it's not too late to whippet, whippet good

Cooking! I can't believe I haven't addressed this aspect.
I too was fascinated by the fact that some people got to follow special baking directions. Now that I'm one of that rarefied set, lemme tell ya: It's not that different. When I made my daughter's birthday cake, I added some extra flour. My husband wanted brownies for his birthday (two birthdays here already, can it be?) and I just let them cook a bit longer, and they were fine. The biggest difference is, that watched pot of water on the stove never, ever boils. It takes about twice as long for water to boil here, or so it seems.

Challenges. Kathleen is right, challenges keep you strong. I recommend Judith Jones' article in the most recent Vogue (the one with Madonna on the cover -- my toddler son points to her and says, "Pretty!"). She's in her 80s, she walks several miles a day and exercises constantly, and she's still one of the premier book editors in the world. She says she'll never retire. There's also an interview with Jane Goodall, who was here a few weeks ago. I found out the next day. Heartbroken, me.

Judith Jones says she has a dog that requires walking about three miles a day. A greyhound, I guess. Maybe that's what I need. That and the Jane Goodall diet -- one meal a day.

And re: the weather: The high today was 65. I wore my black cardie today with my Birkenstock sandals. Just a couple of days ago, it was so gross. And in NC today it's 104 and humid. Summer is so weird.

what does not destroy us makes us stronger

There is some kind of moral in Robin's most recent entry. Oxygen deprivation at some 5,200 feet above sea level made her sick, then strong, healthy and fit.*
A life that is too easy makes people weak and lazy, inclined to focus on trivial problems. We all need challenges, whether physical or intellectual or emotional (ideally all three) to bring out what's strongest and best in us. We need to suffer a little.
I was very fit when I first moved to Brooklyn, from walking a lot in the cold weather and the general stress and exertion of moving. Physically now I am rather pathetic, but my brain feels like it is working harder than it has in years. I am like a rat put down in a new maze full of exciting-smelling cheese and bright lights. There is so much new stuff to master. Even though it is sometimes overwhelming, I love it. If I could cite one single thing that makes me not regret moving to New York, it is what has happened to my brain.
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*And what about the cooking aspect of life at 5,000 feet? I was always fascinated as a child that the instructions on the cake mix were different for people at high altitudes.

no, it's the humidity

I haven't proved anything. The heat is brutal, but 100-plus degrees here is not the same as 100-plus in North Carolina (or New York, for that matter). No, it's the humidity. It's freaky hot here, but it's different. It's like being in a sauna without borders. My skin feels crisp. But otherwise, it's just not that bad. Now, once it hits 80 or so in North Carolina, the air conditioning goes on, you go inside for four months or so, and you emerge only for work and supplies.

It has been a long summer. But I have to say: In many ways, I feel better than I have in my whole life. My lungs are so strong now, after months of being at this oxygen-depleted altitude. (Although, if I go much higher into the ether, a short uphill walk leaves me panting like a dog.) I've dropped meat from my diet completely -- not even so much as a sliver of bacon or ham, the Homer Simpsonesque holdovers I just couldn't give up. (Processed pork. Mmmmmm.) I walk so much more now. I've still got far more around the middle, and the thighs, and the hips than I would like to have; but slowly it's falling away, and this pleases me no end.

"It's not the heat, it's the humidity"

Robin had to move hundreds of miles away to do it, but she has managed to prove the cliche wrong! Sometimes it really just is the heat. That has to be worth something, right?
The heat in that part of the country actually made the front of the New York Times last week, on a day when all the rest of 1A was terrorists in London and terror worries in New York.(Our personal items now being subject to random search in the subway, for instance) I can't imagine what heat like that must be like. Although the subway platforms some days might be almost that hot -- so hot you feel like you are going to start having visions any minute -- eventually an air-conditioned train comes.
Summer has to start winding to a close, soon, right? Right?
Personally, I feel this has been the longest summer of my life. I feel sweaty and disorganized and anxious. I long for crisp weather and reason to wear sweaters and the end of my probational employment period, which lasts six months but seems to stretch into an uncertain eternity. I am tired of reading about drownings and shootings that seem to figure prominently in the summer life of New York City. I am tired of the smell of garbage.

I also cry when I hear "Carolina In My Mind." Look away, look away.

cruel summer

It is apocalyptically hot in this part of the world. We haven’t had a daytime high below 100 for at least a week now. The only thing that’s saving us from the 110s, apparently, is the altitude – in Phoenix, which is a day’s drive away, more than a dozen people have died during this heat wave. Las Vegas has been brutal, too, from what I understand.
We have no air conditioning here at Casa Dodds, in our bungalow that sells for roughly half a mil. (Yoikes!) We do have the Colorado equivalent of air conditioning – two swamp coolers, devices that humidify as they suck the heat out of the air. In order to make the swamp coolers work as they should, I run up and down the stairs each day, filling the swamp coolers (one upstairs, one down) with water. Before it gets too hot, I use the coolers as fans, letting them blow without the water’s cooling effect. In this heat, though, I might as well try to cool the house with hair dryers.
The other side of the summer one-two punch here is the smog. My sister-in-law came for a visit, and as I drove back from the airport I should have been able to see the mountains and the Denver skyline, nestled snugly in front. I should have. But instead, I could just make out outlines through the air, which was brown and grainy and looked as if God had forgotten to sweep the sky this morning. Unfortunately, on these days we can’t go out – we have an 18-month-old, and one of my older children is borderline asthmatic, so I try to keep her out of the dirty air. Oh, but for a clearing in the smog so we can spend a sunscreen-slathered day in a nice, cold pool.

But there are those moments when, finally, I see what all the fuss is about. I love that view from the airport, at least on clear days. I love seeing babies with brightly colored fauxhawks being strolled through the park. I love being in the mountains after dark, when suddenly the air cools by thirty degrees and the stars feel so close. I love Garden of the Gods (even if it is in Colorado Springs, home of Focus on the Family and the Air Force Academy, where they “don’t” force you to choose Christianity as your religion).

song lyrics

I did not answer the question! Re: song lyrics: Pink Floyd no but, obviously, Bananarama yes. And in the grocery store a couple of days ago, I heard James Taylor singing, "In my mind I'm goin' to Carolina ..." which was, of course, the song all the dopey frat boys in school sang when they'd had too much to drink. The song "JT," as he was called on campus, wrote for UNC. And as I looked for which garbanzo beans were on sale, I cried.
Pathetic.

where does the time go?

Yes, it's really July 15. Four months since I arrived in Brooklyn to start my new life, to reinvent myself as a New Yorker. One-third of a year. A book I read long ago about culture shock, probably the last time I experienced it badly, as a 22-year-old in Hong Kong, said that it takes about a year to really adjust to a new culure. There is a honeymoon period where you think everything is great. Then there is another period -- I forget if it has an official name -- where you think everything is terrible and long nostagically for the life you left behind. Gradually, you stop being so crazy and seeing things in extremes. The new life becomes your real life.

But I don't know if it's so simple. I seem to run the gamut of these emotions every day. I love it. I hate it. (Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself, for I contain multitudes.) Sometimes it even seems like my real life, routine even. I do ordinary things now, things I used to do in Raleigh, like go jogging, except now I have brownstones and the Manhattan skyline and the Brooklyn Bridge to look at, instead of the nameless minipark on Oxford Street and the progress of people making mega-additions onto their formerly modest little houses in Five Points. I resumed work on my mystery, finally, and this is strangely comforting. Everything in my life has turned upside down, but in Woodfin it is still January 1999 and there is a murderer at large...

I would like to say something profound about all this, it hovers in my grasp, but the words won't come. I traded safe routine for risk, a place where I seemed to know everything for a place where I seem to know nothing, and now must live with the consequences of that transaction. Do I feel sad and afraid and regretful? Yes, often. And the strange thing is, I knew I would, and I did it anyway. Because the price of saying no would have been even higher, drifting through life, never taking a chance, getting to the end and wondered what happened. It scares me to realize that Pink Floyd said it best:

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again.
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older,
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death.

Actually, Kazuo Ishiguro might have said it better in "The Remains of the Day," but that is harder to quote in a blog. Just read it, dear reader, if you haven't. The movie isn't bad either, but the book needs to be read first.


So, Robin is back online, after a long silence, and the blog is awaiting her words. What about you, Robin? What have you made of your trade? Any relevant Pink Floyd lyrics running through your head?