Summer In The City


The neck of my blouse getting dirty and grimy. Well. So this is summer. Gee, that was nice. When’s autumn?

I have been turned into such a weather wimp. I’m from Texas, damn it. I’m used to summer starting in April and ending in March. I laughed in the face of 100 plus weather. If it wanted to be 102 degrees until 10:30 at night, swell! If it wanted to be 89 degrees at 7:10 in the morning< fine. I was the Heat Misers hotter sister.

Now. It was 90 something and I was sweating. What a lamo. Back in the day I didn’t break a sweat under 103. I ran an errand today and it caused me to go outside. In the middle of the afternoon. In the City. I had to walk around the corner, go do the errand and walk back around the corner. I about fainted. Lamo.

By the time I got back to the office I was drenched. Total Lamo. Where did my watery blood go? When did it thicken to the consistency of jam? I was acclimatized to Hells Attic and now I can’t deal with 90 something degrees. I should be ready for triple digits. I should be craving it. A hot summer fry’s the impurity’s out, it’s cleansing, it sanitizes you. It is harsh, but harsh in a good way, like a new loofa.

Now look at me. A slave to my ceiling fans. I have the A/C running entirely too often. I used to keep it set at 85 degrees. I didn’t keep the fans running all the time, loser. True, I lived in a third floor walk up spaghetti strainer and every time I turned the A/C I altered the heat index for the day. My blinds rattled anytime one of the roof rats burped.


I didn’t have to have a hibachi, all I had to do was put a couple of hamburgers on a plate and open the curtains. I could defrost things by opening the refrigerator door for two minutes. One time I thought I would cool off with a nice cool shower. There was no cold water the coolest I could get was luke warm. It was not really refreshing. I could have used the apartment pool to sterilize surgical equipment.

But. Damn. I miss that. I miss stepping outside and having all the fluid in my body evaporate. I miss not being able to blink because my eyes had dried out.

I’m also really getting tired of the green grass in August. It’s supposed to be yellow in August. Everything is supposed to be yellow this time of year. It went Spring, Green, Summer, Yellow, (no autumn) Winter, Brown. It was so easy it stayed 80 degrees until a week before Thanksgiving… a Blue Norther would blow in, drop the temperature 40 degrees in 15 minutes and it would hover around there until an Ice Storm at New Years, then it was 45 until February and then we started spring. Which lasted about two weeks and then Summer.

Here, we have Autumn. And in the winter, it snows. It snows and it stays on the ground for days. The school district closes every time the superintendent sees a snow globe. Last winter the schools were closed for weeks. If you wonder why children in North Carolina score so low on standardized tests? They Are Never In School.

Dallas wasn’t as paralyzed by snow and we got it so infrequently the city would put out a Gone Fishin’ sign until they could get the sand trucks out. Then we picked up and carried on. Here they lay down when there is a threat of snow. It does this every year and they still haven’t learned how to drive in it. Never In School.