Whew. After next weekend, my summer is unencumbered. I have planned jaunts to San Francisco and Seattle then farther, both for pleasure though the latter follows being run roughshod at the Big Top, but other than that, two months of freedom. Does one run roughshod over the victim, or does the victim run roughshod? Merriam-Webster is not helpful. Its first definition is to be shod in calk shoes and its second is "marked by main force without consideration or justice." I expect that it is difficult, painful, or even injurious for a horse to run in calked shoes, so to be driven roughshod might be to be crippled.
How anyone is shod, run, or crippled at the Big Top occurs to me today because I wore slingbacks and ow. Last summer I happily wore them traveling and to a rehearsal dinner but I think with talcum powder. Today the half-mile round-trip to the grocery store for my lunch was unpleasant. So I don't think I will wear them with my shell-pink suit (knee-length skirt) or butter-yellow sheath or khaki (knee-length shorts) suit to the Big Top, except I will try again with talcum powder and see if that helps enough. I have to have sensible shoes because I will be doing a lot of trotting and galloping and wanting to dig just a small hole and hoping no one boots me in the elbow for it.
That's it, the theme of my literary allusions for the Big Top this year will be horses, as long as I don't have to think too much of that one illustration in King of the Wind that gave me nightmares. Perhaps I should stick with Robin McKinley.
I began by saying that after next weekend my summer's obligations are over. I've been working in the garden fairly regularly since spring; we've done house-y things like replace the porch carpet and refinish a table and purge all the crap tossed into storage areas without a second glance; for the past two weekends I've cleaned; and this weekend my mother and her husband are visiting. But after that, as long as I water the tomatoes and weed, that's it.
The mild weather gave way to heat late last week and for the first part of this week highs are forecast in the mid 90s, but the later part of the week might reach only the high 80s and that would be good. I hope my mother can manage. Lots of sitting still in the shade, a glass of iced tea, a book. She should be fine.
We broke late on Saturday afternoon and went to the pool. RDC swam a k in the indoor pool and lay out and I sat immersed to my sternum on the steps of the thoroughly occupied outdoor one with The Razor's Edge for a blissful hour.
In July I might see PLT and his two daughters, but not their mother because she will be away. I have never met the younger, who is 4 (does seeing her mother before she announced the Impending Sprout count?) and the older is 8, so that should be fun. Also a ex-coworker of RDC's. It's weird to say "PLT and S" but not mean PLT and our own dear SEM, whose name is a homophone but not a homograph for this coworker. In August I go to the Pacific Northwest. I have been anticipating the mother-visit for weeks if not months, and it will be over with two months of summer to go. The plan is to kayak one day a weekend and spend the other by the pool. And read. Truly, my life is a difficult one.