Hot hot heat

Another day in the 90s. The humidity is so high that any movement takes effort, like walking through water, except without that nice coolness of water. Our house has windows on every available wall, which is wonderful in the winter, but not so great on hot summer days. When I was at my parents' house this afternoon, their house was considerably cooler than mine, even though they don't have air conditioning either.

"We always pull the curtains shut in the morning," my father said. Yeah, we never remember to do that. And we do have an electric fan but I hate the noise a fan makes. I'd rather listen to birdsong and bullfrogs and the sound of teenagers complaining about the heat.

Luckily, we don't get many days above 90, or at least we didn't used to. The worst part today was driving Shaggy Hair Boy to his guitar lesson. The steering wheel was almost too hot to touch, and I could feel myself melting into the car seat as the sun dripped through the windshield. Normally, I sit in the car and write a blog post on my laptop while he's at his lesson, but today I could not bear to have any contact with a hot computer that would likely stick to my sweaty legs. Instead, I drove to the grocery store and bought myself some cold juice.

When I returned home, Skater Boy was filling the ice cube trays. "We're making smoothies later." That sounded to me like a good plan for supper.

I took a spot on the couch. "Someone look at the paper and tell me when the heat wave is going to end."

The newspaper was scattered about the floor. Boy in Black picked up the section nearest him. "I don't see the weather, but I've a page of dead people here. Want to hear the names?"

My daughter reached over to the nearest laptop. "Thunderstorms tomorrow." Thank goodness.

By late afternoon, the lethargic teenagers were beginning to perk up, making phone calls to friends about the evening's Ultimate Frisbee game. When Smart Beautiful Wonderful Daughter came out of the shower, she wandered about in a towel, her hair dripping wet, looking nice and cool. "Let me take a photo," I said, "I want to put something on my blog that isn't miserable."