Well, the last of Batt Club shipments finally made it out the door yesterday after a lengthy manual data entry project necessitated by (clearly sub-standard) shipping software. And I’m a big girl: I’ll admit it. It was slowed down terribly by one simple, terrible mistake on my part. It involved my longhand-numbered list, which went to 40. I spent easily an hour, or maybe more, poring over the simple list, numbered by hand… and the one I keyed in, and shipment records for July, trying to figure out who I was missing. You see, the official list had 39 people on it, not 40. I couldn’t figure out who I had dropped, and how.

Ultimately, the answer turned out to be that when I wrote numbers next to the list… get this… I skipped #33. I mean, I jumped from 32 to 34. No, I don’t know how, or why. But I did. And fortunately it dawned on me after a rather extensive span of panic and mopping my anguished brow.

Oh, okay, so the brow-mopping was in no small part also due to the packing of everyone’s shipments of soft, fluffy, warm, cozy fiber… during the hottest week in more than a decade, according to the paper. Yes, I do have air conditioning (or you guys would be getting two shipments in September and I’d be going to swim camp with the manchild). But it’s so humid. And definitely an awful time to be at the carder. The weather web site says it’s 99F / 37C right now, with 38% humidity. Honestly, I think it has to be wrong on the humidity, and maybe the temperature. Walking outside, it’s like a wall of HOT. It’s like… it’s like… well, today’s Jim Borgman cartoon in the Cincinnati paper. Yeah, this nails it.

So, I can’t get anything meaningful done right now. Typing makes me sweat. The heat fatigue sets in by shortly after noon. It’s literally like a steam room out there. I’ve been working my drafts, like of the “Spindle vs. Wheel?” post I promised for Monday, and didn’t deliver then, or yesterday, OR today. It’s too hot to think! Literally! My body temperature is usually about 97F; if the ambient temperature gets around there, I start to feel feverish and dumb after a little while. It’s awful. I am a delicate and fragile flower who wasn’t cut out for this, and I have wilted. Weep for me. That is, if you can spare the moisture.

So, anyway, the heat being so oppressive, I’ve got nothing to show you. Seriously, nothing. I did knit a couple of rows on the Foggy Foggy Dew shawl. Treadling makes me sweat so I’m not spinning while slothing, and I’m certainly not swathing myself in a light, lacy, but very warm layer of knitting. I’m too lazy by the time I sit down to walk across the room and pick up my spindle project. I sit, in air conditioning, with a fan pointed at me, eating popsicles and drinking water. Every so often, I go outside so that I feel better when I come back in. I’d probably take 3 showers a day, except then I’d have to find clean clothes 3 times a day, and that would make more laundry and I’d have to do that. No. Gimme a popsicle, I’m gonna go stand on the air conditioning vent.

It’s clear I’m becoming ever more of a heat wimp as I… mature. I’d swear that I remember heat emergency summers in Chicago, similar in temperature and humidity to this one, when I was in my early 20s, and that I used to do things then. I mean, things like ride public transit to work and back, and walk places intentionally, and live in an apartment with no air conditioning. And none of the places I lived as a kid had air conditioning. So what gives? Like I say, I’m a wimp about this now. That must be it.

As of today, incidentally, there are 2 weeks of summer vacation remaining for the lad. He reports that it has been the best summer of his life ever, and as for me, I can’t get past the Dog Day Angst. Obviously, I’m going to need more popsicles. Lots more. Those might even be worth going outside to get.