It's funny. I've been reading all of my favorite blogs lately and all of the ones from Central Texas have a recurring theme... THE HEAT! And we're not talking typical summertime heat, we're talking fire and brimstone heat... smoldering, sweltering, mind-numbing heat... might as well be standing in the mouth of a goddamn volcano heat... feeling like Kate Capshaw being lowered into the fiery pit in the "Temple of Doom" kind of heat!
Seriously.
We're talking the kind of heat that has driven many of us into hibernation. I feel like an African Lungfish rolled up inside a tomb of mud wishing and waiting for a deep drenching rain to set me free from my prison!
Children have been banished to the indoors to keep them from melting or heat-stroking. The Monkey Man tried to scooter a couple times in the evening, but inevitably came in streaked with sweat, red-faced, grumpy and exhausted. Needless to say it has been the summer of reading and movies! Thank goodness for Ghostbusters, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Labyrinth and anything Disney-Pixar! I mean you know it's entirely too hot when you don't even want to brave the heat to go to the POOL! What's the point anyway? It's like a damn jacuzzi. I'd be better served going upstairs and filling up the garden tub with COLD water. But wait, it's been so hot that ALL water that exits a faucet is lukewarm. The only cold water here is what's in the fridge! And speaking of water, it's to the point that I don't dare leave the house, even to run a few errands without at least one full bottle of water. I don't want me or the kids dying while waiting on AAA if the damn car keels over!
The air conditioner for the house has broken twice this summer along with my car's AC! Almost every family I know has dealt with some form of AC malfunction in the last 3 months. The damn things just can't keep up, they're over-taxed running all the time!
The garden was a joke! What started out in March as a lush, green promise of the bounty to come, became wilted, yellowed and withered. Green beans shriveled, peppers grew, but never flowered, eggplants just never grew, and tomatoes were overcome with wilt in the 100 degree heat. I did learn that black-eyed peas, okra and basil are all hearty sons o' bitches! I have nothing else left, but okra and basil are running rampant! Good thing I like both or this garden would have been a total loss for this season! Even the sunflowers went belly-up! SUNFLOWERS!
Thankfully I was able to escape this hell-hole for a couple of weeks, retreating to the mild temperatures of the New Mexico mountains! In fact, if this is going to be the status quo for Texas summers, I'm going to up and MOVE to New Mexico every summer from here on out!
But alas, we finally got some rain last night! Yes, you read right, RAIN, R-A-I-N, RAIN. Liquid precipitation. Condensation of atmospheric water vapor. Life-giving droplets of joy! Of course it rained for a whopping 2-1/2 minutes at my house (nothing but a tease), but it WAS rain. It made the ground wet, it lowered the temps by 15 degrees if even for a few hours. So although it's supposed to be over 100 degrees yet again today, I have hope that El Nino is gonna kick in and bring us some relief! If not, I'm packing up my shit and moving to Ruidoso until January!
Hear, hear! I'm ready to try for some kind of summer-Canadian dual citizenship.
ReplyDeleteIn San Antonio last weekend, we took a very short hike and saw prickly pears with leaves so dehydrated they weren't much thicker than paper. Good times.
Try moving interstate :) Its spring in Australia and having moved south I am still sitting in tracksuit and jacket in the afternoon
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