I decided to get my shorts on most days to. The great thing about getting older is just not caring so bloody much. My cottage cheese legs have get me going for 61 years and they are being released to the world this summer. So glad to hear the good news on H. But now I think the real work of caring begins . Lolly Willows one of my favorites to. Have already read your David Sedaris recommendation . I love his honesty and yours to. Sending love & a cool breeze. X
I completely get your un-excitement about summer, I feel the same way. I want to run away to South America and/or Scandinavia during these months, I miss the days during my tween years when the warmest it would ever get was 25 Celsius. In fact, I’ve just ordered a copy of “A Woman in the Polar Night” as I see now as the perfect time to catch up with the book club. 🥶
Sending you cooling breezes, lovely K. I do think one of the hardest parts of long illness is how it traps you in a groundhog day of the same stories over and over. It can make you feel so grey and boring while the rest of the world rushes on in full technicolour. It shares much with grief in that way, and arrives as its own grief too. Hurray hurray for the all clear and sending you both so much love and understanding for all the healing and patience and difficulty still in process xx
I think we've discussed this before, but I'm right there with you on summer. I don't tan, only burn. I'm sensitive/intolerant to heat, where 'heat' is much of anything above 75F. The bright sun hurts my eyes and sometimes triggers migraines. I'm grateful to live in San Francisco, where the average temp in summer is still only 60-65F with the occasional heat wave. I hope the heat wave(s) plaguing the UK and EU will pass into milder weather soon.
I love this post so much. Not only do I feel you about the summer heat at the moment but I feel grateful that you have your sense of humour at a trying time. Telling the (what feels like) same story about your husband’s health is also good. I hope it relieves you of some of the burden of carrying it alone! ♥️
I have a friend who shares the same view from her window several times a week and every time it is different. I feel honored that we are able to walk along on your journey with you through your words and feelings.
Thank you so much for your words, they are like balm for the soul, really. I am struck by what you said about surrendering to life's processes. I appreciate your ability to describe the state of being and just living through it all. These days, post 'retirement' and in 'terceira vida', I love these words: Surrender and Unfolding, as I live into them more and more. It really works. Stay cool Katherine and best to you and your family. Big healing for H~
I cannot imagine what Summering would look like. Like you, I am constitutionally unsuited for hot weather. I come by it honestly; I recall my grandmother wearing a wool Cossack-style hat in the house as late as April. Glastonbury sounds like the 7th circle of Dante’s Hell, although I have two friends who performed, and they loved it, and then fled. We are meant to be friends: Gretel Ehrlich’s Solace of Open Spaces is one of my all time favorite books, which I first read late at night on a porch hanging over the Roaring Fork River while on a solo trip to a lesbian-owned ranch b&b in Colorado. Time for a re-read I think. Stay cool, K. 💕
I feel so comforted knowing that someone else feels the same as I do about summer. It’s such an aggressive season - the relentless sunlight, the oppressive sticky heat (I’m in the American Midwest). It’s all too much. Summer requires an endurance I find harder to access in midlife, so this year I am trying to locate more surrender. Hot flashes make surrender difficult but still I’m trying.
I went to Glastonbury in 2007 and it was one of the wettest years, I believe, ever. I was constantly wet and cold. And my wellies ended up with a hole in them so I had carrier bags on my feet, inside them. (What I get with going for style over substance but I was 19!) As we headed home, I ended up in tears as we waited to board the coach to the station because I was so COLD. And, when we got to the trains, we were all looked at like martians because we were all so filthy. When we arrived in Derby, our train was cancelled because the track was flooded so people's parents had to come and rescue us. I saw The Who and Iggy and the Stooges but never again!
I am very happy to hear H has the all clear. I reread The Electricity of Every Living Thing last week, after receiving my autism diagnosis, and I kept thinking of you both and what you are currently going through. I am so glad you have got good news. 🖤
Here in the fairly relentless heat of a Tokyo summer, I agree that it's a question of adaptation. And of learning to enjoy the fleeting moments of a cooling breeze when they arise.
Glad you all can slowly mend with the good news. Summer is tricky business. Best time to hibernate, in my opinion. I’d last zero seconds at Glastonbury haha, although I have fantasised I’d last longer! I can get as far as the mud and the toilet situation and then the fantasy dies instantly haha.
I used to dream of the UK as a haven from the heat and humidity of the Midwestern US. Another dream shattered! I honestly think reverse seasonal affective disorder is a thing— and I have it, sounds like many of us are affected. It’s my least favorite time of year with the glare, humidity, constant sensations of being too warm and too sweaty. I’m happy to spend full days on the beach or hiking trails in October. Currently enjoying a surprisingly pleasant morning on the front porch, behind the sun-blocking shades which are rolled down to within six inches of the window sills. Contemplating a nap but the heat is building so I’ll move indoors. Mid-90s and humid today and tomorrow, again. The town’s Fourth of July parade starts soon but my heart is too hurt today to even want to hear it from a distance.
Happy to hear that H continues to improve and your lives are slowly rotating toward normalcy. I did have a good chuckle over his comment on your season for Glastonbury, Katherine! Not at your expense but seeing myself in it and recalling how intensely I begged to attend Woodstock at age 13– no means transport, no camping experience or gear, not a party girl at that age, etc. — and then reading afterward about the weather, the mud, the lack of facilities, etc. I would have been miserable in so many ways.
I'm also a summer-phobe. I grew up between a swamp and a lake, so the mosquitos were HUGE beasts that came in thick mobs of sound and fury (I imagine summer festivals like Glastonbury to be a bit like that). Here in Calgary, our annual 10-day cowboy festival, exhibition, and rodeo, the Calgary Stampede, is on again. Traditions include very strange foods (pork tongue on a stick, anyone?), dressing up in full denim-and-leather cowboy gear in 25+ degree C weather, and attending as many free Stampede breakfasts as possible, which are community events held all over the city that provide people with pancakes, usually made by grinning politicians, and usually held in hot parking lots. My idea of summer is cool water, lemonade, ice cream, and shade. I'm loving the lush sanctuary of my garden this year, and we're finally getting enough rain to make things grow instead of fry under a Super-Mario sun. No ocean here, alas. I cool off by going back to last fall's trip to Tintagel and Woolacomb Sands in my imagination, and I watch my dog happily plunging into a local river to retrieve his ball while I stand barefoot in the shallows near the bank, and wonder why I live so very far from the nearest ocean. It's flood season here at the moment, when the snow has finally melted off the Rockies and the meltwater is flowing down the slopes to fill the rivers here below, making them muddy, high, and fast for a month or so. I'm looking forward to late July, when they'll be clear and lazy once again, and the Stampede tourists will be gone.
I would absolutely get on board with a Grinch movie but he hates summer activities. My Summer Solstice celebration was allowing myself to start looking at the Time & Date website to check how many fewer seconds daylight there is each day going forward. As seconds turn into minutes I start mumbling to myself like Mikey in The Goonies, "It's our time." Getting there...slowly but surely.
Thank you for sharing your summer ouchiness Katherine! I also struggle to find relief as a pale skin, freckle, auburn hair, Scottish Dad lassie! This am the gardening seemed to have the perfect temp until an hour later when I had to come inside with prickly heat and no sign of relief! I find timing key and typically do well at 6 am or after 6 pm! Thank you for the neat shadow photo inspos! I must endeavour to look for my own! I hope July finds you swimming lots for cool relief!🩵🤍💙💝💝💝
I decided to get my shorts on most days to. The great thing about getting older is just not caring so bloody much. My cottage cheese legs have get me going for 61 years and they are being released to the world this summer. So glad to hear the good news on H. But now I think the real work of caring begins . Lolly Willows one of my favorites to. Have already read your David Sedaris recommendation . I love his honesty and yours to. Sending love & a cool breeze. X
I completely get your un-excitement about summer, I feel the same way. I want to run away to South America and/or Scandinavia during these months, I miss the days during my tween years when the warmest it would ever get was 25 Celsius. In fact, I’ve just ordered a copy of “A Woman in the Polar Night” as I see now as the perfect time to catch up with the book club. 🥶
This is the ideal July read! 🤣
Sending you cooling breezes, lovely K. I do think one of the hardest parts of long illness is how it traps you in a groundhog day of the same stories over and over. It can make you feel so grey and boring while the rest of the world rushes on in full technicolour. It shares much with grief in that way, and arrives as its own grief too. Hurray hurray for the all clear and sending you both so much love and understanding for all the healing and patience and difficulty still in process xx
Thank you! A big part of it all is boredom and managing other people's boredom too.
I think we've discussed this before, but I'm right there with you on summer. I don't tan, only burn. I'm sensitive/intolerant to heat, where 'heat' is much of anything above 75F. The bright sun hurts my eyes and sometimes triggers migraines. I'm grateful to live in San Francisco, where the average temp in summer is still only 60-65F with the occasional heat wave. I hope the heat wave(s) plaguing the UK and EU will pass into milder weather soon.
Oh wow, I didn't realise that SF was so moderate in the summer - that's a lovely temperature. We made it to 37C / 98F this week 😖
We do get up into the 80s/90s/100s once in a while, but it is pretty rare!
I love this post so much. Not only do I feel you about the summer heat at the moment but I feel grateful that you have your sense of humour at a trying time. Telling the (what feels like) same story about your husband’s health is also good. I hope it relieves you of some of the burden of carrying it alone! ♥️
Good point!
I have a friend who shares the same view from her window several times a week and every time it is different. I feel honored that we are able to walk along on your journey with you through your words and feelings.
Thank you so much for your words, they are like balm for the soul, really. I am struck by what you said about surrendering to life's processes. I appreciate your ability to describe the state of being and just living through it all. These days, post 'retirement' and in 'terceira vida', I love these words: Surrender and Unfolding, as I live into them more and more. It really works. Stay cool Katherine and best to you and your family. Big healing for H~
I cannot imagine what Summering would look like. Like you, I am constitutionally unsuited for hot weather. I come by it honestly; I recall my grandmother wearing a wool Cossack-style hat in the house as late as April. Glastonbury sounds like the 7th circle of Dante’s Hell, although I have two friends who performed, and they loved it, and then fled. We are meant to be friends: Gretel Ehrlich’s Solace of Open Spaces is one of my all time favorite books, which I first read late at night on a porch hanging over the Roaring Fork River while on a solo trip to a lesbian-owned ranch b&b in Colorado. Time for a re-read I think. Stay cool, K. 💕
I feel so comforted knowing that someone else feels the same as I do about summer. It’s such an aggressive season - the relentless sunlight, the oppressive sticky heat (I’m in the American Midwest). It’s all too much. Summer requires an endurance I find harder to access in midlife, so this year I am trying to locate more surrender. Hot flashes make surrender difficult but still I’m trying.
I went to Glastonbury in 2007 and it was one of the wettest years, I believe, ever. I was constantly wet and cold. And my wellies ended up with a hole in them so I had carrier bags on my feet, inside them. (What I get with going for style over substance but I was 19!) As we headed home, I ended up in tears as we waited to board the coach to the station because I was so COLD. And, when we got to the trains, we were all looked at like martians because we were all so filthy. When we arrived in Derby, our train was cancelled because the track was flooded so people's parents had to come and rescue us. I saw The Who and Iggy and the Stooges but never again!
I am very happy to hear H has the all clear. I reread The Electricity of Every Living Thing last week, after receiving my autism diagnosis, and I kept thinking of you both and what you are currently going through. I am so glad you have got good news. 🖤
Here in the fairly relentless heat of a Tokyo summer, I agree that it's a question of adaptation. And of learning to enjoy the fleeting moments of a cooling breeze when they arise.
Glad you all can slowly mend with the good news. Summer is tricky business. Best time to hibernate, in my opinion. I’d last zero seconds at Glastonbury haha, although I have fantasised I’d last longer! I can get as far as the mud and the toilet situation and then the fantasy dies instantly haha.
I used to dream of the UK as a haven from the heat and humidity of the Midwestern US. Another dream shattered! I honestly think reverse seasonal affective disorder is a thing— and I have it, sounds like many of us are affected. It’s my least favorite time of year with the glare, humidity, constant sensations of being too warm and too sweaty. I’m happy to spend full days on the beach or hiking trails in October. Currently enjoying a surprisingly pleasant morning on the front porch, behind the sun-blocking shades which are rolled down to within six inches of the window sills. Contemplating a nap but the heat is building so I’ll move indoors. Mid-90s and humid today and tomorrow, again. The town’s Fourth of July parade starts soon but my heart is too hurt today to even want to hear it from a distance.
Happy to hear that H continues to improve and your lives are slowly rotating toward normalcy. I did have a good chuckle over his comment on your season for Glastonbury, Katherine! Not at your expense but seeing myself in it and recalling how intensely I begged to attend Woodstock at age 13– no means transport, no camping experience or gear, not a party girl at that age, etc. — and then reading afterward about the weather, the mud, the lack of facilities, etc. I would have been miserable in so many ways.
I'm also a summer-phobe. I grew up between a swamp and a lake, so the mosquitos were HUGE beasts that came in thick mobs of sound and fury (I imagine summer festivals like Glastonbury to be a bit like that). Here in Calgary, our annual 10-day cowboy festival, exhibition, and rodeo, the Calgary Stampede, is on again. Traditions include very strange foods (pork tongue on a stick, anyone?), dressing up in full denim-and-leather cowboy gear in 25+ degree C weather, and attending as many free Stampede breakfasts as possible, which are community events held all over the city that provide people with pancakes, usually made by grinning politicians, and usually held in hot parking lots. My idea of summer is cool water, lemonade, ice cream, and shade. I'm loving the lush sanctuary of my garden this year, and we're finally getting enough rain to make things grow instead of fry under a Super-Mario sun. No ocean here, alas. I cool off by going back to last fall's trip to Tintagel and Woolacomb Sands in my imagination, and I watch my dog happily plunging into a local river to retrieve his ball while I stand barefoot in the shallows near the bank, and wonder why I live so very far from the nearest ocean. It's flood season here at the moment, when the snow has finally melted off the Rockies and the meltwater is flowing down the slopes to fill the rivers here below, making them muddy, high, and fast for a month or so. I'm looking forward to late July, when they'll be clear and lazy once again, and the Stampede tourists will be gone.
I would absolutely get on board with a Grinch movie but he hates summer activities. My Summer Solstice celebration was allowing myself to start looking at the Time & Date website to check how many fewer seconds daylight there is each day going forward. As seconds turn into minutes I start mumbling to myself like Mikey in The Goonies, "It's our time." Getting there...slowly but surely.
Thank you for sharing your summer ouchiness Katherine! I also struggle to find relief as a pale skin, freckle, auburn hair, Scottish Dad lassie! This am the gardening seemed to have the perfect temp until an hour later when I had to come inside with prickly heat and no sign of relief! I find timing key and typically do well at 6 am or after 6 pm! Thank you for the neat shadow photo inspos! I must endeavour to look for my own! I hope July finds you swimming lots for cool relief!🩵🤍💙💝💝💝
Such good news about H. Wishing you both peace for the care and recovery that lies ahead.