Life and Death

Life—our garden is freaking out right now.



It looks a bit crowded. So far there are no corn cobs, no budding watermelons, pumpkins, zucchinis, pea pods, tomatoes, OR carrots. Just leaves. There aren’t even any tiny green pods or buds suggesting future cobs, peas, or gourds. Corn stalk salad, anyone?



BUT! As I was exploring the mass of leaves out there today, behold—a bean! Our first harvest! All the other beans were tiny
and curly, but at least they are visible and growing.



I had Jay pose holding The First Bean with the garden in the background.



Then he munched it right down raw.
Death—during this past week of AC-less heat, I forgot about our herb garden.



Poor things. The only plants not on our auto-watering system died, of course. Jay and I just dumped a big bunch of water on them so maybe they’ll revive, but who knows. I don’t even know what I’ll do with all that basil if it does survive. I really wanted rosemary. But it came up as basil.

Death—eleven days in the desert during July without AC has nearly reduced me to this:

“I’m melllllllltinnnnng!”

I just feel so unmotivated when my house is hotter than 80 degrees. Nothing sounds interesting or exciting or possible. We are all sleep-deprived because it doesn’t cool off enough outside for fans in windows till the sun goes down past 9pm, and then the fans in windows take a few hours to cool our house sufficiently for sleep. Unfortunately heat plus low sleep makes me feel a bit cranky.

 

I felt so apathetic and HOT all day yesterday that I couldn’t dredge up any motivation, even to go to the pool (wriggling into a bathing suit while you’re sweaty is hard work). I knew after today’s AC installation I’d be back in business, with my cool air flowing. That made me ok with taking a day to do nothing. So I spent the day reading Jane Austen’s lesser-known work, Northanger Abbey. There’s a reason she never published it during her lifetime. It was ok-good, but not sparkly-good. Maybe it was my heat-stroked mood. Ah well.

Last night for family home evening, we had a dinner picnic in the basement and watched Swiss Family Robinson—a childhood fave. I was too lethargic to take a picture of the cute picnic Jay and Rose had on the floor. They loved it. Jeff and I didn’t eat dinner during the movie. We were too hot to feel hungry. And turning on the stove or oven in this heat? NO thank you. I microwaved the kids some cheese tortillas and threw some apricots onto their plates for their picnic. After Jay and Rose went to bed, Jeff and I had some ice cream instead of dinner. It was so cool and soothing, but I don’t recommend it. I was starving this morning! And my stomach has felt sensitive all day, like it’s scared I’ll abandon it and just pump it full of cold non-nutritious stuff again.

At 11pm last night, Jeff and I were plastered to the basement floor trying to figure out HOW ON EARTH people used to live without AC. I mean, really. It’s only been around for a generation or so, right? I’m especially wondering how women in long sleeved billowing gowns and corsets survived in the heat. They must not have done anything useful. Maybe it’s our fast-paced society that makes living AC-less so hard. It all comes back to expectations, like pretty much everything in this world. I expect to be able to function normally year-round. The people of yore probably didn’t—they knew when to lay low. I’d like to say that I could have survived in the olden days, but I know I would’ve died during pregnancy before summer had a chance to get hot. So I suppose it doesn’t matter if I could handle everything else back then. It only takes one thing to kill you! I hate being soft, but in this case, I think I’m just going to surrender to it. I need my AC. That is all.

Life—Our 34 year old old AC unit was taken away today and replaced by this beast:



It is installed, but not wired. The installation-dudes informed us that the electrician can’t come for another day or two. CAN WE BE MORE SPECIFIC PLEASE? I’ve been counting down the hours till we have cool air again in this hothouse, and now you tell me we have this sleek new machine (and nearly emptied our our savings account for it) but WE CAN’T USE THE THING??

Sigh. I know there are worse things out there. I know I’ve had worse things happen to me. But that doesn’t mean this thing is easy! Everyone has their own mountains to climb. It’s HOW we endure our trials that makes us or breaks us. Yeah yeah yeah, I know. I’m not sure if I’ve endured this one as stellarly as I’d like to, but I’m doing my sweaty-best! (minus all that moaning)

Today I managed to get the kids to the park and the pool, so here are a few pictures from that to ease the sting of all my complaining. We stayed at the park for a solid 2.5 hours. I reclined in the shade and admired the tree. Steph and Layne joined us. There was a breeze and I was actually NOT sweating, for once. The kids played in the sun for a few minutes and then came red-faced back to the shade, where they hung out for most of the time we were there. Every now and then they’d venture back into the blaze, but it never lasted long. The contrast in temperature between shade and sun around here is astounding to me with my background in Tennessee humidity.







Beach towels make personal picnic blankets. When in doubt, have a picnic. Seriously one of my favorite things to do with kids.

   



Rose always picks up litter when we go to the park. She plays with it until I finally persuade her to throw it away. Yuck! She’s such a good little citizen of the world.







I propped my feet up on the bike trailer, sat back, and enjoyed the shade. After we had our picnic at the park, we walked on over to the Grandview pool and paid the $2 admission fee. The awesome Prosser Aquatic Center has been so crowded lately that I can hardly stand to go there, even though we have pool passes. In contrast, the less-exciting Grandview pool is large, rectangular, and empty, thanks to its fancy-pants neighbor. The only problem with Grandview’s pool is the shallowest section is 4 feet deep so the kids had to keep their floaties on the whole time. It has no slides, but it does have a basketball hoop! I loved it there, and it surprised me. Cool and refreshing and space—only about 10 other people were there. Perfect-o.

As usual, I thought this post would be a shorty, but apparently I had more to say than I thought. I’ll blame the 83 degree room for all my hot air, ha ha.