Category: Everything Else

• Do chores early in the morning. Dishes, hanging out of laundry, weeding, vacuuming. This will have to include blogging as well- when I attempted to turn on the computer in the evening, the fan was working so hard that I feared for its health and promptly shut it back off. Hence my lack of recent posts.
• Keep curtains closed against the sun.
• Eat an early lunch. Wait too long, and it’s just too hot to eat.
• Enjoy a lazy afternoon. Cass and I hunkered down in the coolest room we could find with a pitcher of iced tea and read our way through the heat of the day.
• Get wet. I don’t know how eco-friendly this option is, but we shared the Y pool with hundreds of others, and we took mere 60 second showers afterward.
• At dinnertime, re-open the curtains and eat by natural light. (On Monday this was our only option as the power went out for several hours.)
• Eat lots of fruits and veggies. For dinners we had big salads topped with leftover steak and chicken we had grilled up in bulk on Sunday. Also, I froze watermelon slices, grapes, and sliced strawberries to put into lunchboxes so that everybody would have cool treats during the mid-day heat.
• Drink lots of water. I froze a gallon for my poor husband, toiling away at his construction job. He drank most of it and used the rest to dampen the bandanna he wears under his hard hat.
• Run the dishwasher after dark.
• Strategically place fans for maximum cross-ventilation.
• My kids like to soak bandannas and freeze them. Then they like to put them on and yelp. Once the bandannas become bearable, they use them to keep cool at bedtime.
• Early to bed and early to rise. We’ll take advantage of those fresh morning hours as much as possible.

The trade-off for the heat and oppressive humidity is the thick perfume of honeysuckle. (If only I had smell-o-vision so that I might share it with you!) Sadly, we have no honeysuckle on our own property- a situation that I hope to remedy- but there is plenty further down the road, and the sultry closeness of the air allows the sweet scent to travel through our open windows.

There is no substitute for awakening on summer mornings to the intoxicating smell of honeysuckle and the laughter of woodpeckers. Running the air conditioner, I would miss that.

Hermetically sealed in artificial coolness, I would miss how wonderful the cool morning air feels in comparison to the sticky hot of the night before. I would miss the happy trill of the Carolina Wrens nesting outside my window.

Soon, the babies they are hatching will learn to fly. It is a long and heart-stopping process. I would miss all that.

I don’t think I’ll miss the air conditioner, after all.

Over the weekend, my brother-in-law was married to my lovely new sister-in-law in a Quaker ceremony. The ceremony included a period wherein those assembled were invited to rise and speak to the couple.

My oldest son “screwed his courage to the sticking place” and leapt onto his chair to recite a poem we had discovered recently; many of those present have asked for a copy of this poem, and we like it so much I thought I’d post it here as well.

From FALLING IN LOVE IS LIKE OWNING A DOG

by Taylor Mali

First of all, it’s a big responsibility,
especially in a city like New York.
So, think long and hard before deciding on love.
On the other hand, love gives you a sense of security:
when you’re walking down the street late at night
and you have a leash on love
ain’t no one going to mess with you.

Love doesn’t like being left alone for long.
But come home and love is always happy to see you.
It may break a few things accidentally in its passion for life,
but you can never be mad at love for long.

Is love good all the time? No! No!
Love can be bad. Bad, love, bad! Very bad love.

Sometimes love just wants to go for a nice long walk.
It runs you around the block and leaves you panting.
It pulls you in several different directions at once,
or winds around and around you
until you’re all wound up and can’t move.

But love makes you meet people wherever you go.
People who have nothing in common but love
stop and talk to each other on the street.

Throw things away and love will bring them back,
again, and again, and again.
But most of all, love needs love, lots of it.
And in return, love loves you and never stops.

We found this poem in Caroline Kennedy’s A Family of Poems: My Favorite Poetry for Young Children, a truly fabulous collection illustrated by the ethereal watercolors of Jon J. Muth.

I cannot say enough good things about Muth’s artwork; in fact, I think I’m going to have to dedicate a separate post to it. For now, suffice it to say that this volume of poetry is an absolute must-have for any household with children in it.