New Shirts & Old Doldrums

Back in February some idiot gave away all my shirts.

Well, not all….

Since my normal working attire, like all successful writers, consists of swimming trunks and tee shirt, my closet abounds with those.

But real shirts, the kind with collars and buttons, they are all gone because I donated slews of them to a mission for the poor.

Well, not all…

Some of my more formal “real” shirts proved too shabby to give to the poor. Being a clumsy pipe smoker, I managed to burn holes in many of my better shirts, so those ended up in the rag bag. Or I kept those to keep wearing myself; they are still perfectly good.

However the shirts that shrank too much to button around my middle (they must have shrunk bad because I haven’t gained that much weight—have I?)

Anyhow, I gave a bundle of shirts to the poor.

Poor poor. They must be in dire straights to wear something I’d discard.

Thus, in February I ended up with four “real” shirts left in my closet.

Fine.

I figured four shirts is plenty for my wardrobe.

Who wears more than one shirt at a time?

Thing is, that was back when the weather was cool; it never occurred to me that the weather might change… Several days this past week the heat index rose to 105 degrees and I sweat like a pig.

No longer can I wear a shirt more than once before it needs laundering… So yesterday morning I looked in my closet to find that I only have one single wearable shirt left.

Some idiot gave away all my real shirts.

Ginny first laughed at my dilemma, then she drove me to the store and bought me an armload of new “real” shirts. She’d prefer I not burn holes in them.

Once again my closet runneth over.

I am fashionable.

Recently I have also been apathetic.

Back in the days of clipper ships when movement through the ocean depended on wind currents, sailors sometimes reached places where there were no wind currents; they called these mid-ocean spots the Doldrums.

My dictionary defines the Doldrums as “A part of the ocean near the equator, abounding in calms, squalls, and light, baffling winds, which sometimes prevent all progress for weeks; -- so called by sailors; the state of boredom, malaise, apathy or lack of interest; a state of listlessness ennui, or tedium”.

That describes my life the past week or two perfectly.

The old time sailors tried two tricks to get out of the Doldrums: They’d haul buckets of sea water to the top of the masts and wet down the sails hoping that the wet canvas would catch the slightest breeze. Or, they try a bit of sympathetic magic by whistling up the wind; by standing the youngest crewmen on deck and making them whistle tunes at the flat drooping sails, they’d hope to trick the wind into blowing also.

My way of wetting my sails and whistling up the wind has been by reading continually the past couple of weeks hoping to generate some spark of enthusiasm in myself.

I’ve read six or eight of Sally Spenser’s Detective Charlie Woodend novels—I’ve been devouring these things. Love ‘em!

And I’ve re-read some of Donald E. Westlake’s John Dortmunder tales of this master criminal for whom everything goes wrong—Hot Rock, What’s The Worst That Could Happen, Drowned Hopes, etc.

Since I’m stymied in my own work by computer problems I can’t solve without help (And Donald is tied up in real life) I’m whistling up the wind by reading the fine work of other writers.

I have not posted much in my diary recently because the most significant thing to impress me recently was phone news of the friend of a friend of a friend’s husband and a messy suicide, and I have not felt comfortable writing about this tragedy in the life of near-strangers—although the incident drove me to the library to read a copy of Alan Emmins’s book Mop Men: Inside The World Of Crime Scene Cleaners—a book not for the squeamish.

So, essentially I’ve been doing nothing but floating in tepid waters recently, no mighty rushing wind of the Spirit (haven’t even cracked open my Bible in a week), no refreshing breeze from on high.

I’ve just been laying up reading novels.

But now I can do that in my new “real” shirts.

The weather may be hot, but now I look so cool!