It’s been hot. How hot? Usually I do laundry when I run out of underwear. Yesterday I did laundry because I’d run out of tank tops and muscle Ts. There were only two regular Ts on the line, and no long pants. That hot.

From left:

• Iditarod 2014: Mals Go the Distance. My brand-newest T-shirt — didn’t I say I was “Powerless over T-Shirts”? “Mals” is short for “Alaskan malamutes.” Once a mal moves into your life, sled-dog trivia magically takes up residence in your brain. You know by osmosis when the Iditarod is being run. You even start referring to it as the Irod and wondering why your mal-deprived friends don’t know what you’re talking about. Malamutes are freighting dogs, not racing dogs, so they aren’t often seen in the I(dita)rod. Team Quinault of Montana is training for the 2014 Iditarod. These Ts are fundraisers. Of course I bought one.
• Buto, Egyptian Cobra Goddess of Protection. Another T from my D.C. days, distinctive for its unusual color. I am wearing it right this minute. I feel protected.
• Sisterfire 1983. Sisterfire was an outdoor women’s music festival held during the 1980s in Takoma Park, Maryland, a D.C. suburb. (The gray shirt just above it whose front you can’t see is from Sisterfire 1985, shortly after which I left town for good.) Roadwork, the producer, was fondly and not-so-fondly referred to as Roadhog. A graphically adept communitarian created a parody of this shirt. “SISTERBLITZ” it said across the chest. I wish I had one.
• Equinox Productions, an alternative women’s music production group in my D.C. days. Alternative to what? Roadhog, of course.
• Reliable Market’s 60th anniversary T. Reliable is on Circuit Ave., Oak Bluffs. It’s where I do most of my grocery shopping. I don’t think we categorize each other by where we buy groceries, but it is something we take notice of. Reliable is small, ingeniously organized, and considerably cheaper than Cronig’s. I also see more people I know there.

Another still-life: “Clean Underwear with Tomato Seedlings.”

A couple of hours after I hung the wash out, a few drops fell out of the sky. I was proofreading out on the deck, but I wasn’t fooled. I didn’t come in and neither did my laundry. The rain stopped.

Later in the afternoon, the sky got dark, and the trees thrashed back and forth. I was fooled that time, but my clothes were all dry, folded, and put away. Once again, only a few drops fell out of the sky.

Overnight it did rain, not much, but some. And the heat broke. Whew.