The heat it’s hangin’ on

It’s only 10:30 in the morning, and it’s already 88º here at my house. That’s 31ºC for you metric people. I’m watching CNN right at the moment, and it’s 55º in Seattle right now, and the Cascades are under a winter storm warning! Gosh, how I miss Seattle at this point. Every so often, it would get blistering hot with a dry heat, but it would always drop into at least the 60s if not all the way down into the low 50s overnight. All you had to do was throw your windows open once the sun dropped below the horizon, and it got nice and chilly inside your house. No air conditioning needed!

Last night it was still hot in the house. It only dropped to 73º overnight, and by 6am the temperatures were beginning to rise again. We have a window fan in our bedroom, so we stayed relatively cool overnight.

I haven’t mentioned the humidity. It is sticky hot here, the humidity making the 88º air temperature feel like 99º. The front covers of my paperbacks that haven’t made it into a book case are curling back with the humidity. I picked up some clothes off the floor this morning to throw them in the wash, and they felt soggy. It reminds me of being in college and not being able to keep posters on the wall of our dorm room because we’d used Scotch tape.

I woke up at 4am last night, all in a dither because of a large purchase we made yesterday. I decided it was finally time to get a camcorder, and after researching it all over the internet and finding the one I wanted on Amazon.com, we went to the Navy Exchange where we were told that we could pick up the same camcorder for just $17 more than the listed price on Amazon. We just had to get it in silver, where I was hoping to buy the red. I figured it was worth it just to have it in my hands without paying shipping, so we went ahead and bought it. When it rang up, it came up $30 more than the price quoted to us by the sales clerk (there was no price tag displayed for that camcorder). Luckily the manager took pity on us and let us have it for the quoted price.

But at 4am I woke up worried that we just spent that much money on something we really didn’t need. I mean, we have the money, but do I really need it?

It didn’t help that yesterday I was having a hell of a time getting the included software to be able to play the sound of my test video — and if your videos don’t have sound, what’s the point of having a camcorder? Fortunately I finally figured out that if I just use the earlier version of the software, things are hunky-dory. I just wish it hadn’t taken me four hours of my evening to figure that out!! Hence my lack of an update last night.

This morning was a comedy of errors. I almost want to laugh at what’s going on because otherwise I’d have to cry in sheer frustration.

For one thing, I was up at 7:15am, and we all know I am not a morning person. During breakfast this morning, Grace began crying. When I asked her what was wrong, she told me she’d spilled her cranberry juice. I realize that kids spill stuff, but she’s been cup-trained since she was eighteen months old, and she’d rarely spill. Now that she’s almost four, she spills her drink nearly every single day. You’d think with better motor skills she wouldn’t be spilling.

After I cleaned up the spilled juice, I went to throw the paper towels away when I realized the trash bag had fallen down into the garbage can. And it had happened before Kurt threw away his pistachio shells the night before. Yes, we’re not supposed to have nuts in the house, but Kurt adores pistachios, and Grace isn’t allergic to tree nuts. He just makes sure to eat them after she goes to bed. I was a bit frustrated he hadn’t noticed the bag had fallen in before throwing in his shells, but I know he’s not very observant, and getting mad at him wasn’t going to get me anywhere. But it did mean that once I got the bag out, I had to dive into the bin to get all of the shells off the bottom of the bin.

As I chucked the bag of trash into the large garbage can in the garage, I heard a persistent beeping. I followed the sound and found my old radio, which had been broken in a long fall, beeping away in a box. I shut off the alarm and chucked the radio back into the box and went to do my hair and makeup.

It was while I was doing my makeup that I realized that as I leaned into the box to grab the radio out, I must have rested against my bike because I had bike grease all over my new khaki capri pants. So then I had to change my pants before I left to take Grace to school, and we were already running late.

Then I couldn’t find my new polarized sunglasses to wear while driving to Grace’s school, so I squinted all the way there.

I threw the pants into the wash after pre-treating them, and after washing them, there are still dots of bike grease in a line across my thigh. And they are new too!

…………………………………….

And now it’s 1pm, and my day has gotten better.  For one thing, I had lunch with Kurt at a pizza joint just outside the base, where he managed to make me giggle several times.  I was amazed to see six enlisted sailors walk into the pizza place, all their white uniforms.  If I had to wear an all-white uniform, you wouldn’t see me even look at a pizza joint, let alone walk inside!  That’s just asking to spill tomato sauce all over your crisp white pants.

Also, Grace is home now, and just watching her play and entertain herself usually manages to cheer me up. She’s so darn creative!!

And the pièce de résistance??  I got the bright idea to set up my large fan in front of me, and so I now have cool air blowing over me at a relatively high velocity.  Woooo!!

Now just don’t ask me to move from my couch.