I'm fucking nuts. I
know this, I understand this, and I accept this. Some of my friends, relatives, and co-workers
also know this about me, and, for the most part, they either understand or
accept it; the rest learn to live with it.
Today is a perfect example.
Today, on the hottest (so far) day of the year, I decide that being
outside from morning until evening is a smart idea.
It starts out well enough.
My friend and I raid her neighbors' pool. The water is warm, not too warm and just
refreshing enough, but certainly not shockingly cold (thank gawd). We swim, relax, and float around for
hours. Okay, we attempt to float around
for hours.
We discover early on that we are both
flotation-challenged. Each time we try
to maneuver ourselves onto the two separate inflatable rafts, we dump sideways
into the water. Eventually I clutch on
for dear life and start bouncing off the edges of the pool, carooming around in
a lazy pattern. My friend, however, has
a bit more trouble. To be fair, the
float she has chosen is a bit more challenging and shoots out from under her at
least six times. Each time she dumps
overboard, she has to rescue her sunglasses from the bottom of the pool. I would offer to help her, but I am quite
certain I cannot make it onto my own float a second time. Round about Attempt Number Seven, she
successfully clings to the raft, and we are both bouncing off walls and into
each other like a couple of tumbleweeds drifting across the pool's surface.
When one of the owners of the pool comes home, he assures us
it's okay to be there (though I think we caught him by surprise, but then again
how many homeowners find two gorgeous babes in the pool -- and don't say none
because that's my friend you're talking about … and me), dives in to join us,
then mixes us each a drink that tastes exactly like an old-fashioned coffee
shake. Regrettably, I have to run to get
to an impromptu BBQ (second of the week, same place and same time). I abandon the floats and the two noodles,
knowing full-well I should've put them back where they belong even though I'm
too short to reach.
I run home, flick on the air conditioners (I don't like to
leave them on when I'm gone because they're kind of old and so is my house and
its wiring). I grab a quick shower,
blow-dry my hair as best as I can, and realize the shower is futile as I am
sweating bullets again already. The a/c
goes off and I'm back on the road again.
At the BBQ, even though we eat inside, the rest of the time
we spend sitting outside under a tree.
Surprisingly there has been a breeze most of the day. The problem is that it feels like a blast
furnace of air movement. But most of us
are tired of being in the house tied to our air conditioners, so we re-seat
ourselves under the tree after dinner. I
have to cut out early and hit the store, but as I stand, I realize I have
sweated through pretty much everything I am wearing. My clothes and I have turned into a giant
"Cling-On."
Ah, a multi-shower day
By the time I get home, the air conditioning has been off
for nine hours except for a few minutes when I showered after swimming. My attempts to get the house to a decent
temperature take about two and a half hours, so I do what any sane person would
do under these conditions: I start
laundry.
See? I'm telling you
I am fucking nuts. I could blame it on
the sun, the pool, the heat, the BBQ, the grocery store, the dryer. But the simple truth is that I don't have the
damn sense to come in out of the heat on the hottest day we've had in
months. Truthfully, though, since this
is day seven (or more) of the heat wave, I was getting kind of bored of these
walls. Besides, any time my friends and
I can laugh our fool heads off, the temperature shouldn't be a factor nor a
deterrent.
The heat is, for lack of a more plausible explanation,
driving me nuts, and it's a damn talented navigator.
