Hot Fun in the Summertime

The hot summer of 2012 continues. Our daily high temperatures have been in the 90s with a couple of 100s and we rarely get below 70 degrees at night.

I can’t remember a time that I’ve run the air conditioner as much as I have this summer. I usually look forward to the days when I can shut off the darn thing and open up the house and let that summer breeze waft through the rooms.

I don’t dare open the windows this summer unless I want to have a sweaty, sultry, and heavy pile of hot air sink into our home and weigh down everything, including us with excessive moisture. Sometimes I feel like I’m walking through boiling quicksand when I go outside.

Our bedroom is on the second floor and even with central air, it can get pretty hot up there. I’ve learned to sleep naked, totally exposed under the fast moving ceiling fan and showered with forced blown air from a fan on my side of the bed and another fan on Joe’s side of the bed. All that blowing air converges on our sleeping bodies, keeping us in our half dreams rather than us waking up drenched in sweat.

However, unlike most of the Midwest, our neck of the woods is getting enough rain. We had a short period of about a month without any rain, but it’s picked up again this week. I believe we’ve received about two inches of rain this from a few early morning thunderstorms.

As we sit in our cocoon of a house, the flowers are blooming, the tomatoes are gradually turning red, and it looks like I’ll have a bumper crop of zucchini. It’s weird to spend so much time inside when it’s sunny and bright outside.

Sometimes, when it cools down in the evening, I’ll sneak out on the deck for a quick read. The air isn’t quite so heavy and hot then.

Susan and the boys and I have spent almost every Sunday afternoon at the beach. My skin is a deep brown and I actually have a few small blonde streaks in my hair. Look ma, no beauty salon needed!

I can’t walk the dogs very often as it’s been so hot. But they seem content to chase squirrels in their shady backyard.

I picked up my new glasses this morning. My eyes haven’t changed much from two years ago, but it’s always fun to get new frames. I wear bifocals, but I have the invisible line in my lenses. I wear Sarah Palin kind of glasses, although not so big, the lenses are smaller, but still frameless. I also bought some sexy overlarge sunglasses I wear when the paparazzi is chasing me. Not really, but the lenses are quite large.

The glasses fit perfectly and I can see so well with them. The glasses were a good investment.

And sometimes a hot summer brings sadness, such as the massacre in Aurora, CO. A young promising man turned mass murderer. Who would have suspected him? And all the victims, just there to see an exciting new movie. He had them trapped and slaughtered them like cattle. How many more would have been killed if the police station wouldn’t have been right across the street?

So sad, so heartbreaking, and so senseless.

We stop and relfect. We grieve and try to understand. And then we go on.

In a little while, I’m going to my younger grandson’s baseball game. It’s quite humid, so I’ll bring a couple of bottles of water with me. After the game, we’re going to a Vietnamese restaurant, as the older grandson has a Vietnamese food craving.

And then I’ll go home, into my air conditioned cocoon with its spinning ceiling fans and contemplate this hot summer.