So I found my shirts. The tenants living below us moved in in July. We share the laundry room with them. They are nice. Very young. And apparantly cleptos.


I won't get into the sketchy details. They were my last resort, the only remaining possible solution short of passing it off on really large moths. They HAD to have the shirts. But every time I asked if they could check, they put it off. One would say the other did the laundry, and then vice versa. But the good news is, after much persistance, I got my shirts back.

Note to self: Keep doors locked at all times.

It's hot. Not the unbearable kind of heat that we had back in July, but hot nonetheless. This morning I rode my bike downtown to a bookstore I wanted to check out, but alas, the radio was blasting top 20 hits, so I rode down the road to the cafe where I always go. I hope they're not getting sick of me. I went home early because I had a headache.

Now it's afternoon, and I am looking out my bedroom window. The birdfeeder hangs empty. There are spider webs everywhere. They are woven between the trees and the fence posts like so many tightropes. The big orb webs stretch and bend like tiny trampolines. It's a virtual spider circus out there.

It's actually quite beautiful. When they catch the light, they shimmer like water. It's as if somebody has strung silver streamers up everywhere. It's amazing how something so tiny can be so strong. I read in a book once that spider webs can withstand storms and hurricanes, and that some webs are as resistant as a steel wire.

Amazing.

Tonight I have a show downtown. I'll be playing outside at 7:30. It's sure to be beautiful. There is not a cloud in the sky. I think I'll wear one of my long-lost shirts.

It's difficult to think anything but pleasant
thoughts while eating a home-grown tomato.
-Lewis Grizzard


There are about a hundred green tomatoes in the garden, weighing down the plants. Luckily I tied them up with string before they got too big, so there is some sense of order out there. I picked the first sweet ripe cherry tomatoes last week, and now every afternoon, I bring in a few for my salad. There are a few sugar peas still left and the green beans are beginning to get tall, which means I will have beans all the way into September.

Walking around a lot downtown, you notice the strangeness of a city. There is a sign along the highway that says: Cheese Sculpture,That Way (an arrow pointing right). What pray tell is a cheese sculpture? There is an old woman who paces along the main road, singing her lungs out to the cars. She waves a newspaper at people and bellows toward their windows accusingly. The other day she was singing "Golddigger". Sometimes it's Bob Dylan. The thing is, she can really sing.

2 of my very favorite shirts are missing. I don't own a lot of clothes, so when 2 go missing, I really notice. I had thought they were in the dirty laundry for a while, and then the other night I discovered they were nowhere to be found. I scoured the house for them. I unfolded all the towels and bed sheets, went through all my drawers, looked behind my dresser, the computer desk, the washing machine, the piano for crying out loud. Nothing.

I knew I had not left them anywhere. For starters, I haven't really GONE anywhere for awhile. I am in desperate need of getting out. But secondly, who goes out wearing a shirt, and comes home without it? Well, maybe some people. And if you're into that, then by all means, who am I to judge? But I am not generally one to do that sort of thing. When all the girls in highschool were getting drunk and sleeping with boys in the backs of pickup trucks, I was going to bed early so I could get up for vocal jazz choir and hoping someone would be my friend.

So anyways. It's been driving me mental. Men. Tal. I woke up at 4 am the other morning, racking my brain to figure out where they could have gone. I don't think the dryer can eat whole shirts, can it?

The days are getting shorter. I miss the long light in the evenings. I wish this summer could go on and on and on and never end.

n: A large sea creature believed to be roaming the depths of Okanagan Lake. Originally named "N'ha-a-itk" by the Interior Salish Native people over 100 years ago, the monster has since come to be regarded more with amusement than fear. Much like the creature immortalized in Loch Ness, Scotland, Ogopogo is believed to have a snake-like body, including several humps, a green outer skin and a very large head.

***

Rode my bike downtown this morning with the sun casting long shadows along the lawns. It seems I am always worried about something or other, and these things play over and over in my head, be it the cleanliness of the lake water or pollution or money or my future or... well no need to go there. I have tried so many times to let go and I am trying still. Some days I don't quite know what I'd do with myself if I didn't worry. (Perhaps just be too happy for words? And what would I do then?)

As I rode by all the stores along the main street, I passed a little baby in a stroller. His mother was pushing him, and he was delirious with joy, smiling and laughing and flapping his arms all around. For no apparant reason. It was really the most beautiful thing ever.

I rode past the water. I swear, every single minute of the day, there is someone getting their picture taken with the big cement ogopogo by the waterfront. Kids climb all over it, and the little Japanese tourists LOVE it, and I mean LOVE it. I saw one cute little Japanese man almost hyperventilate when he saw it, and he then proceeded to gather his family members around it and snap about a hundred photos.

I stopped in at a cafe for some tea. As I waited in line, I picked up a paper and there was a full page story featuring Ogopogo. Maybe its his birthday or something. There were photographs taken of pedestrians and the question was asked of them: What would you do if you saw Ogopogo?

Interestingly, all of the adults said they would scream/swim away/crap their pants. Most of the kids said they would give it a hug/pet it/get on & go for a ride.

How do we lose this? How do we become these timid, afraid, worrysome grownups?

On my way home, I passed the concrete statue again, heard someone shout: Say cheese!

I couldn't help thinking that many of the worries that circle in my head are, in the end, about as real as the legend of Ogopogo himself, and instead, maybe I should just hug them/pet them/get on and go for a ride.