Too Darned Hot

I remember meeting a guy from Dallas at one of my former dead-end jobs, and he marveled at how yearly summer heat waves never failed to kill people in Chicago. "When it's 104F in Dallas, I go running in the park with my dogs. What's wrong with people in Chicago? Are they just wimpier?"

I can't imagine what he'd think of us here in Bellevue. Yesterday hit, what, high 90s, after days of being in the 80s and low 90s, and we all thought this might be The End. Today promises to be even hotter, and the weatherman forecasts a seemingly endless stretch of sunny, hot days, with the "best" day shaping up to be Sunday because it will "only" hit 88F. Yikes.

Things have reached such a desperate pass that I got up at 4:55 a.m. this morning to open up the house (mosquitoes or no mosquitoes), in the hopes of cooling it off to the mid-70s before we have to go back into mole-like hiding from the sun. At book club last night we agreed unanimously to forgo the planned firepit Peeps roast, and even talk of slogging through bitter cold outside besieged Leningrad couldn't cool us off (Book: David Benioff's CITY OF THIEVES). I continue to send my son to morning soccer camp, peering anxiously over my shoulder, lest CPS nail me for child abuse.

Well, they do say people in hot climates drink hot tea to cool themselves off. Maybe we should all read some books set in sweltering places. Carson McCuller's MEMBER OF THE WEDDING (it may be hot in Western WA, but at least you're not a depressed, alienated adolescent)? David McCullough's THE PATH BETWEEN THE SEAS (at least we don't have to build the Panama Canal, and the mosquitoes don't carry yellow fever)? Dean King's SKELETONS ON THE ZAHARA (at least we're not hot and starving and enslaved by desert nomads)?

How hot have your houses gotten?