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.