Where Ocean author modifies plan to make this an AC-less, car-less summer

The van is standing idle, feeling deserted, abandoned, like some kind of ostracized aging animal. I don’t need you anymore – I say brazenly.

Oh yeah? Didn’t you just on Sunday take it downtown because you were “running late?” That was because I thought it would storm. Hey! I did grocery shopping on the bike yesterday! I stuffed grape-cranberry juice and a bottle of wine into the back pouch and worried that if I fell it would smell boozy all around me.

[progress report on injury sustained during last week’s bike crash: bruise is still good ice-breaker during stalled conversations, in the style of Kruschev’s “wanna see my scar?”]

And the AC: Europeans aren’t into creating freezers out of indoor spaces during the summer, you said. Am I imagining it or is there a soft purr of the AC unit in your house? I have a business meeting here right now (he he, here I am on the computer, businessing it up!) – I cannot expect the person across the table to tolerate beads of perspiration on their eyebrow as we look at forms and papers. Watching sweat drip has a dampening effect on most human interaction.

But just for a little while. As soon as the little lassie is out the door, off goes the AC and it’s back to basics for me. Sort of. Last night my neighbor made jugs and jugs of lethal lemonade (there was Citron vodka there, right?) over ice – it would not have tasted so cool and refreshing had it been without ice. Though maybe then I would have had less of it…