H-O-T-T

For those of you wondering -- and, I mean, who isn't? -- it is hot right now in our house. Like, surface-of-the-sun-hot. In-the-center-of-a-volcano-hot. Frying-the-egg-that-is-my-brain-hot.

Sollie and Rosa have taken to splaying out on our hardwood floors in an attempt to cool down. Myself, I've been binging on Pop Ice (you know, those ultra-cheap frozen tubes of brightly colored goo that are so divorced from the reality of fruit, that it makes more sense, when asked for which flavor you prefer to say "purple, please!" than "grape!"). It is quite delicious, but we've eaten nearly all of the 100 frozen treats our box came with in less than a month and I am quickly becoming convinced that I've replaced the blood in my veins with corn syrup and food coloring.

Anyway, the one window fan we have downstairs cuts the muggy air only fractionally, and I am finding myself rethinking the necessity of central air in these hot hot hot summer days. Presently, the only a/c in this house are the window units chugging along in our upstairs bedrooms, and I've been trying to convince myself that, in itself, is a luxury (which I guess is the case, if I think about things *too* much, so let's avoid that line of thought).

As a kid, my parents had only two window units for our house. One went in their room, the other in my sister's. I'm not sure why my lil' sis got the other a/c, seeing as how she had the ceiling fan my room lacked, but I would imagine it had something to do with the agreement my mom and I struck: I didn't have to clean my bedroom, as long as I kept the door shut. So, yes, on summer nights, my parents and my sister would open their bedroom doors to (theoretically) cool all of the upstairs rooms, but I spent most nights in a tangle of sweat-dampened sheets. And that is when my youthful DIY-er spirit presented itself: The freezer is cold, ergo anything placed in the freezer will get cold, I reasoned. And so each night, I would strip my pillowcases off my pillows and set them in the freezer. The shock of the ice-cold cotton is only a brief pleasure, but man, it ruled.

And so, tonight, I am going to freeze me some pillowcases. Heck, at this point, the ol' slumber party trick of the bra in the freezer sounds pretty daggone good, too. We'll just hafta see how much stuff I can stuff in there.