We tried to bypass yesterday's Hot by slowly wandering through the art museum, slowly wandering through a used-furniture store, slowly sipping a beer and slowly watching the Red Sox slowly almost get no-hit by the Orioles. It's amazing how much nothing one can accrue in an afternoon.

I guess the heat is supposed to moderate today, but this morning feels just as torrid as the last two were. I'm still fighting a summer cold, so I'm not exactly sure where heat lethargy ends and illness lethargy begins, but I hope I'll figure out some way to get something done. Next week I've got a two-day teaching gig with high schoolers, and I need to prep for it today. I've got editing to look at. And of course I did next to nothing in the house or garden all weekend, so that's waiting for me too.

I do hope it really will rain tonight. I've been watering morning and night, but the garden is exhausted from the heat, and a good downpour would soothe us all. Cherry tomatoes are starting to ripen; okra is beginning to set; peppers are swelling. Second-crop greens are sprouting and the Sassy Groundhog has not yet completely destroyed the brussels sprouts.

I'm reading Emma and the Inferno. I'm drinking ice tea like it's a drug. I'm changing my clothes three times a day. My hair is a wild mess of curls. All the paperback covers are curling up into cannoli, the playing cards are gummed together, and the toaster belches heat like it's a portal to hell.