tar and asphalt

 A lazy hazy day of summer… perfect for stretching out on the sofa outside with a book or two… except! They have been doing roadworks on our corner since first thing this morning… the scent of asphalt is heavy in the air and the sound of trucks and machinery is loud enough to drown out the lawnmower! And I have to blast my music. Still the cicadas are the loudest. I will persevere though, especially as we have rain and cooler temps in the forecast for the next week :-(  This could be it for summer but I'll keep that thought on the back burner and just use it as motivation to enjoy this day to the fullest!

There's something about the smell of fresh asphalt that transports me back to my youth - creosote railway ties and pavement hot from the baking summer sun, heat rising in visible waves, a mirage on the roads that look like water in the distance, the sound of cicadas figure in there as well. I can close my eyes and be on my blue bike pedalling down back country roads. Maybe I'd stop at the creek - were all creeks called ‘Devil's Creek’? Those endless days of summer are tucked into my memory.

Sometimes on those long summer days I'd pitch my tent in the backyard and hang out shrouded with stinky canvas, my transistor radio picking up stations playing 70s pop music. I loved those days and nights in the tent - there are some songs that transport me as if in a time machine to an exact moment. Oh oh oh, it's magic you know, never believe it's not so… 

Well, I just looked up that song and learned that the band broke up in the early 70s, with some of the members going on to 10cc which was a favourite of mine! And when I listen to it, I can hear 10cc in parts of it.

Carm was busy today with the lawn and then cleaned up and stored the garlic harvest while my big accomplishment was walking with Kirsten for an hour and then prepping a bunch of vegetables for supper. Hardly much but more than yesterday and the day before that.

I did take a break from walking on Wednesday - I spent the whole day reading outside, barely getting up except to make more tea… and eat more cake! I unearthed a giant slab of pineapple upside down cake from the freezer and during the course of the day nibbled the whole thing. Comfort food which did not energize me at all and probably had the opposite effect but YUM!

From what I could glean from the internet, the fatigue can last for weeks which is unacceptable! Especially with the garden going crazy with zucchini and tomatoes. 

I've spent much of my life fighting against low energy, either from errant moods, or medications, which often needs to be just pushed or muscled through so it's hard to accept that this might be real and not all in my head. 

It's too nice to be inside today, but tomorrow the kitchen will get trashed with cooking. With Carm's help, I'll get some zucchini ready for scarpaccia, make some tomato sauce, roast some tomatoes and onions for salsa, slice up last year's garlic to make garlic chili crisp oil, and gosh I downloaded a recipe for chocolate zucchini bread so I might make us a treat ;-)

It's almost 3pm on a Friday afternoon and the construction crews are still hard at it 😞 

update: 3:30 and I think they are done for the day!

I've spent too much time on facebook these last few days, but even still, I've managed to read some interesting health stuff, as well as a trashy novel… all good, except in the trashy novel one of the characters died from breast cancer! Who the heck needs a reminder of their close call like that 😞 it left me feeling a bit discombobulated for a while… 

Awesome!

“the silence once the machinery is gone”

“old music on the radio”

“the song of the cicadas”

“I'm going to morph the annoying smell of road construction into an awesome trip down memory lane”