Too Hot To Handle

 Ugh.  As you may know, we moved to the Pacific Northwest from Orange County, California a couple years ago.  There were many factors involved in this decision.  My sister lived here already, and when Wonderful Husband and I visited, we were amazed at how green it was.  Our family expanded, and we wanted both boys to eventually have their own bedrooms.  We also needed a better school district for them, and couldn't afford that in southern California, not without moving out to the desert.  (And I was NOT going to move out to the desert.)  And, year after year, it kept getting hotter and drier.  This was before global warming and climate change were as prevalent in my consciousness as they are now, and even so I knew that California's drought was never going to end.

...The pictures I've seen of Lake Oroville, where my family used to go houseboating in the summer, have broken my heart.

At the moment, we are being VERY grateful that we boxed up and brought our bulky portable A/C unit with us in the move.  In the summers, it lives in Wonderful Husband's office, which has an unshaded south-facing window.  A few days ago, Wonderful Husband hauled it upstairs to the master bedroom, where it has been installed in the master bath and running in tandem with the tower fan ever since, trying to keep the temperature there down around 75 Fahrenheit.

We hauled the boys' mattresses into our room last night so they could sleep better.  As I write this, at my desk by a north-facing window, it's 91 Fahrenheit in the rest of the house.  And it's only 11am.  We've been opening the doors and windows at night and in the early morning to let heat seep out, and shutting them (and their blinds and curtains) after a certain point each day.  I've been watering all the outside plants daily, and taking rinse-off showers a few times each day, just to cool down.  The chickens, fortunately, have plenty of shady spots to hide in the yard, and they do make use of them.

Remembering last year's run on them, I bought an inflatable pool a few months back.  It's situated on top of foam flooring blocks on our pergola, and has been a blessing in the evenings the last week or so, as the boys play naked in it before bedtime.

After today and tonight, the heat's supposed to break.  Thank goodness.

This fall, when the boys are back in school, I'm planning to paint their bedrooms.  And at the same time install ceiling fans, because our house sadly lacks them...

Catching Up

Ugh.  First we had a bout of lice.  Which probably came home from preschool with Jazzy.  And I was far, far away the worst infested.  After OTC remedies failed, we found a lice clinic up in Silverdale, and I (with my long hair) got the full treatment: comb-out, heat treatment, oily serum slathered on my hair.  The malefolk opted to go home and shave their heads and do at-home oily serum treatments.  So right now Wonderful Husband, Squiddle, and Jazzy all look like they've just joined the military.

Then Jazzy got sick yesterday.  The fun started at a quarter to seven when he woke up, feverish and with his eye glued shut by nighttime mucus.  Screaming ensued, and panic, until he worked himself up to a pitch where he actually threw up because he was so upset, which I had previously thought to be only an expression, not something that really happened.  The upset wailing of "I can't see!" recurred through the day, though he was able to see well enough to watch Trollhunters for a few hours with me acting as a comfort object.  Eventually he (who hates naps) burrowed into Mummy and Daddy's bed of his own volition and slept away most of the afternoon.  Fortunately today, other than a stuffed up nose, it all seems to be gone.

I did make a bit of gardening hay while he napped, and pruned back and dried my oregano.  Four hours in the oven, varying between a sort of stank and half smelling like an Italian restaurant, just add garlic.  After stripping the stems and tossing them into the chicken coop, I have three pint jars of uncrushed oregano leaves.  I crumbled a tiny bit into my eggs this morning.  Yum!  I also have seeds starting in containers, since a lot of what I planted in the beds hasn't come up.  I got about ten baby dills, maybe, from a whole packet of scattered seed, and no basil, chard, or monarda seedlings at all.  Sigh.

And, finally, I went out to thrift stores and a used book store today, and only got books.  Two living-abroad memoirs, two Michael Pollan books, a quilting book, and the first Hunger Games book.  And something innate in me shuddered, because I'm reading like an adult.  Quick, I need a hit of speculative fiction!  I'm also amused at the price differences for the same book within a 1-mile triangle: $.50 at St.Vincent de Paul, $2 at Goodwill, $7 at Book 'Em.  Ah well, better supporting local business than Amazon.