Weekend Update:
Disgusted
It’s a lovely summer evening here in New York, with clear skies and cool and dry air. The heat wave that was supposed to be extinguished by thunderstorms seems to have spontaneously dissipated. I have rarely been more disgusted with the weather.
Kathleen, who is visiting her father and brother in North Carolina, was to fly home this afternoon, but given those predicted thunderstorms and the estimated delays, I urged her to rebook a flight for tomorrow, and to stay where she was. As she’s been having a very pleasant time, she was happy to humor me. So I’m the one who’s home alone.
Which wouldn’t be so bad, if I hadn’t had a completely inane day. The air-conditioning and the Vornado fans kept physical discomfort at bay, but there is no way to ease the psychological displacement of really humid weather. I was counting on some atmospheric violence to shock me out of my torpor. Curses foiled again!
There were all sorts of things to do, but not a volt of energy to get me off my duff. I read and read and read. Then I watched The Iron Giant, an animated adaptation of a kids’ book by Ted Hughes. Quatorze brought it over, about a hundred years ago, along with a number of other recommended titles that it has taken me a shameful length of time to get to. Truth to tell, I haven’t been watching many DVDs lately, not out of the kitchen anyway — and in the kitchen I play only movies that I know quite well. I’m ashamed to confess that I wept almost all the way through The Iron Giant. My eyes are still sore, and it’s difficult to read what I’m writing. What a sap I am.
What to do about dinner? What to do about dinner, that is, in the wake of my movie snack? Salami, Jarlsberg, Smartfood. I feel larded up enough for swimming the English Channel — well, I could be towed across, maybe; I can hardly get out of my chair and across the room.
Sixes and sevens isn’t the half of it!
Yeah, wow, it was incredibly stifling in Boston all weekend too. I lugged out the crappy window AC units, and that helped. The rainstorms yesterday afternoon and evening, while brief, were some of the most intense I’ve ever seen.
We got The Iron Giant for Ari a couple of years ago, and he’s still reasonably scared of it.
“The Iron Giant” really is certainly an older child or even an adult movie; it is quite scary for the audience one might otherwise assume it was intended for, given the style of cartoon.