while our kin on the east are bracing for that nasty girl, irene, temperatures here in the west, are smoldering chaud.

the heat feels thick and heavy; like an invisible, clear fog has seeped in to bake us. skirts are short and skin is bare. hair is worn high to avoid sweaty necks and shoulders, stiff from an all night losing game of finding the cool in a un-air conditioned california king. last night a cold, wet washcloth provided a most heavenly pillow for me …for the beast too.

yesterday my movements, my speech, my thoughts-they all carried a slight, sleepy slur. this heat wave washes in a gauzy net of slow-motion, almost tipsy-like air, of which i find myself breathing and walking around in.

this weekend i’m going to saturate in the sticky hot of the last of summer. i plan to roll my warm, languid friday, saturday and sunday nights out, like a kaleidoscopic rainbow of faces and places of the people i love most; a pot of gold at every port.

linger, linger, linger.

that will be my word of my weekend.

finding my slower back beat, i’ll relish in summer’s final, simple pleasures that too often go amiss in my interval driven world: the sound and sight of my backyard bees liquoring up on bushels of lavender, jasmine oil baths so heady with summer scent i’m perfume free all day, breakfast coffee in the yard: early enough so the moon’s still out, but warm enough to be robe free. i will set my alarm a bit earlier so i can hang longer with the my garden friends.

losing my psycho, good girl, quick-to-wipe-away-the-first-sign-of-mess, disordered self, perhaps i’ll let a dribble of our soon-to-be gone, gummi-bear sweet, local nectarine juice remain on my chin for a self-deprecating chuckle or two, before i whisk it away with a napkin. or maybe i’ll finally eat those strawberries right off their stems, right out of the basket, after buying them from stand #14, like i’ve been wanting to all season.

how will you be soaking up these last bits of summer m’loves?

sending all my good vibes the east coast. miss irene sounds like quite the diva; which is ironic because we irene’s {my middle name} mean peace.

oh, yeah….speaking of divas….priscilla would like to say “goodbye.”