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SunJune 27, 2006 As late as last Friday the Weather Underground forecast for this week consisted of one fat-cheeked gray storm face after another. Imagine my surprise yesterday morning when sunshine was pouring through my curtained and shaded windows at 5:20 yesterday a.m. (Probably earlier too, but that's what the clock said when I woke up.) Where did this come from? True, it was sultry sauna sweatbox heat, the kind I associate with my years in Washington, D.C.; however, Martha's Vineyard at its most hot and humid could never achieve the misery index scores of D.C. during a thermal inversion, and despite the surrounding sea my leather shoes have never turned as green here as they did during most summers in D.C. All the places I worked in Washington had air conditioning, but most of the places I lived did not; hence, probably, the chartreuse hue of my footwear. I didn't own a motor vehicle in those years, so I got around on public transportation and by bicycle. For more than two years I commuted regularly by bike from my home in the Mount Pleasant neighborhood, which is nestled between 16th Street N.W. and the National Zoo, to Alexandria, Virginia. A shade over 10 miles each way. Biking home through the soggy late-afternoon heat of summer, I used to pause at the Lincoln Memorial to soak my head in the water fountain. Mr. Lincoln never complained. He didn't sweat either. Yesterday morning I called the automated inquiry line at Big Corporate Publisher to check on the status of an overdue invoice. The bad news was that BCP had no record of the invoice; the good news was that a check had already been cut for an invoice submitted on June 9. June 9 invoice was for $1,909; overdue mid-May invoice was for just over $200. Happy freelancer braved the midday traffic to drive to the West Tisbury post office, where not one but two checks were waiting in her mailbox. BCP had already paid the June 15 invoice as well. What a difference a positive checking account balance makes! This morning I paid some bills and completed an application for a writers' grant. OK, so I keep swearing I won't do this again, but a five-buck application fee for a possible $10,000 payoff ($1,500 for runners-up)? What's to lose? Did laundry while the sun shone. (There's a rickety dryer in the basement, but I make a point of avoiding it whenever possible, which is most of the time, except in midwinter when the day is barely nine hours long and my clothes are likely to freeze before they dry.) I now have clean sheets in anticipation of tomorrow's eagerly awaited arrival of My New Mattress.
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