coming into a long fourth weekend, and the weather is unseasonably tolerable, as i like to say, on the rare occasions that it is nice. it's warm; it's clear; it's sunny; but it's relatively dry and this means you can actually go outside, stand out there, or even sit out there, maybe on the beach, and enjoy it. i walked home today, again, and the variety of life out there in the neighborhoods, where grasses and flowers bloom like crazy, was amazing. at our own house we go out and play in the yard, but get eaten alive by the chiggers and other little bugs; it's open season out there, with everything hungry, even the poison oak looking for a leg to wrap itself around, so as to make someone red and itchy for a few months. this is bound to be me, so i lay low, a little, but often can't resist, when the weather gets good, and go out to do some gardening or some other fool thing.

we opened up the house, turned off the aircon, which is kind of a luxury; it's great to have real outside air for a while, even if it is hard on the allergies. it seems sometimes that the house circulates the same stale air for maybe five months, and even though the aircon cools and dries it, it doesn't remove the staleness, the sameness of it. so this is a chance to start over: from july, or whenever it gets intolerable again (bound to be soon) until maybe september, or whenever it's nice again, we'll have this new air, starting now: let the new stuff roll in the open windows. let the bugs and mosquito larvae stay out there. let the little caterpillars turning into moths or whatever, stay also.

the cat, who has only one eye, and a scrunched up face, constant sinus problems, a noisy snuffler, is actually a good hunter, and will sit at the open window, wishing to get some action and not knowing clearly that, as long as there are screens, she won't. but the other day she was let out back, and actually caught a bird; you'd think being short one eye would set her back, and maybe it did, but she got that poor thing fair and square; the other cat, an old maine coon who thinks outside the box, was surprised, as if he'd forgotten that that's what cats are supposed to do. they kind of batted at it together for a while; the one-eyed one, victorious; she wanted this to happen in front of us, too, to show us what she'd done. there's a disconnect there, though; cats don't know, really, how we feel about their mauling birds right in front of our eyes. i'd explain it to her, but somehow i figure it would get lost in the translation.

so it turns to july tonight; the days are getting shorter now; it's drying out a little; soon, there will be fireworks, all over, all weekend; in fact, i heard my first few tonight. i don't especially like this part of the holiday, but the unexpectedly temperate stuff, i'll take it; it's birthday weather. however it comes, time to take a breath, and maybe get some rest.