The Heat of Summer

I am sitting here this morning with the door open, enjoying an infrequent, cool morning. The temperature outside is a mere 70. I'm sure that it will be going up later, but for now, it is just right. I just wish we had had more mornings like this during the summer. Instead, we have been in an oven since late June.

My last post prayed for the end of winter and the beginning, finally, of spring. It seems that Mother Nature forgot to have spring this year. We went from the rainy misery of April and May straight into the blast furnaces of June, July and August. I'm not sure, but if I had to guess, I'd say that we had a record number of days over 90 this summer. And here we are, at the end of August, still having to run the air conditioner due to the excessive heat.

These horrible heat waves (and there have been a couple of breaks, so it is plural) have severely limited my outdoor activity. Some days, the air conditioner has gone on at 10am and stayed on until after 10pm. A couple of days, I haven't turned it on and simply sweated through temperatures in the high 80s. When the temperature is so high with the amount of humidity that we get here in Illinois, it is extremely hard to draw a full breath outside of an air-conditioned environment. Short trips to the post office and to get groceries (by car) and walks across my parking lot to the garbage dumpster have been about it. And that's a shame because I finally have a doctor who has found the correct medication to help my arthritis and I would have been capable of doing a lot more, if it hadn't been so darn hot!

Anyway, school started here yesterday, and that is usually a harbinger of cooler weather. Unfortunately, it appears that the little break in the weather that we're experiencing this week (mid 80s instead of mid 90s) is only that - a little break. The forecasts have the temperature climbing back up into the high 80s and mid 90s again next week, and staying there for a couple of more weeks, at least.

Ah, well, I'm sure that in a few months, we will all be wishing for some of this hot weather to warm us up. One thing that I've noticed in my lifetime is that every really hot summer is usually followed by a really long, cold, snowy winter (have you noticed the tails on the squirrels lately?). So, I'm going to sit back and continue to enjoy this lovely cool morning while I can. By the way, in the time it took me to write this entry (about ten minutes), the temperature has risen to 74.