If we don’t get up to 100 degrees today, we’ll get very close. Yesterday it was 95, and tomorrow it’s supposed to be 94. It’s July, and our glorious reprieve is over: it’s hot. I’m keeping the house closed until the sun starts to go down this evening. I’m eating salads and drinking more water than I usually do. I’m wearing a tee-shirt, flip flops and shorts. The hoodie is sitting at the top of the laundry basket, an artifact missing its museum.
And I’m wondering how I survived my own childhood. I have no idea what it was like to be an adult in, say, 1970, but I’ve searched my memory and I cannot for the life of me recall even a tiny fraction of the hype we have today about the weather. The power grid on the East Coast is being pushed to its limits. People are having heat strokes, or about to. You should drink water, you should stay out of the sun if at all possible. Drink water, but don’t drink too much water, and the time to drink the water, according to medical editors on two of the networks, so far, is before you’re thirsty. People are dying. Oh no, some people on a boat got thrown overboard yesterday. Wear your life vest! Be careful, whatever you do. Don’t leave the babes – or the dogs – in the car when you run into the grocery store. If you do that, they could die. Last night, the most offensive weather guy in town did his hour-by-hour foolishness to make sure we all knew how ‘uncomfortable’ the evening would be. And this morning, on one of the local news shows, this little gem: your child’s ADD meds could cause some problems during extreme heat.
So today, I’m tuned into a radio station where everything is in Spanish, which I do not speak, read or understand. Therefore, I have no idea how dangerous the territory I’m in is. I hope I make it!
