Miserable-o-meter @ 106

It's still pretty hot around here. Were at about 106 on the miserable-o-meter. The sky isn't even BLUE anymore. It's just a HOT sky. Look in the big Crayola box of 64. The one with the sharpener on the front. The one that my mother would NEVER, EVER, EVER buy me (thank you , Granny, for making my Crayola colored world whole). So, flip that sucker open and look for the dullest, ashiest, duskiest looking blue crayon you can find in that waxy smelling choir loft of crayons. Now color the sky. Now, squint. That's what the sky looks like on a 'clear' day when we're sitting at 101 on the miserable-o-meter. I would know that better if I EVER took my sunglasses off. Ever.
Pretty Pretty Princess is a child after my own heart. She likes to do the things we have "always done." She is a 'good girl.' When you are the MOM, that's pretty much a blessing. My elder girl, did NOT choose to follow the 'good girl' model of adolesence, she chose the wild-maniac-scare-your-mother model of adolescence. She has survived to begin her student teaching....today she experienced her first 'registration day' - she texted me to tell me exactly how many hours she spent at school. Welcome to the world, Sophisticate. I spent 2.75 more hours at school today. I win.

We live in a city - in a 60 year old enclave of yards and trees, but in the city nonetheless. And about a mile from us is a property the old-time city dwellers call 'THE PENAL FARM." PENAL as in JAIL. FARM as in 'grow things.' Cross the HIGHWAY there and over the hill - there it sits. A mile from my house. When I was a girl, it was OK , even kind of noble, because it was on a FARM, and they grew their own vegetables and cows and stuff, so the whole jail idea was not costing anybody anything, and the prisoners were learning to farm. Here in the city, where there's a HUGE job market for farmers. Oh, the naivete of my childhood. Later they built a real live PRISON over there too. Not just this criminal/farmer s..... stuff. Those are some serious non-farming FEDERAL prisoners. I put my faith in concertina wire.

We had to go to the county jail in 9th grade Civics with Coach Donald to be terrified out of a life of crime, which would have started immediately had we smoked cigarettes, drunk beer, or fooled around with boys. Or, if you ask my mother, show too much of 'the girls' to a certain boy, who loved the whole idea of cleavage, and he was taller enough than me to work that to his advantage. After morning football practice. (Happy Birthday, Scottie boy) Of course some were ALREADY doing all of that pre-criminal activity, so...whatever. Not ME, I didn't do ANY of that, until I got older. In fact, I drank a beer tonight. It probably was my first beer. Ever. I saved myself from a life of crime. And cleavage. Not the cleavage, maybe.

I did learn to cuss after I was a sophomore in high school. I visited my cousin in *gasp* CALIFORNIA! Her friends went out and drove around every night. And most nights they drove up onto a mountain, like it was no big deal (I come from a land with NO mountains, so that whole drive-up-the-mountain and crawl around on the edge of the sky - not so much for me.) Anyway, they drove aimlessly, cussed, smoked pot, and drank beer and did things in the dark that I had no notion of. Prissy little goodie two shoes that I was. OK, I was absolutely terrified every night of the whole visit. TERRIFIED. But, man, I came home from California cussing. And my little other goody-perfect friends were shocked. It was awesome. I was shocking. Also, I brought home the pleasure of driving around aimlessly on a hot summer night. With a foul mouth. I grew up, and gave up the foul mouth. Mostly. Lots of the time. Not. At. All.

So...back to the PENAL FARM.

I still call it that, even though now, parts of it are deemed a PARK and other parts are some sort of agricultural testing farm-like lab. Also, two square faux-lakes, where people can go and fish. And you have to be a total moron not to catch something, because I have seen the fish truck drive up from Mississippi and dump fish in the little square faux-lakes, about once a week.

And in a whole different part, for some reason, there are buffaloes. That blue sky? That's a June sky. August sky is grayish-bluish-duskiness.

Seriously? In this state? There are no naturally occurring buffaloes anywhere near here, so what the &$#% are buffaloes doing 1 mile from my house near the prisoners, who are probably riding to court in that white police-looking car back there. Since we are in the PENAL FARM.

I don't think they are eating Buff-burgers in the jail house. Poor things, I bet it's not this hot where these animals occur in nature.

On this farm/park/buffalo field/prison/agricultural testing ground/faux fishing hole they (who? I don't know the answer to that...but it's a big THEY).

THEY grow sunflowers. A big field of them. Usually a couple of really big patches that you can see from the road. It's like life's little consolation...the field of sunflowers blooms gloriously in the 109 degree heat on your a.m. commute.

In rush hour traffic, if you're lucky, you'll get stuck right beside the sunflowers. And the car will immediately overheat. Because the miserable-o-meter is up there. But, dammit, we've got sunflowers. And the sunflowers themselves look hot and wilty.
So, PPP and I like to go over every summer and take a closer look at them. If some accidentally fall at our feet, we will take them home. But only by accident. Sometimes we make weekly checks to see how many have fallen. It was a miserable-o-meter 95ish hot night on Sunday, and PPP went with me to take a look, in case any had fallen to the ground and needed a big nice glass vase. And, she *gasp* wanted a hand with the camera.

PPP took some arty pictures, as she described them. It was so, so, so hot. And then some. The weird thing, which surely someone can answer, is this. Why do all the faces of the sunflowers look to the east? Theoretically, I know it must have something to do with the sun. But the sun is equally brutal and horrible from any angle. There is no shade, there is no respite from the sun. Yet, oddly, the sunflowers are lined up like Soldiers with their Faces turned to the East, looking for marching orders. As if they want only to see it coming, but can't bear to watch it going. OR...it's just so damn hot in the afternoon, they can't risk taking a look to the west.



If I were doing a science experiment with 6th graders, which I am blessedly NOT doing - rather I will merely try to teach them an ancient language. Anyway, IF I were doing this experiment, planting sunflower seeds...my 6th graders would hypothesize (a science vocab word in the 6th grade) that the faces of the sunflowers would be randomly facing different ways, Because it's hot as hell from every angle, due to the unrelenting sun. But, not so. They all look east. Is there is some kind of ancient native myth about this? Is there a trick to the angle that the seed lays in the ground? Is it a certain breed: the east-facing variety? Come on, all you farmer-women people. I think it's just that it's so hellishly, damnably, $%&*#!%&$*%!!! HOT. I'd turn my back on the sun in the afternoon too. And, keep my sunglasses on.

DISCLAIMER: One year at one of the patches there was a sign directing people not to take them - no cutting, no stem snapping, no clipping. They are for the enjoyment of the community, but you could photograph them. There are at least 3 or 4 acres of them. As if I even know what an acre is. This year, I looked really, really hard. There is no sign. Anywhere. Note that fact.

Too HOT

It's too hot. Actually, it's too $%&*#*!!! hot. Also dusty. When I was a girl (that's what Granny used to say, when she was talking about when she was a child, or a teenager...OK, let's be clear, I have always literally been a girl, but this euphemism works, so. . . ) When I was a girl, I used to get so fed up with my mother and father when it got hot and they told me it was too hot to do anything. Seriously? A girl thinks "Just go swimming. For 6 hours." That was me, when I was a girl.
Not any more. Nobody takes me swimming for 6 hours.

In my little corner of the world, we are in a heat emergency. The weatherman talks about the "heat index" which should be called the miserable-o-meter. It's all the way to the top now. 100+ on the miserable-o-meter. When there is a thuderstorm or tornado emergency, you get the flashlights out and go hide in the bathroom. And it passes. When it's a 'winter weather warning' you make hot chocolate, and hope for snow; you might make snow ice cream and maybe stay home from school a day or more. You hope. In a heat emergency, you just...keep on sweating. No hope till Thanksgiving. Air conditioning, according to an a/c repairman, will only give you 20 degrees lower than the exterior temp. So, 110 outside, 90 inside. Sweating weather, inside and out. Not so much fun as sleds, mittens and cocoa.BigD works more often away from here than here. Many, many days it's in New York City. ALWAYS cooler than here. OK, this picture is actually in the dead of winter, but still. This hellish week he got on an airplane and went to Cleveland where the people were complaining that the high was 82 degrees. That's maybe our LOW, in the wee hours of the morning, in this little corner of hell-ish heat.BigD wouldn't let me take his picture, because he sweat through his shirt in the time it took him to get out of the car, get his bag from the trunk, and step up on the curb, less than a minute. I hope he has the right shoes. Look carefully, he was wearing a red shirt....with a big sweat stain on it.

Yesterday, even though it's so very hot, I drove from my 'big city' with it's big old 'medical center' and all its fancy hospitals, 221 miles from this populous urban center to a small town in the northern part of the state to GO to the DOCTOR. I do it every other month. Because there is not my-kind-of-doctor in my big urban area. At least not enough per capita. Doctor rant over. I think. It was just too hot to spend the whole day on the highway. But I did. OK, I made ONE OTHER STOP. But only for 15 minutes. It was hot as HADES in there, inside the store. Got that, all you people you work for that company? You know who you are. Hot. Inside. The. Store.

So, I left. Driving home is heading west, which means that the sun was ....making it hotter. Even with air conditioning, which is weak in that car, very hot. I wore my biggest, darkest sunglasses, since it's before Labor Day, they are white. Not much help. PPP wouldn't go. Well, she had to work. In the air conditioned place that she works. OK, so it was 85 degrees in the air conditioning. She looks SO much better in sunglasses than I do.

The miserable-o-meter is actually "dangerously high" around here. According to the TV news, "People are dying." One man was found dead in his yard with jumper cables in his hand. He was trying to run a fan in his house from a car battery using jumper cables. They will call that a 'heat-related death' Seriously? That's more like 'idiot related' death.

I've been worried a little bit about our Young Son (Psych! I don't worry 'a little bit' it's not in my DNA, I am an uber-worrier) who was in 3-a-days, football-speak for some intense football practices all day long.

What is the miserable-o-meter on football practice, in pads, several times a day?

Not so much, when it ends with a SCRIMMAGE...look at that, they are all dressed out and they think they won. A scrimmage - or faux game - on August 1. Seriously?In all fairness, they are all careful about our precious little boys. They have the trainer around - even the scrimmages. Remember that I drove 442 miles round trip to see a doctor today...and they have this guy at school in case someone gets a heat-related cramp. Is that JUSTICE?

Early morning, no heat shimmering in midair. They practice on a cool shady lawn.I had to take my little camera and leave before the big old stinky sweaty boys came out - under a huge threat of excommunication by our Young Son who KNEW I was planning some stalker pics of the 3-a-days. And, he was right, but I bet they probably wouldn't have seen me. I would have been in the SHADE, wearing sunglasses.

However, I do tell every mother to read this thing when her kid makes an appearance, so....

Do these people look hot? Man, they turn out for football, don't they?

There were people carrying around SWEAT TOWELS just to watch football. I don't personally get that worked up about it.
Time out for a picture of the pretty girls in their swimsuits. They aren't even sweating. The miserable-o-meter wasn't even out of storage yet. It was MAY.

Now, I must be officially old because it's just too hot. I needed to run a lot of errands today. I ran one. It is too hot. I hope that works out next week, with teacher in-service stuff. Who wants to go buy school supplies on tax free weekend, when the guy helping you smells bad, and the people behind you in line have big sweat stains on their "Graves Family Reunion" tee-shirts? Or the cashier has a little fan blowing on her from her little cashier stand. Which is blowing the sweat smell RIGHT IN MY FACE.

At least Granny was content to sit around and actually do nothing because it was hot. Doing nothing meant keeping most of the lights off, even in the day, to keep it cool inside, watching Yankee baseball on her black and white TV and eating 'Bridge Mix,' a yummy assortment of chocolate candies, and Granny had plenty of it. Then, maybe go to the 'dime store' and buy a toy or a book or ANYTHING I WANTED....which was Bridge Mix. Then go have a glass of sherry with her sister. For me, that was a real full-on, sugared up, caffeine rich Co-cola in a little glass with ice...and bridge mix. Inside. Doing nothing, but reading and drinking Co-cola. Isn't that what you DO in the summer in the heat?