The Summer Doldrums

Trigger warning: I'm sad about my cat

It’s hard for me to feel creatively motivated in the height of summer. Survival is the watchword.

When the humidity hits, my body just can’t handle it and I literally wilt. Drafts sit unfinished on my computer, laundry piles up, and I get stuck in the summer doldrums, laying on the floor with my cats.

Did you know that it really is cooler down there? This isn’t only my Human Design Caves environment coming into play. The cats know.

Well, the cat (singular) knows. Because this is me burying the lede: After 19 years and change on this planet, Lenny Potatoes left this earthly plane in June.

We knew it was coming at some point, but UGH. When it’s finally that moment, it’s never not the worst.

This week, I finally felt ready to write a remembrance and homage to Lenny’s legendary life. It’s mostly for my own catharsis and comfort, but you’re welcome to read (and look at just a few of the five-star Lenny photos and videos I pulled from my vast collection — believe me, I could fill a million pages).

But (Tonal Klaxon Shift, as the Drinks with Broads gals would say) there are many wonderful things to appreciate in this life that I am personally still living. Reading links here are embedded for your summer distraction and inspiration:

First, we are heading back to Lake Winnipesaukee for our annual summer weekend with friends, where we will paddleboard and watch sunsets from the beach house and generally be in good company.

And I finally found the Route 66 stamps and Mister Rogers stamps at a local post office, so it pays to get out into your community!

AND I get to visit MASS MoCA again soon and see Cultural Apothecary one more time before it closes, which feels so indulgent but also 100 percent necessary. I touched on this briefly in my story, but the elixir bar in the installation offers a few interactive elements: you drink golden root elixir (root- and herb-based) and are given two items.

One is a paper blood droplet on which to write your hopes and dreams, which then will be added to the large neon heart sculpture hanging from the ceiling, and the other is a red wooden ball that you drop into one of the tubes in the Heart Tally cabinet, each of which corresponds to an emotion.

Honestly, I can’t remember which emotion I chose to tally the last time I was there, though I know it wasn’t gratitude or hope. I said I was being honest! This time, I’m definitely choosing grief because this is my process.

Then I get to return home to my embroidery projects, with which I am obsessed (future story fodder), and start thinking ahead to fall.

So this weekend, enjoy your favorite treat, whether that’s ice cream or Doritos or Reddi Whip, in honor of Lenny Potatoes.

FYI, I am closing comments on this post — not because I don’t appreciate all your well wishes and wonderful thoughts on Lenny — but because I don’t have the bandwidth to respond to each one right now. But I do feel the love, I do.