"Those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer..."

With apologies to the late Nat King Cole, I'm gonna forget about the "hazy, crazy" part of his song lyrics and focus on the "lazy."  It's been exactly one month since my last post, and laziness is the only thing I can blame for the lapse.

It's not that I've been completely idle, but I've been really, really slow. It was probably a month ago that I started cleaning out my closet. There were clothes in there that fit me last year, when I was 60 pounds heavier, and clothes that might fit now except they were last fashionable in the early 1990s. (Um...I actually kept a couple of items from the latter category.) I thought I'd just pull all those out and take them to Goodwill. The pulling out part has taken place.

The taking them to Goodwill has not. For some bizarre reason I had to try everything on one last time, even if I knew it wouldn't fit, which made the process take longer than it should have. Some things needed mending, too, just a button here or there or a hem coming loose. It didn't seem right to donate them until they were wearable, so I fixed them. Between one delay and another, seven trash bags full of clothes, including the ones pictured above, have piled up on my bedroom floor.

My original idea was to clean out all the cupboards and closets and deliver everything I don't need in one big haul, but I'm beginning to rethink that. I've felt weighted down for the past month or so, and it might lighten my mental load (or at least my mood) to get this stuff out from underfoot.  

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In my last post I mentioned reading "good books," and several commenters wanted specifics. Although I've read some not-so-good ones, too, I'll list the good ones here. In fact, because I'm too lazy to tell you why I liked them, I'll make links so you can read other peoples' reviews:

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

Years by Lavyrle Spencer

Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, and Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery

Tender Graces by Kathryn Magendie

Heaven-High and Hell-Deep by Peggy Poe Stern

The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley

The Day of Small Things by Vicki Lane

Some of these titles have been around for a while, but the only one I'd read before was Years. With the exception of that one, which I'd wanted to reread for some time, I selected these particular books by going to Amazon.com, armed with a Mother's Day gift certificate, and searching the Kindle Store's "literary fiction" category for books with four or more stars. 

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The heat is at least partially responsible for my laziness this summer. With a heat index upwards of 100 degrees F. almost every day since the beginning of June,  there hasn't been a lot of motivation to get outside and do anything. Today, though, the sky opened up and dumped rain on us for hours. It was a welcome change (although a little less thunder and lightning would be nice next time, okay, God?).

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The good news is that I've had plenty of time during this slack period to remember things I'd like to write about, so if anybody out there is still with me and reading this, please check back again in a couple of days. I'm determined to post more often, even if it's only photos some of the time.