This week I feel as if I just keep going and going and there hasn’t been any time to breathe. Or, for that matter, sleep. There was the extremely long meeting on Tuesday night, and the tool tutorial on Wednesday night. Friday night was craft night, so even if it was another late night out, at least it was something that was a lot of fun, and that was even above and beyond the fact that the woman who hosts craft night had another batch of foster kittens to play with. We all alternated between working on our various projects (I managed to nearly finish the first of my socks for the secret pal sock exchange) and poking at kittens, because when one has kittens climbing on one’s lap and trying to eat one’s craft, it’s hard to ignore them. And with kittens is is always easier to just pretend that you were taking a break in your work to pet something fuzzy and see if you can get it to settle down and purr, then to try to continue with tiny teeth and claws and bottle brush tails getting all in the way.

I tried to sleep in on Saturday, but there really was no hope for it. The heat has been unbearable and shows no sign of abating any time soon, which means sleeping with the windows open, like we prefer doing in the summer, is out. And I cannot seem to get any sort of decent, restful sleep when the air conditioning is running, so I usually just give up and get up early and spend my days bleary-eyed and yawning as a result.

This weekend is Lambtown, which means there are people from all over the country flocking to our little rural town. This is a fact which continually amazes me, because the festival itself seems so very small and insignificant. But one must not underestimate the allure of sheep, I suppose.

Someone I knew back from when I worked for the Big Fish and was on assignment up in Roseville emailed me to say she was going to be coming down, so we arranged to try to meet for lunch. So we eyed the time and tossed on some clothes and sneakers and decided we might as well walk over to the fairgrounds because finding parking was going to be a nightmare, and oh, was it muggy and hot. There was just no escape from it. We wandered around the grounds and signed petition letters against the stupid racetrack. We headed into the indoor markets, but if they had any sort of cooling systems going, they were remarkably ineffective against the heat. It was hard to work up any enthusiasm for purchasing anything, even though there was one building dedicated entirely to fleece and yarn and all things fiber related. After the TKGA show in Oakland earlier this month, however, I have put a personal moratorium on buying any more yarn unless it is directly related to a specific project, so I was able to resist the allure of pretty, pretty fiber. Also, the mere thought of having anything to do with wool when one is sweating and dying slowly from heat was likely the more powerful deterrent.

There was a lot of traffic coming into town, so my friend ended up being over an hour delayed. And by that time we didn’t have much time left to do more than find a booth that did not have a huge line, stake out a spot on the ground in the shade, listlessly eat our lamb gyros and inhale bottles of water, and then trudge wearily home to collapse.

Richard’s little sister’s birthday was yesterday so there was really no time to recuperate from being out in the heat. So instead we wrapped up his niece’s present (which we’ve had sitting on the counter for weeks now) to bring with us, and we drank copious amounts of water and tried to cool off, and then got into the car and turned the air conditioner to full blast and drove down to Campbell for the fun. I brought along my knitting and managed to sneak in a few rows while we waited for the Almost Twin and Richard’s niece to arrive, and then we all went out for Chinese food for her celebratory birthday dinner. Afterward there was the ritual opening of presents and the ritual throwing of the ball in a vain attempt to keep the still-mostly-puppy busy, and we ate cake and ice cream and drank coffee and Richard and I tried very hard to stay awake because we were so very tired, and then finally we came home.

Today there has been the usual assortment of things that must be done, like going to church and practicing the song I’m going to play while two of my friends sing next week, and rummaging around until I found the disk with the latest church newsletter that I now need to upload to the church website. At some point today I am hoping there will a nap, because if I do not get any sleep between now and Monday I will surely be dozing off at work, and for some reason, they really seem to frown on that.