Erulisse Dances

It's getting hotter and I expect that I'll be a sweaty mess by the time I finish cleaning house at the end of the day. I'll be a cleaning tornado around my house when I get home from my errands mid-morning. I've cancelled everything else on my schedule and will be sitting down with gloves, chemicals, scrubbers and compounds to try and get the last things clean. Cleaning a house in our humidity and high temps is almost hopeless, but if I don't keep up with it ... well, let me just say that dirt is one of the super-villains of the world, but one that Superman and Batman would have no chance to defeat forever. I want some scientist to invent something that I can spray onto shower grout to forever eliminate mildew. It's SO frustrating. I've tried educating DH about wipe-downs, etc but it just never seems to sink in, leaving me with serious cleaning issues *sigh*.

( discussions about housecleaning, Seth and Sharon below the cut )

So, it is now August and the summer, which seems as if it just started last week, is already into its waning months. Oh, we still have the heat and the humidity, I am still going to have plenty of days when I fall asleep with the fan blowing on me and where I am complaining about the heat, but I am already looking at the various shades of green around me with a nostalgic feeling. Winter has its own beauty, no doubt. There are sparkling mornings after an ice storm that make me catch my breath as the sun hits the angled ice crystals. But, my preference is experiencing the snow rarely and, unfortunately, I live in the wrong state for that.

( pretty pics and talk about goals below the cut )

Finally our heat wave has broken. Last night around 6:30 pm a rainstorm passed through the area and dumped a wonderfully gentle but heavy sunlit rain onto us, dropping our temps from 102F (38.8C) to 88F (31.1C) in a few minutes. Another storm coming through in the early hours of the morning dropped the heat down even more. I can breathe again, I don't feel like a sticky piece of rubber baking on a hot sidewalk, I didn't stick to the sheets while sleeping, I'm SO relieved! This was a miserable stretch of days and we really needed the break. It's only July and we may still get some hot days, but I'm very happy about a weekend that will only have high temps in the 80's instead of the 100's. Yippee!

( pics and relaxed, cool talk below the cut )

Minnesota is generally a rather temperate climate, although it is humid in the summers. But we don't often have days-on-end in the upper comfort zones without relief. We're in the middle of a heat wave right now and uncomfortable is such a poor description of how we are all feeling. Actually, I could take out my broad brush and paint the entire US with it. We are hot. We are uncomfortable. We are packing the swimming pools and backwoods ponds, we are crowded into venues offering air conditioning such as movie theatres and restaurants. We are turning on the fans and air conditioners in our homes. And we are blowing power out in massive numbers from all of this overuse of electric power in a heat wave.

( pics and more below including some funky art and Le Tour de France )

 The Egyptian exhibit at the Science Museum that DH and I went to yesterday was wonderful.


( Text and pic below the cut... )

Catastrophe always seem to happen when I'm out of town. Those "happenings" are part of the reason why my poor DH really hates it when I leave town. This year's conferences were no exception.

( Pic and Crises below the cut... )

1 - Before leaving for Bead & Button Show, my car decided it needed $2000+ of work *head...desk...thunk*.

2 - Before leaving for MCWC I needed a refill on a prescription. That turned out to be impossible to achieve. The doctor's office finally called me with an approval AFTER I was already at my conference. Obviously THAT didn't actually happen until I returned a week later. *head...desk...thunk* again...

3 - And on that note...this prescription used to be part of the $4 generic program at Wal-Mart, Target and other stores. How much does it cost now? $75/tube! WTF??? My three tubes which should have set me back $12 set me back $225! Ouch! (It's a miracle med for me though and already, after only having it for two days, my hands are almost 100% healed with only two applications. Goddess bless whoever invented this stuff.)

4 - When I had called my DH on Saturday while I was attending the final day of the conference, he sounded pretty crabby (not that it's unusual, but...). I later found out that we had 5-1/2 inches of rain in an hour early that morning, and that shrew burrow holes had caused a leak into my craft room and yet another flood. Oy! The water was restricted to his side of the room, so not as bad as we've sometimes had in the past (we've had waterfalls into that room in the past, flooding up four inches or more of water - very nasty), but it was still a pain, requiring wet/dry vac, fan set-up, and the dehumidifier running. And then, of course, he had to get to work since he was covering my shift for me.

5 - The heat! -'Nuff said...

And now, Chickie is off on her vacation. And my luck seems to have followed her to Montana because...

6 - Chickie phoned me yesterday and, while her Mom was visiting her Grandmother in her nursing home, the nursing home cat - apparently known to have "issues" with visitors - bit her mother. Her mom has subsequently developed a raging infection to the bite and is hospitalized, where she will be for at least another day, perhaps two. Since Chickie and her Dad were actually camping in Glacier National Park, unreachable by cell phone, etc., and a cousin had to drive up to the campground to get them. They left everything set up in the hopes of returning in a day or so. I'm not sure I would be quite so trusting...but that's just me.

So...now you see why I am strongly discouraged from leaving town....guess I'll be here for a while - LOL.