The Laser Sun, the Library, and Some Time Off

I received the long-awaited email from the library. My book has come in. The second of a series of YA fantasy adventure/romance books that seem very similar to ones I read last summer, specifically For the Wolf and For the Crown by Hannah Whitten. But also, like T. Kingfisher aka Ursula Vernon’s The Saint of Steel Series. Reading being a guaranteed way to give myself permission to slow TF down and just read because, Summer!

I had to get from my house across the very crunchy courthouse “green” to the library, diagonal on the square on which we live. not too big of a deal for the laziest of people, but the temperature has reached 100 degrees fahrenheit. Like heat warning kinda weather. I want to avoid the sun as it “is a deadly laser” today. But I must brave a little to get to the mailbox to mail my daughter’s shot records to her new school.

I dash out of the shade, across the street under the scorching sun, and pop it into the mailbox, and take three steps on the brick sidewalk and back to the safety of the shade. But in front of the library is another sunny patch which burns my skin as if I were a slug and it the salt. I grab the door handle and pull. Whoosshhh!

My book awaits me on the white holding shelves in the coldest building in town. Two Twisted Crowns, the second of the Shepard King series by Rachel Gillig. As I check it out, I tell the artsy gal with the covid mask on, “Being outside is like being Link in a Zelda game where you start losing life heart points as soon as you leave the shade.” I managed to weave a better shady path back to my house.

Back in my shady rattling air conditioner cooled house, I now recognize I can’t pick up my new book feast without first writing a little. So, this is what I can give you today. Permission to relax. Also, permission to do the thing before you take that time. Much love and see you with more clarity on the other side of my book and weeks’ vacation to visit my sister in New England.