Hot, Hot, Hot! - 7/16/18

It seems I was destined to swelter all weekend long.

You may have seen in my previous post that the air-conditioner was not working at my office last week.  No biggie, really, since I wasn't there very much until Friday, when I had to wait for the repairman.  The office was still hot when I left.

I came home and worked on a painting project on the back porch.  The temps were in the high 90s.  The box fan that I set up to blow directly on me just stirred hot air.  Sweat dripped out of my hair onto my project while I worked.  The low temperature that night was in the mid-80s.  Sometime during the night, our power went out.  I woke up in a pool of sweat.

Saturday morning, I pestered The Husband until he finally agreed to replace the belt on my garden tiller.  We went down to the shop and raised the door.  It was like an oven in there.  We opened both doors and turned on the big shop fan, but like the fan on our back porch, it just stirred hot air. 

While The Husband went to work on the tiller, I went out to the garden and discovered that the cucumbers needed to be picked.  I thought that Nanny would want them for cucumber relish, but she had made relish on Friday and didn't want them, so I brought them home and started a batch (two batches, actually) of pickles.  Since this was my first canning adventure of the year, I had to go up in the hot attic for canning equipment.  For the next five hours, I stood over either hot dishwater or a hot stove.  Finally, about 4 o'clock, I got the last of the pickles into the jars.

We were meeting friends that night for dinner and a concert  - Alison Krauss at the Mud Island Amphitheater.  We've been to several concerts at Mud Island (an outdoor venue) on summer days.  Even though the days were hot, after sunset a pleasant, cooling breeze would always blow off the river.  Not this time.  From the minute we got on the tram to ride over to the island, sweat ran down my face and back.  The woman in the seat next to me sat with her legs spraddled, touching mine.  The more I scrunched in to move away from her, the more she spraddled.  Finally, about 30 minutes before the concert was over, I got up and went to the top of the amphitheater, where there was at least a little breeze.  From up top, I could see that some medics carried somebody out on a stretcher a few minutes before the concert was over - heat exhaustion, no doubt.  We rode home, sopping wet, with the car windows down.

Yesterday was another scorcher.  I put a final coat of base paint on my painting project at 7 o'clock in the morning, and it was already like breathing under water.  I did not go outside much after that; my butt was dragging.  To tell the truth, I think I was dehydrated from all the sweating the day before.  After breakfast, napped until lunch time, then I got up and started cooking.  Made a batch of bread, put a roast in the oven for dinner - had both ovens running for a good while.  At 6 o'clock, I finally turned off the stove, and we ate dinner.  In the living room.  Under the ceiling fan. 

An hour after dinner, a fierce storm blew in suddenly.  The power went out again and stayed out for two hours.  It got hot in the house before the power came back on, and I went to sweating again.  We sat out on the back porch for the last hour or so.  It was hot there, too, but at least the air was stirring.

Here's hoping for a cooler week!