing. Well, I guess not really 'nothing'. Vergil golfed a lot, I read 6 books, we had his family up for Father's day, we had some friends stay with us the next weekend, we went to Lac du Bonnet and Pinawa and the dump. I know. The dump. Very exciting. LOL

And now we're back into the swing of things. We got back on Friday afternoon and that night my parents flew in to stay with us for a couple days. They had a wedding to go to on Canada Day, so they were only in for the weekend. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see a whole lot of them since we babysat Maddison on Saturday evening and they had the wedding all afternoon and evening on Sunday. So yeah, we went from doing practically nothing on our vacation to being super busy as soon as we got back. Typical us, I guess.

I hope everyone had a good June and can find some time relax yourself this summer.

Anyway, that's about all I have to report. My sister Breanne is in Greece right now on her adventure vacation and looking at her pictures, I have to say I'm a little jealous. I haven't seen evidence of a single mosquito in Greece! *Sigh* I wish the little buggers weren't so prevalent this year. Makes being outside a little difficult sometimes.

But here's a funny to help us Winnipegger's through the mosquito season: