Summer has returned here in the Valley of the Sun. We’re heading towards triple digits today, though I’m sure the folks back east would love to trade. Me, I’d be more than happy to – there were few things in life I enjoyed more while living back east than a good East Coast storm – but unfortunately that’s not in my power.

(Actually, as the last two weeks – no make it two months – wait, make it this whole year – has shown, if anything, that any ideas that we have control over much of anything beyond what we might individually eat, do, and say are really nothing more than an illusion. And as I’ve also learned there is a very fine line between sanity and insanity, healthy and being not healthy, and the haves and the have nots of the world.)

Today the house gets a significant cleaning, and we try to put things back together (in some cases, literally) from the events of Tuesday. Over cocktails on the patio the other night, Tracey and I decided that it was critical that we carve out one area of the house where I can chill away from everything, so today Tam’s rabbits are being moved from my office bedroom to the guest bedroom, allowing a place where me, my work area, and my prayer table can reside in relative peace.

For those who might be interested, my sister-in-law is doing better than she was on Tuesday, although I’m not sure how much worse she could have gotten. Tuesday night she was transferred from the hospital she was originally taken to, to a temporary bed at an urgent-care psychiatric unit while waiting for another bed to open up at a larger psychiatric hospital in the area. That’s where she’s been since Wednesday night. Since then Tracey has been able to visit her daily, and she’s back to being more like herself, although quite tired and still a little paranoid.

Sound like anyone you might know personally?

…want to know the weird thing? As out of her head as she was, Tracey reports she remembers everything about it, from soup to nuts (literally!). Me, I find that pretty strange, but then again, that’s psychotic behavior for you.

After this past week, the humdrum aspects of life like housecleaning will bring a necessary form of relief. After all, isn’t housecleaning nothing more than creating order out of chaos on a small, very local scale? Afterwards, I’ll reward myself with one or two Pusser’s Painkiller #2s on the tiki bar patio to watch this warm day dissolve into dusk. Boring? Perhaps.

But this weekend, after this week, I’ll take it.