It’s getting hot in here

I think summer has finally arrived.  It’s getting hot.  Generally our daytime temperatures hover around 80º, but it doesn’t drop far enough at night to keep it cool in the house.  In Washington, we never needed a/c because we would just suck in all the cold air overnight and proceed to shut all the windows come morning to keep the house cool.  And it worked!  For the most part, anyhow.  But the glorious thing is the temps would plummet down into the 50s every night.

Here, not so much.  Today’s high was 80º, though I know it didn’t get that hot, but the low is only 70º.  Methinks we need to install our a/c units soonest.  Although it’s not really that bad, not till about 5pm.  And by then you’ve only got a couple more hours till it really cools down, and then I figure the effort to put up the a/c units is just too much.

We’ll have to do it soon, though.  We’re having more company (can you believe it??) in a couple of weeks.  I’m thinking of shoving their two kids in with Grace and ME, and they’ll get the guest room.  It’ll probably behoove us to have the a/c units functioning by then.  I have a feeling it’s going to get hotter come August.

Today was just a comedy of errors.  Where to even start??  Lately Mary Ellen’s feet and knees have been getting so black, crawling around — and I know I’m a better housekeeper than that!  I mean, I vacuum at least once a week.  There’s no reason for black feet!  So I decide to get out the steam cleaner for the carpets, which is a little difficult because it reminds me so much of Koolit.  We bought it because he kept having accidents in the house, you see.  But I soldiered on, and did what I had to do.  I filled it up with hot water, got the heater going, and started laying down the water.  When I let go of the trigger, the water is supposed to be suctioned up and out of the carpet.  For some reason, that just wasn’t happening.

Hmmmm.

Being the somewhat bright person I am, I went for the most complicated solution.  It must be clogged!  So I take the whole damn thing apart and clean it out.  That’s when I found nearly enough fur caught in the cleaner to knit myself a new Koolit.  Ew.  I put everything back together, get the steam cleaner working again, and tried once more to see if the water would be suctioned up.  No such luck.  Gahhh!  Now I’m annoyed because I can’t think what else the problem could be.

I fiddle with it a few more moments until I realize DUH.  The damn thing is set to HOSE, not to FLOOR.

Yes, I am serious.

I switch the dial to FLOOR and now we’re cooking with gas!  I steam-cleaned the dining room, the living room, the foyer, and the hallway.  ME was napping throughout the ordeal, and I set up the fan to dry the floor as much as possible.  I must have done something right because later this evening, after she’d been crawling all over everywhere once again, her knees and feet stayed clean.  Yes!

Plus now my house smells clean and fresh.

Then I decided it would be a good idea to bake some cookies.  Ms Cheez-It and her family are moving down to South Carolina, and the movers arrived today for the first stage of packing.  She’d given me a whole ton of baking goods that she didn’t want to move with, and in that basket was some chocolate cookie dough mix.  Grace and I whipped up a batch and set the cookies to baking.  After the ten minutes had elapsed for the second batch, I checked on them, but they were still pretty soft in the middle.  I set the timer for two more minutes — but they were still soft.  Two more minutes… and still soft!  What was going on??

Somehow I had turned my oven off.

Cookies don’t really bake very well when there’s no heat.  Just in case you were wondering.

I preheated the oven once more, and after a couple of minutes in the now-hot oven, the cookies came out awesomely.  And I hied myself down to Ms Cheez-It’s home, where her sons inhaled them before I got both feet across the threshold.

Anyhow, after all that cleaning (the steam-cleaning, the vacuuming, the laundry, the sweeping and swabbing of the kitchen floor, the dishwasher emptying, the bottle washing, etc), I figured I was due for some time off.  My friend and I headed down to this delicious Mexican place down in Newport, where we drowned our woes in two margaritas apiece.  I have driven down the street that it’s on many, many times, and never once seen it.  But it’s totally worth braving the summer crowds of Newport, that’s for sure.

Margaritas, anyone??