black_cigarette

I'm not sure if I didn't set my alarm this morning or if I turned it off and went to bed in such a daze that I didn't retain any memory of doing so. Either way, it threw off the day to the point didn't have nearly as much in it as I'd wanted.

I've double checked that it's set for tomorrow.

I've also grabbed another case of seltzer for the upcoming heat wave over the next few days. I hadn't realized I'd trained myself to rely on it until I saw I was down to one cold can in the fridge. It's a little uncanny at this point.

I can still easily enough drop and do ten push-ups.

I can still, not as easily, do ten more.

I could probably do another ten in a few minutes, but I think I'll move onto squats and curls for a little while. Just something to move a bit and make sleeping a little easier.

I decided on For What Binds Us. At least, as my first request. I can afford another later this month if I'm careful. I still hold that poetry readings are one of the best things to use Cameo for, and I always hope I'm not being avant-garde when I commission these readings and there's other people doing it I simply don't yet know about.

In other news, my younger brother's wife G. recently received some news she didn't want widely circulated, but she told her brother, who told his wife, who told her mother, who told my brother. He was already aware of the news, what with being married to G., and it still got back to him. It's good news that she wanted private, which has me abjectly baffled she told anyone who'd go around sharing it. For contrast, after my mother found out she then told me G. had received some news and I could ask her about it if I wanted, which at least acknowledges a boundary.

I ended up getting enough done today I won't feel too bad about going to the movies tomorrow, which is pleasant enough. The end of the project is within sight, though not without some consultations about the ephemera. I don't know how my client wants the bank notes and shopping lists tabulated - likely by format and in chronological order, but it's his family documents, so I'm not going forward until I know exactly what he wants.

I've got a decent idea of how I'd do it - and again, his documents. So, while I wait: the movies.

The day started with planes over the Hudson and tall ships on the river, and ended with fireworks to the west and thunderstorms to the north. There's still some noises I think are explosions but could be thunder. I'm not going back up to check; I've had enough excitement for the day.

It was amazing to look and see the thunderstorm to the north, as dark as night when the rest of the sky was just in the evening. It was uncanny to see a stealth bomber, where all I could think was it looked like someone had cut a piece out of the sky. From my windows, it's night all over now. Fewer fireworks this year than others, but many more tall ships - which I think might be the way to go from here on out. But with more sunscreen next time.

Thunder all over, rain coming down steady and hitting hard, lightning slashing through the clouds for just a second and you hope you're lucky enough to be looking right where it is when it comes. Standing outside, knowing you're getting wet and knowing it's okay since you can get dry later, happy it's a reprieve from the last few days' heat. Light in the west, bright light, the light at the end of a day with nothing cutting through it since everything's washed out with the rain. It's still washing out, still coming down, far from a downpour or a gullywasher and far from over.

You walked over fast to get to your building and you're heading to the park, and you stop to feel the smell all around you, and you head to the rooftop.

It's harder to see from up there with nothing between you and the sunset, not even any clouds. What clouds there are hang south of you, gentle purples, or northwards, blue-gays. Lightning wherever it wants to find itself and thunder rumbling for many long seconds after. To the east, dark clouds, heavy and ready to burst. To the west, sunlight. Not even a sunset. Fading sunlight. The occasional, incidental glimpse on the horizon of a rainstorm far away, a patch of haze on an otherwise perfectly clear view to the end of the day as the sun moves down below the horizon. No clouds, no smog, no haze. Nothing but clear sky from here to forever to get in the way of the sunlight so all you see are the colors as they fade out. A sun that's too bright to look at, that hangs behind your eyelids if you do more than glance. A sun that's still up, low in the sky, the lightning that scrawls and sprawls across the sky at the same time dazzling in its own right, but nowhere near as steady.

Dark shapes of large birds and small flying creatures, artificial shapes of large and small boats on the river. Standing out against the colors fed into the river and sky by the last of the day's sunlight as it keeps going down. Fading, gently. Finally gently to your eyes because the rainstorm knocked out everything else hanging around in the sky. There's clouds above the sun, eastward close to you, and south and north and probably far west, too, but in that strip of the sky where there's sunlight there's nothing else. Just sunlight, just the sky getting filled with the colors of sunset.

The rain doesn't stop when you leave the roof. The sun's dipped below the horizon, and it's only a matter of time now. So you might as well take the moment to say farewell.