I'm sorry, a high of what?

This morning, on KRCL, Alison announced today's high in the Valley of 104 degrees. I had to verify; now I wish I hadn't. Google says this:


I would be interested to see Hades' forecast for the next few days. Couldn't be much worse than this one.

This makes me want to cry. There are few things that I hate more than the heat. It seems like another life when I wrote this post.

At night, when I lay in bed with as little clothing on as possible (read: boxers or none at all) and the AC is blasting, my poorly insulated old brick house keeps the heat in. So much so, that even with 5,000 BTUs bringing my bedroom to a remotely livable level, the walls remain hot to the touch, so that when I roll into them in my sleep, I awake startled, sure that the first nuke has landed in my backyard and melted me to my bed and walls.


Soon, I will resort to only using the pavement as my means of cooking. Hopefully, however, it will be documented in a slightly more flattering manner than this gentleman here is shown. At least he is wearing his hip pack.

I feel a little too close these days to the narrator from Shel Silverstein's poem "It's hot!" (A light in the Attic, HarperCollins 1981), which reads:

It's hot!
I can't get cool,
I've drunk a quart of lemonade,
I think I'll take my shoes off
And sit around in the shade.

It's hot!
My back is sticky,
The sweat rolls down my chin.
I think I'll take my clothes off
And sit around in my skin.

It's hot!
I've tried with 'lectric fans,
And pools and ice cream cones.
I think I'll take my skin off
And sit around in my bones.

It's still hot!