Hiding from the Heat Madness

Last week was SO HOT. The humidity is what kills you. We had constant heat indices (is that proper?) of 105. We hunkered down inside enjoying our 80 degree AC. Seriously, no wonder settlers died off wearing naught but wool & chainmail; predominantly the water here is brackish. Jamestown must of been hell. Cid & I still see a new bug from time to time, some new swamp creature we think, & he from southern Fl. The last was a cross between a mosquito & a wasp, a good 5" long, 3" of it stinger. He thinks it may have been a queen wasp. Scary!

So how do you stay in the house all day w/ 2 small children who have tons of energy irregardless of the weather? Cid (not included among small children) is having this freakish surge of retirement energy, he has been busting his hump & all in this very hot weather. He's been tearing down the raised beds & shoveling all of the dirt against the low spot of the foundation. I built those beds in Dec. 4 years ago. I filled them w/ 5 pickup truckloads of compost. Cid wasn't lazy, he was deployed & I needed to keep busy. It was very satisfying work digging & raking the steamy compost in cold weather. That's how I did things. Cid is shoveling everything into our wheelbarrel & hauling it on the flat tire up our sloped lawn. Our tire pump is lost. He is so driven to sell the house.

Victor is always the little man & has to be right where Daddy is. Cid gave him the hoe & told him to scrape the sides which he proudly did, pretty well too. I went out there to help after Charlotte was asleep, but they were using most of the tools & Cid said they were done. He hosed everything off including Victor's head, to his great delight. They took an hour long lemonade break & then Cid cleaned up to go buy some paint & trim. I was rather mortified at all the work he was doing w/ me doing nothing. Am I not the housewife? I put on my biggest apron & scrubbed all of the grout in the kitchen w/ full strength bleach. I loathe bleach. I go through a bottle every 3 or 4 years. Cid hates the smell of my vinegar/ rubbing alcohol cleaning mix, but the smell disappears as it dries. He caught me toward the end & remarked that it wasn't a competition. He's so sweet.

The next day I had a ton of errands, but I wanted to take Victor to his first movie. Regal Cinemas play free movies Tues. & Wed. at 10:00 especially for the preschool set. I had been waiting for this one, it was Charlotte's Web. Not the cartoon like I thought it would be but a Dakota Fanning version. It was still very close to the book & that was important to me because Charlotte's Web was our family read aloud some months back & I thought he could follow it better. I splurged on expensive popcorn (the 3 of us together couldn't finish a small size) since it was his first movie & we settled in to enjoy it. He did great! He made sure to empty his bladder prior & had no accidents. He didn't talk much at all, he was very absorbed. Charlotte did great too for an hour. The last 20 min. she was walking between our 2 seats, playing w/ my keys, nursing then feeding me popcorn & then she had had enough. We left & I let Victor sit on the floor in the exit wing to finish his movie while Charlotte & I played running games by the door. It was nice & now that he's been indoctrinated Cid is looking at movies they could go to see together.

Another hot day, what to do? I've been waking up very early & having all of my tomatoes watered before 7:00. Mornings I can fill w/ chores pretty easily, but the afternoons drag on. I got the bright idea to play Pillow Mountain. All of the couch cushions came off, every pillow in the house was piled on & we had a massive pillow fight for a good 2 hours. We changed it up making mountain caves at one point & playing earthquake w/ tectonic plates & avalanche, but it wound up just being a big pile of softness on the floor that you could jump off the toy box & land in. Charlotte was going nuts, she loved it! She was jumping off of the toybox before I could get both hands on her. Anyway, that was our hot week; work & play w/ lots of lemonade & sweet tea kept us sane.