Well, if we knew each other we'd have traded phone numbers - and then you could sit on your patio and I could sit on mine and talk about all of it until you didn't feel lonely anymore.

101 at night? Good lord. That's just wrong, on so many levels.

I live on the plains and LOVE the wide open sky. There's nothing like watching a meteor shower on the prairie.

I walked out of my tent last night on the way to the showers. The sun had set and the wind blew oven-hot air. It was a reilef from the blast-furnace air we have during the day.
Dust swirled at my feet. The ground is so dry here even the weeds are having a tough time.
I looked up to the sky, scanning for incoming shooting stars. I know exactly how many steps it takes to get to the closest bunker.
Tonight is Saturday. Guess the high light of the night is clipping my nails. Tomorrow is Sunday...just seven more weeks till I get to see grass and not have to go outside to do my 'bidness.
Cheers.

I keep wondering when the heat will end. I had thought about going out but I have had a hard time getting motivated to change clothes. Maybe it's the heat. Maybe it's the weird evening I had last night.

I`ve been reading (lurking) your blog for some time now and I just want to say thank you for speaking your mind and making me laugh. Keep it up! You are so SNAKES ON A PLANE!

I, too, am remembering long-ago Southern summers tonight. It's not nearly as hot in the Bay area as it is where you are, but there's enough heat to bring on some powerful nostalgia. Which includes baked beans, just like you said.

What about a doggie pressing up against your leg? A doggie who loves to sleep under the covers even when it's a bazillion degrees outside? She only weighs 14 lbs (a Boston Terrier) so I don't mind. Also, I can say that *technically* I don't sleep alone ...

I wish you sweet dreams, amiga.

Midnite here and AOL says its 98 degrees, predicting 113 tomorow and 110 the day after that. Someone get me out of here!

IIF in Fresno

I've been clingy this past week. Even my husband (usually he is the clingy one) noticed. So many things in the past that surface on hot summer nights. It doesn't help when none of the drugs help you sleep. 3 am here... wishing for daylight, at least then I sleep.

I need to have some friends over soon and sit outside drinking something. Maybe that will pull me out of this funk.

Wish you were close enough, I wouldn't mind sharing my crickets, lightening bugs and lonely train whislte in the distance with you!

We're not geared up for hot weather in this country so I've been feeling very sick and uncomfortable without A/C.

I've never seen heat lightning - it sounds beautiful.

What is it about hot weather that makes you just go along with it, whatever "it" might be. It's as if the temperature and the sun compel you to just shrug your shoulders at "it".

It's pretty warm here, but it's so humid that the towel hung up in the bathroom still wasn't dry 10 hours after my shower, and the carpet in the bedroom feels almost damp underfoot. It's rather gross.

What an evocative piece! You really can capture the essence of an emotion..... Keep writing!

Heat lightening! Oh my God! I've been in the San Fernando Valley for almost 8 years now (orginally from Mississippi)..and going to the store tonight I saw lightening flash across the sky.

I was spellbound....rain?...oh my god! rain?...nope, just a flash in a pan....like a man coming too soon...so disapointing. ;-)

What Heather said!! (because it really says it all!)

Summer is soooo SNAKES ON A PLANE.

Oh, girl, you have so many friends out here that we'd trample your back yard flat in no time.

I'm half a continent away. The way you write had me right there in the back yard with you. (In spirit, not in grass-tramping shoes.)

Last night, I was standing in the driveway, waiting for the dogs to finish their bathroom run, and looking at the stars through the clear cool night air, wishing it were hot because it feels too damn much like fall when the nights are cool.

Everywhere you go in this coutry right now, it seems like there's a heatwave. I know in the winter I'm all for the greenhouse effect, but you forget what that does in the summertime.

we turned the AC off last night for the first time in about a week- it is still so muggy, but supposed to be in the 80s today instead of upper 90s. Nighttime with no AC reminds me of summer camp. crickets, frogs, damp, nice in a weird way.

That sounded like the opening scene of a movie.

Spent some time in Palm Springs and Palm Desert, CA last summer for work, where it was 115ºF every day and still 99ºF at 11pm. Bleh. I love my A.C.

It's so hot that even wearing a watch feels too hot; suddenly that strikes me as a way to feel less hurried. This heat makes you disregard time altogether.

Lovely post.

Repeat after me: "One day closer to autumn," "One day closer to autumn," "One day closer to autumn,"...this is my summer mantra here in steamy Texas.

Maybe I'm weird, but sometimes the loneliness feels like an old, comfortable friend and I enjoy just sitting with that friend. Not all the time mind you, but every now and then I welcome it. It makes me take time out of my hurried and harried life to just sit and contemplate on things. That's how this post made me feel.

Hadji --- been there, only the girl's latrines were almost 1/2 mile away, and we weren't allowed out alone at night, had to take a bathroom buddy. At dawn you could watch the predators silently come in. Come home safe.
Laurie --- Amazing ... you have the power to bring us all to you, virtually ... suddenly I had to turn up the A?C and push the cuddly but hot cat off my lap!

I live in Northern California, where it's hot and humid. Far more humid than I am used to. It's got me thinking things I should not be thinking, depressing me and wearing me down. Worse yet, givine me crazy ideas and urges. I almost the back of someone's neck in Home Depot yesterday morning. He was there and his neck was pretty and the humidity told me to. o.0 I think we all could use a break.

*hugs*

So she was right about the earthquake? Did you feel it at 8:45 this morning?
It is earthquake/muggy weather/ good old California summer days

Have you ever considered writing a novel? short story? Your "voice" seems to be evoking so much feeling in your readers. You have a gift for engaging and holding my attention....and the attentions of hundreds of others. I think you should publish your work...Please consider it....

With deep appreciation for your writing and sharing .....

Susan

Good post, CAP. You've described the heat of a summer night perfectly. Today is the first day of cool weather in oh, must be at least two weeks in NJ. I like the warmth of summer but this past heat...well, I finally feel like my old self this morning. It's interesting to read about your feelings or reaction to a place like the desert. I remember moving from the Rocky Mountains across Canada to Ontario as a kid. I didn't believed my mom when she said there was a place without mountains. My reaction to the flat plains of the prairies and little hills of central Ontario was similar to yours. I felt protected by the mountains. Anyway, years later I've adjusted. I've never been to the desert and would like to see a night sky so huge, so full of stars.

Good post, CAP. You've described the heat of a summer night perfectly. Today is the first day of cool weather in oh, must be at least two weeks in NJ. I like the warmth of summer but this past heat...well, I finally feel like my old self this morning. It's interesting to read about your feelings or reaction to a place like the desert. I remember moving from the Rocky Mountains across Canada to Ontario as a kid. I didn't believed my mom when she said there was a place without mountains. My reaction to the flat plains of the prairies and little hills of central Ontario was similar to yours. I felt protected by the mountains. Anyway, years later I've adjusted. I've never been to the desert and would like to see a night sky so huge, so full of stars.

I was once in Utah on top of a lookout point at night. It was unlike anything I had ever seen - the stars looked huge, like you could literally reach out and maybe touch them if you tried hard enough. I figured that's what stars must have been like in bible times.
I know what you mean about the summer.
But hey, at least we're not Flannery O'Connor crazy...yet...

and i've been forgetting to put my name. maybe it's a summner thing. goshsnakesonaplanedarnit.

Can I get an Amen! sister Laurie?

I know what you mean about the wide skies. I never realized how much they impacted me when I was growing up in Austin, but when I moved to New York, I found myself craving them. When I would go home to visit, I'd spend all my time staring at the view from the elevated freeway. Now I live in New Mexico, and though I miss many things living here, I love the wide openness of it. In many ways I am totally a city girl, but there's just something about watching a thunderstorm roll in from miles and miles away.

I want a whole book of your writing about a moment like that. I want a whole volume of books.

Heat lightening? That's so SNAKES ON A PLANE!

Right now I could go for frogs and crikets. All I here when I go out of my hut is choppers and C130's takeing off in the night. It is kind of creepy to here a plane but not see it they fly with all the lights off. Last few days it has been hot and dry here, the temp inside the hut was 90 with the AC now at 1100PM it is 80 but with a fan blowing its not to bad. Only 320 days till I get home.

I admit I don't get the snakes on a plane thing, is it an Americanism?

I totally understand the outside in the hot summer evening scene.....you are so lucky to have air conditioning in your home....no such luck in houses in the UK...at least not mine. Even in my workplace (well the boss has it in his office but everyone else has to suffer). Its been 30C here today, not normal for this isle.

Go on write that book.

I remember moving from Houston to Santa Cruz, CA and driving across the panhandle of Texas on a moonless night. The Milky Way coming up from the earth to the south kept catching my eye and making me think a truck was getting on the highway. It was amazing.

Then I moved to Juneau, AK and loved the smell of it, the moisture, the mountains, the glaciers. However, I missed the sky. There is so little sky in Juneau. The place is so closed in by the mountains all around you.

Oh Yes....I remember Tent Revivals....slept through a lot of them, get me a spot on the back row, that is until Granny found me!

Unbelievable, isn't it. It was just as bad here in Northern California last night. It was 99 and 60% humidity when I came home at 10:30. Miserable. I thought August was supposed to be the hottest weather.

I agree - the heat lightening is creepy.

I can only repeat what so many have already said, that you have a rare gift for transporting your readers to a place and time that resonates with people who have never been there, or are likely to be.

I remember heat lightning growing up in upstate NYS, hearing the rumbling, seeing the flash, and waiting for cooling rain that wouldn't come. Finally giving up and going into the basement to lie down and pant. Or being in the Adirondacks, watching the bats swoop over the water catching mosquitos and seeing the Milky Way splashed across the sky. I would stare at it until I couldn't stand the mosquitos anymore, I couldn't believe a sky so filled with stars.

I grew up in a small deep valley and when we first moved to southren PA it took a few weeks to get used to all that sky!
And let me add to that Amen! Mmmmmm-hmmmm *nods while flappping that paper fan*

Today we hit a full on deluge. It really DID rain somewhere in Southern California. There was lightning & thunder and the corners were flooded and we saw several small car accidents (because we here in Southern California cannot tolerate ANY changes to our normal driving. GOD FORBID people should slow the hell down when it's freaking POURING!)
It was totally weird.
And then we got to our destination and I stepped out of my air conditioned car (big mistake) and felt like I had stepped into an active volcano.

OHMYGODSOFREAKINGHOT!

Anyway... may you be blessed with working A/C both at work and at home... and hopefully this heat will let up just a bit so we can really ENJOY summer before it's over.

It's 84 here right now, and it's 11pm. It was 112 earlier, and I thought I was going to die. BAD BAD HEAT!

Hey Laurie, ever thought of writing a book?
You could put in excerpts from your blog. I'd buy it.
You have a way with the words.

miss aunt purl, Snakes on a Plane -- a FILM -- is coming up. i see the posters about it all up and down 11th st here in nyc.... i thought of you!

Girl, I read that and I was right there with you. Ten AM on Monday and I was feeling all Saturday night. Such a beautiful voice you have. Thanks for sharing and letting us in your world.

You write so well Laurie. I love summer too because it is hazy and lazy and lovely.
Mia

It never gets that hot here. Well, almost never. It can get to be 90 or so, though, and so humid that you feel like you have to swim across the room, and nothing is dry -- not exactly wet, but not dry either. I've found that wearing a wet shirt helps (trust me, I am *way* past the stage where anyone would want to photograph this, even if I didn't wear a bra, which I do). I like that languid feeling, as long as doesn't last for more than a day and ends in thunder and rain followed by sunshine in the morning. Next time I'll have a drink on the deck and think of you.

I liked this entry - it was well written. I don't agree with you about summer,though, because I have seasonal affective disorder in the summer(most people have it in the winter)-as the summer progresses, I just become more and more depressed.
By the end of the summer, I'm just i-n-s-a-n-e! But I really like air conditioning. Some people hate it. I actually know people who hate air conditioning.

I really like this post. I grew up in LA and now live near Baltimore. I get very nostalgic during the summer months and think a lot about the west and what it used to feel like, weather-wise. I remember being a kid visiting Arizona, swimming in a large motel pool with a thousand other people during a horrendous evening lightning storm. Nobody seemed to care enough to get out of the pool.
I really like your site. I'm thinking of getting me some more kitties.

Laurie, I love your posts and have been reading for a while but never commented till now. I lived in NYC years ago and really missed being able to see large pieces of sky. This weather is tough; I know I'm lucky because I live closer to the coast and it's a few teeny degrees cooler, but it's hitting me hard all the same. Yesterday, driving in the car, I realized what I was feeling (besides hot and sweaty) was lonely. It is summer, it is feeling trapped in the house or what?

Heat lightning - I haven't seen it in 20? years. Used to love watching it growing up in MD. Never have seen it in Southern IN, although my father in law recalls seeing it here many years ago....

It was Snakes On A Plane kind of heat brewing in So Cal on Saturday. I had the pleasure of having a BBQ that day. I think we could have just tossed the meat on the patio cement and cooked just fine.