I don’t know if you noticed or not, but it’s hot out. Really hot. Some might even go as far as to say sweltering hot. Scorching hot. Hot, hot, hot.
I don’t do well in the heat. Everyone here jokes that it’s because I’m from Michigan, but I’ve always been a little bit susceptible to heat stroke, and heat stroke sickness is awful. Thankfully, we do have an AC unit for our kitchen, though it’s been working overtime and the apartment doesn’t really get that cool. It’s significantly cooler than outside, though, so it’s bearable, but I’ve been spending my days in little more than a tank top and shorts, showering only when I’m about to get ready for work, because, otherwise, I just get sweaty again and the whole thing is pointless. But I’m one of those people who feel slightly “off” if she’s been up for several hours and still hadn’t changed into something decent. I keep telling myself that the heat is an acceptable excuse, and, besides, it’s not as though I’m really slacking off. I’m still writing, and I’m doing so with sweat dripping down my back. It’s so warm out that I haven’t done much lately besides going between working and lounging around at home with my reading and writing, which makes me feel like an anti-social slacker, but I have a lot of work to do, I have no money to spend on stuff anyway, and it’s hot. Really hot. Really, really hot.
It’s too damn hot for a penguin to be just walking around….
So I should embrace this excuse to do little more than write myself into a frenzy, avoid the glaringly scorched earth, and carry on. After all, there will be other, cooler weeks in which I can live life to a fuller capacity, and perhaps this heat is just a way of life telling me to take it easy, be a little sweltering, sweating homebody for a little while, and get some shit done. I worry a little about the cats, but they seem to be doing fine, they just flop more and create what I like to call “cat puddles” of themselves on the cooler floors. I’m drinking plenty of water and indulging in what I think is one of the best ways to cool down: lots of handfuls of delicious frozen grapes. You don’t eat as much when you’re warm, and you’re sweating, so you’re probably shedding a good deal of pesky water weight. And the head really does help transport me to the land of Kassir, so I can sympathize better with Gilferen and Locke and their hatred of the sun-scorched land in Serpent in a Cage. And how often is it actually the lesser of two evils for me to go without a bra? Not very often at all.
So (I say to myself), embrace the heat. Embrace the fact that it’s too hot to put on real clothes or actually go outside and do stuff. Embrace the chance to do nothing more than write with the convenient excuse of the weather to help you feel a little less like an anti-social loser. Embrace the fact that you, too, can flop over like a cat and enjoy a nap as the sun fries your brain into a useless mush. Embrace it, love it, do what you can with it, because it all change before you know it and, as the Starks of Winterfell remind us…WINTER IS COMING.
…just not soon enough.
(This post brought to by by the Committee of It’s Too Damn Hot to Be Writing a Good Post Right Now.)
L.S. Engler 
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