Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2002-07-09 - 11:02 p.m.

Hot

It was too hot here today. Too hot, I tell you.

How hot was it? It was cross hot. Cranky hot. What do you want NOW? hot.

It was so hot, I couldn't find a good place to be. My hindbrain kept saying, "no, too hot here, move on." Kind of the way you toss and turn during labor, thinking, "Owwwww, it really hurts when I lay on my right side, I'll just...OWWWWW, the left side kills too, so maybe I can..." There's no arguing with it.

It was so hot, I have a half-glass of iced caffeine-free Coke on my nightstand, and now that I have brushed my teeth I can't drink any more of it unless I brush again, or my teeth will ROT RIGHT OUT OF MY HEAD. My mother taught me this, and I do not want to wake up on a pillow full of teeth crumbs. Coke on the bedside, though - that's pretty hot.

It was so hot that waiting an hour for the junk man to come pick up my burned appliances instead of heading for the pool was agony. So hot that when I helped him heave the incredibly heavy trash compactor into his truck, I whimpered, and when he said, "Oops, too heavy?" I said, "No, I forgot my shoes and the asphalt is now blistering my freakin' FEET."

(Side note: I have to tell you - the junk man felt my arm muscle. I kid you not. I said I would help with the washer, which for some obscure manufacturing reason was filled with CEMENT. So he looked at my arm and said, "Make a muscle," and I laughed, because of course he was joking, and he said, "No, I mean it," so I did and he felt it and he said, "Okay," and let me help. Do these things happen to OTHER people? Getting felt up by junk haulers? What if he'd said, "No, that's okay, I can do it myself"? And why do I always do what I'm told?)

It was so hot that the town couldn't seem to keep the power on; we had three failures today, and the semi-downtown area was out for hours, with the grocery stores running on their generators. I had visions of all the idiot residents when the power came back up, saying, "Quick, Fred, it's back on! Crank the AC up and let's get it real cold in here before it goes off AGAIN!" and poof - out we go. (I ain't got no stinkin' AC, so I just KNOW it's all those stinkin' bourgeois AC powerhogs causing the problem.) (Cranky, I tell you.)

It was so hot that I took my kids through the drive-up to get Kentucky Fried Chicken. Oh, I know, we don't say that any more - we aren't supposed to know that it's actually fried - but I fed my kids KFC without a flicker of guilt. MAKE dinner? Generate heat in the house? Oh, I don't THINK so. Go eat your chicken in the swimming pool. Luckily , the KFC store was just outside the no-power belt, so we actually got (shhhh) FRIED chicken instead of oil-marinated squawkimi.

It was so hot, that within an hour Younger Daughter had eaten her KFC and trimmings - and thrown it all right back up.

It was so hot, that while I am doing the GoodMom helpful vomit thing, twisting her hair into a tail, patting her back and making soothing Mom noises, I am also thinking bitchily, "Oh great - now she'll never eat CHICKEN again."

It's STILL too hot. I drank that Coke. You knew I would, didn't you?

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