At 5 a.m. I let the cat out into a spattering of rain, faint relief after a hot and sticky night. Yesterday morning the temperature had cooled off enough for me to open the house windows for an hour or two and release our ears from the constant roar of the fans. Today I won't bother: the air outside is like a wet wool blanket.

We bought our air conditioner just after the pandemic, when I needed to spend days on zoom in my tiny hot upstairs study. I'd never lived inside an air-machine bubble before, and though I still don't like it, I'm grateful for it. This weather is a terrible strain: I struggle to get anything done in such heat, yet my body yearns to be outside--digging, weeding, mowing, just being in the world. Yesterday I cleaned the house, which was at least active, and today I'll try to go for a walk before the heat starting spiking again. But I'm missing that Monson lake--paradise for hot and restless skin.

Today my plan is to write. I've got a notebook filled with blurts that I want to play with. I've got Bate's biography of Keats niggling at my thoughts. I've got time and solitude . . . the house is clean, the laundry is under control, the groceries are shelved, the new editing project has yet to arrive, I can't work outside, so I might as well spend the day with words.