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Monday, July 18, 2016

Blogger Guilt?



Is Blogger guilt the same as Catholic guilt?  My post last week was a cheat.  Call it a lifeline perhaps, but the blog hop that appeared like an angel and supplied me with word-fodder when I had nothing to write, got me off the hook.  This week, though, I won’t allow myself the luxury.  It’s time to come up with a real post, even though it feels like I’m still out there treading water, at a loss for words when the lifeguards have all gone home.  So, you’re going to get what you always get with this happens, a word dump. Brain, to fingers, to post. 

As I write, we’re cruising towards our end of July heat wave, but after two visits down to South Carolina since March, I’ll tell you this.  Up here, we don’t know heat. We just don’t.  As a result, I’ve been snickering to myself at work when I hear people moaning about the humidity.  To be clear, it is not unusual around here for people not to own air conditioners, and without one when the thermometer tops ninety and the humidity soars, it really is hot.  That said, the reason so many of us don’t go to the expense, or bother of installing air conditioners is because the heat just doesn’t last.  By August, the nights will already get cooler. Add to that a sea breeze that helps to mitigate high temps, and like us, you too, might own one air-conditioning window unit that some years never makes it up from the basement.  As this moment, ours is still down there.

Ugh.  Weather?  Is this all I can come up with?  Come on fingers, you can do better than that...

Hmmm.  Ummm…

Things I am grateful for:

A visit from one of my oldest friends this weekend along with her husband.  

When I wake up to a clear sky and a weekend stretching ahead of us, well, trust me, I know how lucky we are. The ocean we love is near and we appreciate it even more when we get to share it. Fate was especially good for this visit, as we took our guests sailing and the wind blew steady and strong.  Later, we swam off the harbor sandbar, and the normally frigid water was bearable.  We ate dinner outside and the mosquitos allowed to us finish before chasing us inside—and Sunday morning, when we headed out early to drink coffee and eat bagels on the beach, the still water blended with the horizon as if an artist smudged the line with a charcoal pencil. The stone lighthouse on the horizon faded in and out amid a distant haze, while behind us, a morning beach yoga class quietly struck their poses.  Having company allows us to see our hometown through our visitors’ eyes, making it a holiday for us, too.

And last but not least, I received an email from my favorite blueberry patch this week, announcing the berries are ripe.  

That means in the next day or so, I’ll pull on socks with my sneakers and head to the farm where I’ll sling the rope tied to a plastic bucket around my neck, and pick with two hands. I’m pretty sure I’ve written about this tradition for each of the seven summers I’ve been blogging.  Being out in the fields with the birds and the cicadas and the tickle of tall grass around my legs always inspires me.  Making blueberry crisp with fresh picked fruit does too.  Stay tuned.  Could be my topic for next week…

16 comments:

Alex J. Cavanaugh said...

Bagels on the beach. I could handle that.
Yeah, you live here in the Carolinas and you bet you're going to have air conditioning! I have no idea how they did it a hundred plus years ago with no air and heavy clothing.

mshatch said...

Ah, a nice sail around the bay or harbor would be especially nice :) And yes, it's hot, but I'll take hot and humid over frigid temps and icy walkways any day!

Joanne said...

I am envious of your "hot" weather as opposed to mine. A day at the beach - delightful. Weather is always a great topic. Blueberries are another - yum!!! I'll pay a fortune even in winter for them. So please gather a bunch, eat a bunch, and feature a blueberry blog post for me. Happy Monday. (and life's too short for guilt - it's summer, be a slacker)

Madeline Mora-Summonte said...

This might have been a "dump" kind of post, but I enjoyed it! :)

We went out for a bike ride yesterday morning, and it was like riding through soup - and it was early! Give me some a/c!

glnroz said...

Heat? Heat? lol. We lived in South Carolina for awhile during the 1980's. That aint heat.. lol...Here (Texas) it is heat... Remember the Hat Creek Hotel (building project that I blogged about..writing office and a place for the kids to stay when they visit). I put in one air conditioner then decided to make it two...just in case one or the other "conked out". Used them both this weekend while working on it...but keep the cool posts from up north coming...:) I hate winter.

Bish Denham said...

Idyllic. "...the wind blue steady and strong." I'm not sure it that was intentional but sure did paint a lovely picture.

Chrys Fey said...

The humidity in FL is awful. I can't imagine not having air conditioning.

Blueberry crisps with fresh picked fruit...save me one! :)

Hilary Melton-Butcher said...

Hi Liza - how wonderful to be able to spend those few days so satisfactorily with your great friends ... sailing and swimming off the sandbar ... then blueberry picking - interesting thought! Cheers Hilary

Susan Gourley/Kelley said...

That's cool getting an email from a blueberry patch. My sister lives in Mississippi so she taught me not to complain about heat.

Pixel Peeper said...

We lived in South Carolina for seven years, and I had a car without AC (it was my Buffalo car...bought one week before my husband had the job interview for the job that moved us to South Carolina). The last week we lived in South Carolina, it was 109º three days in a row.

It's hot here in Central Florida, but it has never been 109º hot. We always joke about moving south for the cooler weather. And now I have a car with AC.

For a "dump" post it was fun reading!

Connie said...

I enjoyed this post, Liza. We have had a wonderful summer here (Ohio) weather-wise, in my opinion. We talk of retiring to South Carolina, but we're not sure if we can take the heat. Or we may just turn into snowbirds and only go south in the winter. I'd really like to escape the ice, snow, and cold of winter. Blueberries--yummm! And they are so good for you too. :)

Jan Morrison said...

We don't have an air conditioner here in Labrador either! Our house stays cool even when we do get a heat wave, because it is in a small forest of very tall spruce trees. This also means I don't need to suffer from garden guilt. The beach has been gorgeous lately and the fella put out his salmon nets. Last night we had a peeler for dinner ( that's a small salmon ). Yum! Not a huge amount of wild blueberries but we have red berries -called partridge berries too. We'll get tonnes of thdm and I'll make jam. Summer!

Unknown said...

I also live in Massachusetts and, let me tell you, after 8 years in Houston, this is bliss! I live on the coast so we usually have a sea breeze even when it is hot. I love it.

Susan Flett Swiderski said...

We're in Georgia, where we're currently in the midst of a long drought and 40-some day streak of temperatures well into the nineties. No air conditioning? Not even imaginable! (And I thank God for it every day!)

I buy blueberries all the time, and not once have they bothered to send ME an email... :)

Empty Nester said...

I'm in SC. Just across the bridge from Charleston and only 3 miles from the beach on Sullivan's Island. I haven't done anything outside this summer. It's just too hot. Too hot to breathe. And we'll most likely be this way until October. Oh well. The beach will still be there in November. LOL

Unknown said...

It certainly can get very hot. I can't imagine anyone in the U.S. living without plentiful air conditioning in the summer. Then again, I am from Miami, so my AC is on year-round and a good thing for that. Better to pay for electricity than melt away or get heat sickness.