Maria and I are very similar in some ways and very different in others.  She has the blood of a lizard, I think, she was hopping around in this awful heatwave as if it were the first day of Spring.

She found a stream to jump in and has been walking around in wet clothes all afternoon, happy and full of energy, talking about microbes and sending her contribution off to the tinypricksproject, that is another story, she’s been working on this for a day or so.

I expect her to start stacking wood any minute. I, on the other hand, are almost housebound. While I was dozing off, she wrote about how happy she was to be sending something to Tiny Pricks. She can describe it better than I can.

I call her my Willa Cather girl, even though she is not mine, and has no intention of being possessed. She would have loved the prairie.

Even the dogs are droopy, Maria is not human, I think, she is some kind of plant life.

I fight it and hate it, but this kind of heat and humidity in combination with my heart and other medications is debilitating. If I go outside in this sun, I will end up in bed and be pretty sick. I know, I’ve defied the doctors more than once and paid for it every time.

I never feel more like an old man than during a heatwave, although the good news is that I get to write and write in an air-conditioned study with dogs at my feet. Once in a while, I dart out to take a photograph, like this portrait of Maria in the front yard, chipper and comfortable through the heat and mucky air.

I can’t imagine how her circulation works.

Thank God for the blog, otherwise, I would feel like a useless old man. We’re keeping Bud and Red inside, the heat is also too much for them, Fate and Maria skit around, they both love the heat, their cold blood seems to thrive in it.

The only thing that slows her down or stops her is occasional exhaustion, and she rebounds in the morning.

I guess I am lucky to have Maria around when this happens (I did get over to the Mansion two or three times), in a few minutes I’ll head outside of my cool cave to read, I’ve started the new novel, The Nickel Boys, by Colson Whitehead.

I’ll try sticking my head out again. Tomorrow will be a lot worse than today, my cardiologists have cautioned me to stay inside when the heat index gets too high. I’m going to behave, the alternative is not acceptable. We might try for a movie if it isn’t too hot to get around.

I should warn you, the only medicine that works for me in this heat is writing.