And all manner of things shall be well...

...when this hot wind returns to the desert and my husband returns to his home.
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The girls are in bed, sleeping away the ill effects of a harrowing ride home. To be honest, though, a normal driver my age with a decent amount of self-sufficiency wouldn't have even blinked. I had to drive home in unfamiliar territory after dropping John off at the airport. I weaved my way across two lanes, cut off others (even with a police car to my right), all to remedy my nearly disastrous wrong turn onto a foreign highway, and all the while holding my breath until my face turned purple. To some, this all would have been laughably easy, but I felt more like Psyche facing impossible tasks. (This analogy is due to the fact that I just finished Til We Have Faces a few weeks ago, and Psyche's plight is fresh in my mind.) Anyway, we're safe at home, and all of the car's fluid has leaked out, and we will let it sit until John returns home on Sunday night.
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Til We Have Faces remains a favorite. Lewis uses language sparingly, and the beauty of the writing in this book is one reason why I hold it so close (the story itself is the other). Here's my blog, spilling over with excessive vocabulary, praising the power of sparse words in Til We Have Faces. Humph.
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The temperature here is oppressive. (And likely is there, there, and there, too.) I am heavy with heat. Last night, a spectacular thunderstorm arrived, the first of our spring. Its rumbling song and finger flashes, along with the steady sound of rain, more than made up for my skin's stickiness. A balm. Nothing more need be said.
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Our vegetable hopes are finally in the dirt. John tilled, and the next day Millie and I quickly planted. The swiftness with which we were able to finish reveals the size of our garden. At my request, John extended it a few yards this year, but, even so, it barely garners modest size status (See Figure 1 below). The tree in our yard is a blessing, but its ever-reaching roots and great arms limit the area within which we can work. That's okay. I'd rather have the tree than a bare square. We found fistfuls of glass shards and age-eroded, metal mysteries again this year, reaping a mighty harvest for the garbage can's belly. We also found buried treasure (See Fig. 2 below). Millie helped me plant the beans and tomatoes, and she planted her own little plot and some "puppins," to boot (Fig. 3). I want the pumpkins to flourish, but I also don't want them hogging earth belonging to the other plants. We placed them next to the chain link fence in hopes that we can conserve some space through their mountaineering (Fig. 4).

I realized, in the middle, that planting the garden was the first exercise, apart from sissy housework, that I've had in too long to remember. And planting a garden is only light exercise. I miss it, though-- my body sweating because it's accomplishing something, not because of the deadly combination of the couch's orange plaid wool with the rising sun. It will be good someday to have outside tasks again. (On a related note, there sure are a lot of benefits to not owning a scale.)
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I love children's books (which doesn't diminish my love of adult books, of course), and every time we go to the library, I pick out ten or so. After sifting through all the dross that somehow gets published, I usually find several books to feast on that I never knew existed. Although they're known to the far reaches, I think Frog and Toad are two creatures who deserve their fame and acclaim, and it's fitting to combine my love of children's books with my newly planted garden. Arnold Lobel, the man who put them on paper, described them this way:

Somehow in the writing of the manuscript for Frog and Toad Are Friends I was, for the first time, able to write about myself. Frog and Toad are really two aspects of myself.

Well, Mr. Lobel, I am Toad, through and through....(See Figures 5 and 6)
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A blind woman in a bright orange shirt just walked by my window. Sometimes at college, when I was late for class and the walks were clear of bodies, I would close my eyes and try to navigate confidently in darkness. I walked in darkness but was never truly confident, and within minutes I usually opened my eyes to see where I had wandered. I'm always struck by the confidence that blind people must have in order to walk the streets so swift and sure.
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Town living in the heat means that the ice cream truck stops outside our house. We don't buy overpriced, iced treats, but the boy downstairs does. Millie has keen ears for the truck's tune. She always hears its music before we do, and rushes to the window in high excitement. A few days ago, we were eating pizza at one of our downstairs neighbor's apartments, and Millie inexplicably bolted out the door. John ran after her and found her already outside, nearly to the sidewalk, waiting for the truck that had made its way halfway down the street. None of us had heard a thing. (I think all ice cream truck men are relatives of the Pied Piper of Hamlin.)

This obsession with all things ice cream has Millie driving invisible ice cream trucks, handing John, Nixie, and I cones all the livelong day. Let me tell you, it gets a little tiring to lick a dozen invisible cones a day. The past few days, thankfully, she's been giving them to her invisible friends, too, which gives my weary tongue some relief.

Right now, though, she's not driving an ice cream truck. She's flying a plane high in the sky--"My plane is pink, Mom, and yours is blue and Anka's is black." (I suppose mine is blue because I told her John was flying on a Jet Blue plane...)
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So I spent the day making birthday cards, hemming pants, watering skin, taking leave of my beloved friend, and tensely journeying through the Wide Unknown to our little apartment. Home again, home again.

And now the girls are up, and it's time to dip them in the tub to wash away heat rash before feeding them macaroni salad. Ah, macaroni.