I’ve taken to sitting on the floor. The book on the floor is Yochai Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks, a book I’m told is extremely insightful and influential. About every four months or so I’ll pull it off the shelf with the intention of reading it, but I never get very far.
I sit on the floor because it got really fucking hot last week, hot enough to swear. Our window air conditioner does the best it can, but on the warmest days we usually find ourselves loitering in the four foot radius the little Frigidaire is able to cool reliably. Those days usually result in a lot of sleepless nights, which I’ve had my share of lately.
If you’d told me five years ago that the primary means of cooling my apartment at age 28 would be a fan on a chair… well, honestly, I probably wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that.
You might remember last year’s attempt at fire escape gardening, which yielded dozens of thick-skinned, pugnacious little cherry tomatoes. They were the product of their gritty urban upbringing, to be sure. We moved tomatoes to the roof this year (so far so good) and use the fire escape for a few houseplants that could use some direct sun in the morning.
A few weeks ago Cheeks decided that sleeping on top of these boxes was luxury living. Her residence here meant that the top of these odd storage boxes was quickly matted with cat hair. So, she got a towel today. There’s something comforting in watching a twelve year old cat pick out a totally new place to snooze. Granted, she’s not doing anything differently, but hey, it’s never too late for a change of scenery.
