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…