Heat

06/14/10

I promised  myself I would not write anything today until my house was clean!  Hah!  What a gratuitous lie that was!

To begin, it is as hot as the hinges of hell here is Macon, Georgia, and even the air conditioner cannot stay ahead of 95º with a heat index of 104º.  (By 3:00, it will be 98º)!

Here, in my little air conditioned house, I have cleaned my bathroom and the guest bath.  Period.  Sweat is dripping down my cheeks and my sports top is glued to my torso, feeling like a wet bathing suit.  Yes, I do remember wearing one of those, but not lately.  To make matters worse, I’m wearing a back brace that my 14 year old doctor says I should wear when I work around the house.

The copper fountain has lost its splash, needs to be cleaned, the water merely draining from one leaf to the the other with no more than a faint hum.  Water evaporates quickly in this heat. 

Both of my dogs are lethargic with crabby expressions on their faces.  They know that their walk will have to wait until 8:00 tonight...........

...................Back from cleaning the fountain.  I couldn’t contain myself.  Once I wrote it down, it became real and I was so ashamed of my neglect of it that I had to do something.  Guilt is a great motivator.

My room is scary.  I can only see a few little spots on the top of my dresser, so strewn it is with stacks of old journals, new journals, my iPod, notes to myself, - some written weeks ago - my new vocabulary lists.  There are several of them because when I add a new word, I frequently am unable to find the last list.  There are stacks of books, one of them on the verge of causing an avalanche of sorts, framed photos, a head band and two clips, my coffee cup from this morning, and the tiny brass lamp Kristy gave me one time.  Last week, cheat that I am, I moved everything around a little and dusted with one of those Swiffer things that goes 365º. 

My bedside table, oh, shit, my bedside table.  I have to leave the tubes of medicine there or I will forget my dogs’ maladies.  Honey has an eye thing, and Belle has an ear thing.  I can’t put my lip balm in the drawer or I will forget to use it before I go to bed.  Ditto the nail stuff.  Mine are little stubs.  I need the CD remote so I can turn on my relaxation music when I turn out the light.  Pictures of Clint and Addie, well, there is no room for negotiation there.  They stay.  And I dust them off every day.  Mr. Palmer, my betta fish, lives on my beside table.  He’s the only thing in the house that looks at all cool.  I guess I’ll take the dirty glass and empty Gatorade bottle to the kitchen.  The trash can in here is overflowing.

Never  mind the chair in my room, just never mind.

God, I hate this sweat.  For the uninitiated, here in the Deep South, the humidity invades our homes, even with the air conditioner cranking out air that is supposed to keep us cool.  Someone once told me that an AC can only effectively cool a home more than 20º below the outside temperature.  I believe it to be true.

I’m going to tackle my dresser, then take a cold shower and lie naked beneath the ceiling fan that hangs over my bed......or maybe I’ll clean the den first.