WHITE LILIES AND IT'S HOT

          I’d forgotten I have white lilies in my garden. They are finally blooming and smell absolutely delightful. There should be a couple more stalks to enjoy before they are done. The other stargazers are also blooming, but they only have one or two blossoms each. My deck smells especially wonderful in the evening.

          Speaking of my deck, I love spending time out there. The last week, I’ve watered what needed to be watered first thing in the morning. Then I made my breakfast and ate it at the table on my deck. The birds flit about, sing songs, dragonflies visit and the sound of the water in my little water feature is so enjoyable. The doggies hang about hoping I’ll save them a nibble or at least drop something they can scramble to eat.

          When it isn’t terribly hot, I like to sit in my hammock swing with my I-pad and read or play the Hidden City game. Again, all my senses are engaged for the most part, i.e., hearing, seeing, feeling, but it’s mostly the hearing sense that brings the most pleasure. Of course, I do like the swinging part too, and at times can almost nod off into a little nap.

          How did you sleep Monday night? It was so hard to fall asleep because I was so hot. It didn’t matter that I’d all the windows open and left my bedroom door open, there wasn’t a breeze. I kept moving from one side of the bed to the other. When one side got hot, the other side would be cool. But it’s really hard to go to sleep when I’m rocking and rolling on the bed. I finally took my nighty off and eventually went to sleep in just my undies. It was about 5:30 am when I woke up to use the bathroom, put my nightie back on and pulled just the sheet up over me.

          In years past, by this time I’ve hooked up the air conditioner in the living room. John believed 69 degrees and cloudy was the perfect temperature and couldn’t stand anything much above 75. So, the air conditioner ran almost 24/7 when we had hot periods. I don’t know if it actually did anything to cool off the bedrooms, but perhaps just the sound of it was enough to make him feel cooler.

          I also have an attic fan which wasn’t operational last year or this year. In order to check on it, one must go up into the attic and clamber over all the joists to get to the fan. When it’s hot, whoever goes up there would most likely have heat stroke before reaching the back of the attic and returning to the opening. Not a good idea at times like this. Having the attic fan run and eliminate the heat from above goes a long way toward keeping the house cooler.

          There’s also the furnace fan which I turn on when the weather turns hot. It brings cool air from below and sends it throughout the house. To augment that, I leave the sliding glass door open until the sun reaches the deck and then I close it. At about 12:30 pm today, it was already 100 degrees on the deck by the slider. I also leave the door to the garage door open for a while. But, since there’s no insulation in the garage attic, it becomes hot out there as soon as the sun hits the roof. I keep it closed most of the time.

          This morning (Tuesday), I made a quick trip to the grocery store, mainly because I needed milk. I did get a couple of other things I can use and several that I didn’t need but bought anyway. I was very naughty in purchasing a pint of ice cream, a package of three ice cream bars and a box of cranberry-orange scones. It’s a good thing I rarely buy stuff like that or I’d end up weighing way more with a diabetic score that would be off the chart. Ah well, I’m old and deserve it regardless of how it affects my health.

          There seems to be a nice breeze outside at the moment. I think I’ll finish this, grab my I-pad and head for the hammock swing. I’m sure that without even trying very hard, I’ll swing myself to sleep before I can finish a single chapter. I deserve that too, being kept up so late because I was so hot. Here’s hoping your house was cooler than mine and that you slept well.