July 27th, 1978: On Basking Like Lizards

Betty said today her thermometer at the farm registered 118 degrees!  

Pete and I took a long walk up to the kindergarten (EDITOR'S NOTE: This was @ St. Matthew's Episcopal Church) and back @ 10:00am before it got too hot.  We came back and lay in the grass, face down in patches of white clover in the shade from the sycamore trees.  We could see a sliver of moon in the sky and Pete told me a long aimless story of the moon, the sun, their mothers, their fathers, and the moon's cousin-making different voices for each.  I was blissfully contented for that time.

Pete and I saw hollyhocks on our walk and I told him how to make a hollyhock doll with a fully opened flower for the skirt, and a bud for the head.  We drowsed in the shade and I made a clover chain (I never learned to make a daisy chain-we never lived where daisies were so abundant).  

Pete paddled in his pool today and splashed down the side.  Lolita waded in with him.  He soaked in the pool in the sun and pretended to go to sleep.  I would have liked to jump in too.

Then we walked to the Dairy Queen for an ice cream cone.  The day was sweltering but the Dairy Queen is air-conditioned, so we lingered over our cones.  Pete ate his inside so it wouldn't melt on the way home (but it still dripped a little vanilla ice cream on his fingers, and he licked it up).

In the evening we sat on the lawn and watched the sunset illumine the edges of clouds.  We wandered across the street for a desultory chat in the lengthening shadows, and finally-at 10:00pm, decided it was cool enough to go inside, having had our fill of basking like lizards in the sunny day.