It’s already a third of the way through the second month of summer, which means next week is roughly the midway point of the meteorological (as opposed to astronomical) season. I might not be failing at summer, but I’m definitely flailing a bit, which is probably indicative of where my head is these days.

Rudi and I fixed our air conditioner, which is great, because comfortable sleeping. But pleasant daytime temperatures in the apartment during our recent heat wave have made me a little loathe to leave it, sometimes even on the nicer days, and that’s not good for me. So I thought I’d brainstorm a little about things that I haven’t done this summer yet that I’d like to.

Here are then things that still seem totally reasonable to do this summer:

1. Go to the beach. I miss the ocean desperately.
2. Go home. I have spent the least amount of time ever in my life with my family and friends back home this year. Not being here in the event of a job interview has stressed me out tremendously, but it’s not like I couldn’t just come back early, right?
3. Watch an outdoor movie.
4. Attend an outdoor concert. We were going to go to Fort Reno last night, but the four inches of water D.C. received yesterday morning made the prospect very muddy.
5. Check out the suffrage exhibitions around town. The National Archives, the Library of Congress, and the National Portrait Gallery all have have shows on right now about the centennial anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment.
6. Picnic. I mean, how hard is it to pack a supper to eat outside?
7. Attend a Tour de France watching party. The danger of going to parties in Rudi’s social circle is that Rudi knows everyone and it’s impossible to extricate him without him having conversations with every bloody person in the room. If I just for a little while and plan to leave without him, I’m hoping I’ll find that less frustrating.
8. Claim my first summer reading prizes. Reading is the only thing I’m reasonably successful at right now, so I have prizes waiting for me in Virginia and at my local D.C. branch.
9. Try Jamaican and Filipino flavors of ice cream at regional shops.
10. Attend the National Book Festival, which is on the final day of August.

Stretch goal: Adopt a new member of the family. Since Jeremiah died, we’ve been a one-cat family. Corey has a lot of personality and we aren’t fully sure about how adding a new cat to the mix will go, but he has lived with up to three other cats in our apartment without too much fur flying, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed. We’d like to have a second cat again, so we’re hoping when the Humane Rescue Alliance has their next clear-the-shelter event (or, you know, we attend our next wedding), we’ll be able to take advantage of it.

What do you hope the rest of your summer includes?

Whoops! This didn’t post last night. Anyway…

As we were walking home from the pool and the garden this afternoon, we noticed the storm clouds overtaking the sun in a dramatic fashion. This is taken from Massachusetts looking west over Embassy Row.

Within 20 minutes, the winds were approaching gale force and sheets of water were pouring from the sky, obscuring the buildings across the road from us, with loud cracks of thunder overhead. It was a delightful time to be inside, and I truly appreciated our cozy Burrow.

Rudi and I started off our weekend well with a surprising text from friends who were home and wondering if we wanted to see a film. We watched Echoes in the Canyon, a documentary by and starring Jakob Dylan about the early days of the music scene in Laurel Canyon in L.A., and then went out for drinks to catch up. It was a nice way to begin the weekend, and I hope it will continue pleasantly and include some of the following:

• Swimming.
• Watching the Tour de France and knitting. (More details on the latter tomorrow.)
• Following the World Cup final. I caught some of the opening round matches, so I think it might be okay if I watch Sunday’s, but if they start doing poorly, clearly I’ll have to abort the plan.
• Working on some job hunt-related things.
• Baking.
• Doing laundry.
• Planting beans and harvesting mint in the garden.
• Drinking home-brewed iced tea (Our current flavor is Hibiscus Raspberry Currant) in Arnold Palmers and maybe making daiquiris.
• Dancing to upbeat music. (I don’t do this often enough.)
• Phoning a couple friends to mark major life events.

How about you? What do you hope your weekend will hold?

It was a quiet final weekend in June.

Yesterday was one of our garden work days. It was miserably hot and humid under the full, blaring sun, and, as one of our fellow gardeners said, it did not take long before you felt like a turkey with a pop-up thermometer, where when you reached a certain temperature, you were done.

After pulling the last of our lettuce, Rudi and I stopped for milkshakes on our way home as a reward for our work. And then I took a nap as a reward for having gotten up early.

While I was asleep, Rudi managed to get our swollen window closed and then got the air conditioner working. It’s a nice change to live in the cool again. It meant that when Rudi turned on the oven to make pizza, it wasn’t completely miserable. (To be honest, I suspect we both would have passed on the pizza if we’d had to bake along with it.)

This morning, I headed to the farmers market, where I found both red and black raspberries (but no yellow raspberries yet). I also came home with our first ears of corn (so sweet!) for the season and a flat of sour cherries at Rudi’s request for turning into pies.

This afternoon, we headed down to the Mall for Folklife Festival. Apparently the D.C. focus was only on Saturday, but we still got to hear some good music on a still hot, but less humid, afternoon. And we were pleasantly surprised to discover there was also a small, local international food festival going on, so we stopped for some locally brewed lavender limeade and a tofu bun.

Then we biked over to the pool for the last hour. It was understandably packed, but felt so refreshing. We stopped to water our plot again, and encountered the mom and baby bunny happily munching through our vegetables. They enjoyed the last of my shelling peas I’d left on the vine to pick later this week. I hope they don’t like peppers or tomatoes…

How was your weekend?

Sunset over Georgetown as we were walking back from Trader Joe’s (we went a little cheese-crazy).

The last days of June are slated to bring more of the hot, hazy, humid weather that’s been pressing down on D.C. this week. Today, after a morning excursion, I pretty much hid in our bedroom in front of the fan with all the rest of the lights in the apartment off. Obviously, that should not be my M.O. for the weekend, so here’s my plan:

• Work at the garden. Saturday is one of our periodic garden work days where we all put in time on the communal spaces of the garden. Plus, I’d like to get some beans planted in my plot, now that Rudi and I have found the ground again.
• Go swimming.
• Read a book. I’d like to get With the Fire on High back to the library. Acevedo is a D.C. resident and there’s a long hold list on this already overdue book.
• Check out the Folklife Festival. This year’s government shutdown put the kibosh on their usual international festival, so they opted to examine the social power of music, with a specific focus on the music of D.C.
• Track down raspberries at the farmers market. Yes, I’m still on the hunt.
• Deal with the fruit in my fridge.
• Find the title to the car. It’s here someplace. Just not in any of the places I’ve looked so far. Probably this requires a more concerted cleaning effort. Also, I maybe wasn’t looking far enough back, since I was thinking we’d brought it down in 2012, but apparently it was 2009 or early 2010.
• Repaint my nails. (Obviously after the garden work…)
• Eat pizza. It seems like a good weekend to do that, but we might punt it to next week.
• Replenish my tea canisters. And make iced tea, since I’ll have the box with all my teas in it open.
• Do laundry. I really wish I’d remembered we’d need quarters while I was out today. Now I need to hit the atm and the bank (but not the atm at the bank, where it charges money) before heading to the garden in the morning…
• Watch a film, probably at home. We have The Kid Who Would Be King out from the library, I have a free rental from Red Box that I have to use by Monday, and I see Kanopy has acquired Colette. Plus Netflix keeps adding new movies practically every week.

How about you? What’s on your weekend agenda?