Sunday, September 14, 2003

Sometime during the last 2-3 hours, the air here has thickened up, becoming still, humid. The kind of conditions that produce flopsweat with minimal physical exertion. Minimal. Like walking, breathing. Standing up, sitting down.

(What a great term: flopsweat.
Flopsweat. FLOPsweat.
Man, I love language.)

I went out a short time ago to cut some grass, a blessedly infrequent activity during the last couple of weeks, rain having been kindly, thoughtfully scarce. (Plenty of fog and mist in the mornings, burning off around 9 or 10 a.m. Lovely autumn temperatures, meaning upper-30s/lower-40s at night, upper-60s/lower 70s during the day. And little rain.) Ten minutes into pushing the mower around, sweat began flowing with joyous abandon. Not because of sun (it's overcast), not because of heat (the thermometer currently reads 68 ). Because the air is syrupy and still. Bleah.

Which gave me an excellent excuse to stop working. Not that I needed much of an excuse, having spent the day working -- cleaning up/printing out a manuscript in prep. for procuring an agent to hawk the bugger to an unsuspecting sucker publishing house. Chilling instead of mowing lawn, at this point, is no hardship.

[Manuscript excerpts can be found in this journal's entries of 5/24/02, 6/15/02, 8/13/02, 8/22/02, 12/28/02]

My downhill neighbor, Mo -- a crusty, indomitable, hugely entertaining 82-year-old who's lived here on the hill most of his life -- went into the hospital this last Tuesday for a knee replacement. The way he put it when I stopped by to see him on Monday: "The ax falls at 6:30 a.m.!" He delivered that comment through gleeful cackling, half-amazed/half-gleeful to hear himself spouting something many might consider fate-tempting. Haven't seen him since, though I've gotten updates from his wife, Kay. The ride apparently turned out to be a bit rougher than anticipated due to the many medications being prescribed and pumped into him by various medical personnel. Some of which did not mix well. Tomorrow he goes into a rehab. for a week before coming back home. He intends to be out in the woods come mid-October, ready for hunting season. I hope he makes it.

**********

Label seen on a sandwich in a deli cooler at the Hunger Mountain Food Co-Op in Montpelier:
Meat Sandwich.
(No further details supplied re: contents.)
Considering that the Co-op is generally a haven for healthy chow, something about that no-frills, two-word description seems excessively, creepily austere.

On a related note, a single sentence I found in notes made for a journal entry a couple of months back -- lacking further explanation and, needless to say, never used:
my fingers smell like cheese

**********

Not that you asked --

Currently hanging out in the CD player:

Body and Soul -- Errol Garner
Welcome To The Monkey House -- The Dandy Warhols
Mezzanine -- Massive Attack
Viva! La Woman -- Cibo Matto
Symphony No. 5/The Lark AscendingVaughan Williams

rws 7:13 PM [+]

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