its hot here -- like 95+ with just about as much humidity. we're in the middle of a heat wave and i chose (purposely) not to put the A/C in the apartment this year. the housing authority charges an additional $20 a month (per A/C unit) to do this. that was $20 extra a month that i don't have. but that's only part of it -- the other part is that i don't understand the increase -- they say its for the increase in electrical usage. but see, i take issue with this because we have electric (yeah, i know, don't get me started on this either) heat -- which, obviously, is not being used at all during the summer. and our appliances (stove) r electric, and we're running them less in the summer because of the temperatures. at any rate, my feeling is that since we're not using electricity for the heat, we can't possibly be using $20 more a month for electricity for the A/C -- but whatever. so we're running 9 fans -- now u tell me -- what is using more electricity than my nine fans?? certainly NOT my new A/C unit which was rated highly for less consumption of electricity ... but whatever.... at any rate, its not the A/C -- or lack thereof, that i wish to expound on today. when its hot, i tend to not do much moving around. i mean, literally, i could lay in bed the entire day reading. which is sort of what i did this morning. i've been working on this book (eat, pray, love by Elizabeth Gilbert) for a couple of weeks now, and today i finished it. i've read one other book by her and liked it, and then i saw that this one was being made into a movie -- with julia roberts -- so i figured i better read the book before hollyweird (as my father likes to call it) ruins it totally (which, if ur avid reader of books that then get turned into movies u'll understand).
so, this morning i didn't really have anything to do or anywhere to go (like i do this afternoon) and i decided to go back to bed with one of the nine fans blowing over me and finish the book (i was like 2/3 of the way finished already). and finish it, i did. and now i wonder just how badly hollyweird will botch the movie making.
when i read books like this one, i think about how when i was younger i wanted to be a novelist and journalist and travel around the world and write and have all sorts of wonderful experiences that would be fodder for my next novel. obviously, if u look at my life, this is NOT what happened. i never got to travel (truly, the one time my passport got stamped was because i begged some crossing guard in canada to stamp it, even though he insisted that it was not necessary since i was an american -- and that was 20 some years ago before 9/11). i mean i've been across the US (flying or driving it doesn't matter) and i've seen lots of interesting places when moving from PA to NJ back to PA to TX to NH to NY to FL and back to NH -- and i have made a point to try and check out all the local bits of interest when we've lived in all those places. but its not the same as going to italy, india or bali -- at least not in my mind -- which were all the places that Liz went to in this book.
most of her travel was an attempt to "find herself" and to become one with her creator. i know who i am in papa god's eyes. that doesn't always translate well into who i am in my own eyes -- if u understand what i'm saying. and i certainly don't need to travel to far away places to discover who i am -- but it would be nice to travel just the same.
my daughter and i have two piggy banks that we put our change into. one is strictly quarters and the other is dimes. we return all our cans (and those of our friends who know we do this) that we can for 5 cents each and that money usually goes into the piggies -- although lately its gone into the gas tank more than into the piggies. i digress -- we have said that this money is our "go to Ireland" money. meaning that some day when there is enough there, we will travel to Ireland -- the land of my ancestors (well some of them) and visit the O'Dougherty (no, they don't spell it like that over there but who cares) castle in Buncrana, Ireland. somehow, i don't see this ever happening ... i could yet be proved wrong, but it seems like most of the time when it comes to dreams or desires of my heart, they don't materialize in quite the fashion i had imagined. and no, i won't go into all the details of past desires.
so i can live vicariously through the adventures of ppl like Liz in books that have been written and imagine what it would be like to travel there, live there, love there. on a super hot summer day -- its the best way to spend the time!
