While the rest of you are solving world events, here in the Pine Grove we are trying to stay cool.
We don't care about jazz club cool, or knowing all the newest info cool, just staying cool and not melting away in summer heat.
It's not quite 7am. as I write this. It's hot. It's close to 80F. Our air conditioning is running to keep us cool.
Heat like this (and worse) will continue until October. Hard to believe, isn't it? I think of you in your cool New England places where your growing season for flowers and tomatoes is short.
My hibiscus, begonias and etc. stayed outside during "winter" and began blooming again in March.
It's flip-flop weather. Better get your pedicure ready. Iron your linen clothing. Take two showers a day. Drink lots of iced tea and water. Don't do heavy yard work in the middle of the day.
My friend, Karen, says we cannot complain about the weather until August. I disagree.
Let's go throw ourselves in the pool.
13 comments:
I am also in Tropical USA, the South. It is hot. Makes me remember some of the good things people did or had when I was a kid:
1) attic fans which sucked all the air from the house into the attic;
2) lots of ceiling fans;
3) an appreciation of large green trees, like oaks, that kept the sun off you and were bastions of coolness;
4) transoms over doors, which allowed air to circulate through the house; and
5) seeing women have umbrellas over them to protect from the hot sun (which does work) and seeing men have big hats on; and
6) the happiness generated by a Summer rain that cools the day.
Although listening to the outside sounds at night through screened windows is such a pleasant memory, as are others above, thank you American engineers and inventors for AC in my house, my car, and my work place. If they could just invent a mini-AC to cool the inside of my clothes I would be most grateful.
Expeditus.
Meanwhile, here in the Pacific Northwest my husband and I are considering the busted AC in my car. Given the uncertainty of our future finances, given that any summer in Oregon features only three or four weeks, max, when not having AC makes life truely miserable--is it worthwhile to repair it at this point? We both remarked that, were we living in the places either of us grew up: midwest or deep south, we would not even be having this discussion. We would be using the grocery money to fix the AC ASAP.
P.S. What are flip flops? Are they like Birkenstocks without the wool socks???? :-)
Birkis without sock -- ha! That's funny.
It's 83 in the house right now, as when we got home from FL the AC was broken. We have called the repairman. It will get hotter.
BTW, we made our annual trek to the John Gorrie Museum in Apalachicola to offer up burnt offerings to the inventor of Air Conditioning.
I wonder who first iced tea?
Rev Mommy, I wish I'd know you were in appalachicola or however you spell that exotic place.
Flip Flops are rubber bottomed shoes with rubber thingies which go between your toes. Cheap, cool shoes. Also known as: shower shoes, zorries and flip flops.
Iced tea is served sweetened with sugar here unless you specify unsweetened. Then, people wonder if you are a yankee or consort with yankees.
I've lived in Texas/the South my whole life, but sweet tea has always made me gaaaaaaaaaag.
It's a high of 90 today. Bleah.
I'm with reverendmother--Texans can't stand "sweet" tea. Ugh.
Summer's just winding up down here. It was 90 and 95% humidity at 7 am when I was walking with a neighbor. This is the time of year we spend the day indoors and the evenings on the porch if the Gulf Breeze is up.
Down here the teenagers wear flipflops all year long.
I grew up in the 'shallow south' and sweet tea (why do we write it as two words? we don't pronounce it that way!) is mother's milk to me. I was raised on it! Got the cavities to prove it...
It's hot in Oklahoma, too. I really, really don't like hot weather. I pretty much become useless this time of year. You will find me in a air conditioned spot with a good book. It will be this way through August. Usually, September brings back mild weather.
Flip flops are all the rage here, dozens of colors and stages of gaudiness.
prediction: 3/4 of family restaurant menus in the south will offer you "ice tea"
No "d."
R
Y'all, it's way too hot in Portland today. My car thermometer said 92 degrees an hour or so ago, and Time and Temperature declares 87 even at 5:05 p.m. And my window fan, here in my attic study at church, tells me it's 91.
In Tidewater, Virginia, where I grew up, it was "ice tea." "Sweet tea" must be more inland or mountain or deeper south, because I never heard it.
Soon I will go home and be grateful for the big trees around our house, although they are not the same as the ones I grew up with in Virginia.
I grew up in Houston but my mother's family was in Tallahassee. We made that trek every year (in the summer!) and it's the law: the farther south and east you go, the less likely they are to even offer you "unsweet tea" as an option, except at Grandy's restaurants.
I never understood why you'd want someone else to sweeten your tea for you.
When I was little we used something called "Sweeta" in our tea...a liquid sweetener probably made from saccharin. I can't find it anymore, though I have tried.
I drink coffee first-thing in the morning all through the fall, winter & spring, but I can tell when summer is here (North Texas, now) because I have to switch to iced tea while I'm out in the heat and getting where I'm going. I certainly have coffee once I arrive....but it makes me sick first thing in the morning when the heat is on.
Iced tea is mother's milk.
Everyone here (west Texas) has brown teeth from the tea. (Among other things.) We are hugely suspicious of someone else sweetening our tea. Its served plain and you are expected to take repsonsibility for yer own sweetnin'.
Mary Beth - Sweet-n-Low still makes that clear liquid saccharin stuff. My Grandpa always used it. (I prefer the powdery, cocaine-like version myself.)
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