Eleventy-Billion Degrees With a Chance of Toys

I really love the week-ends.  The only problem I have with week-ends is that they are never long enough.  There really should be more week-end than there is week.  That’s a movement I could get behind.

This was a good week-end for sure.  Much too hot for my liking the first half, but otherwise pretty good.  Not a whole lot happened, really.  It was hotter than blazes on Friday and my little apartment with no air conditioning was still eleventy-billion degrees at 1:30 Saturday morning when I finally went to bed.

I imagine Mischa has mixed feelings about days like Friday.  His fur coat certainly didn’t help any in the keeping cool department and you know it’s hot when he doesn’t even want to sit with me in the recliner, preferring instead to sprawl himself out on the floor to sleep.  On the other hand, on days like this it gets to be much too hot in my bedroom to sleep with the door closed.  For that matter it’s much to hot to sleep with any thing covering me and without the fan blowing directly on my body as I attempt to sleep. Since the door remains open, Mischa is allowed to come into the bedroom with me, which is normally not allowed.  It must be quite the toss up for him, be cool all day or get to sleep in the room with daddy?  Decisions, decisions…

Anyway, with it being the eleventy-billion degrees that I mentioned it was difficult to sleep.  But sleep I did… eventually.  My alarm clock went off at 9:30 because it was laundry Saturday and I didn’t want to be too late getting to Michelle’s house to do my laundry.  I was hoping the whole way that it would be cooler at her house than it was at mine.  I always feel bad going off and leaving the cat in the closed up house when it’s so hot, but really there’s no alternative.  I open all the windows that I can open and still consider my house secure, close all the shutters so the sun isn’t shining right in and turn on all the fans (there are five) maximum blow and oscillating to try and help matters, but on these days it often reaches 90 degrees (or more) in my apartment while I’m gone.  Poor kitty and poor me when I come home to it!

Another problem with this situation is with the extreme heat comes a loss of kitty appetite.  He hasn’t eaten much in the last few days and his already too light weight has gone down by three quarters of a pound (10% of his body weight – I wish I could lose 10% of my body weight in three days, but then it wouldn’t be any healthier for me than it is for him) and if he doesn’t start eating again, he’s building up to another trip to the vet.  Don’t know what they can do, though.

Anyway, I gathered all my dirty laundry, and cooler bag (Michelle gives me ice from her ice maker when I come over), opened the windows, closed the shutters and started the fans.  I headed out to the car and loaded up.  I arrived at Michelle’s house about 12:45 and hauled everything inside where it was just as hot as at my house, dang!  Nothing like running a clothes dryer all day in an already hot house, right?  I started my first load of laundry and we headed out to lunch at Red Lobster, Michelle’s a sucker for Red Lobster and they had a shrimp promotion – plus she was paying.  It was 102 degrees in Vallejo where the restaurant was.  After lunch we went to Target and Safeway and got back to her place around 4:30.  Three more loads of laundry waiting and it was obvious I was going to be there later than I anticipated.

I put the first load in the dryer and started the second load in the washer and we sat down at the dining table under the ceiling fan and played a couple games of Yatzee!

While we were playing I noticed that her balcony door was closed and I asked her if she really found it to be cooler with the house closed up and the blinds closed and the fans on.  She said she did.  So we sat in the heat with the house closed up and played the game.  It was fun, but man was it hot.  Finally about 6:30 she asked me to go out on the balcony and start the grill so she could start dinner…

Folks, it had cooled off by, like, 20 degrees!  It was actually very pleasant outside while still a steam room in her apartment! We ate dinner and watched Race to Witch Mountain while I finished my laundry.  I didn’t get home until nearly 11:30.  Fortunately, it wasn’t nearly as hot in the house as I feared it  would be and it cooled off pretty quickly when I opened doors and windows.  At 1:30 it was still pretty warm in the bedroom, so I went to bed with the door open, uncovered and with the fan blowing again, but around 3:30 in the morning I woke up somewhat chilly so I evicted the cat, closed the door and pulled up the covers.  I slept until around 10:00 Sunday morning.

When I awoke on Sunday, I set about taking care of some household chores while simultaneously trying to keep track of the time while trying to not  think about the fact that I was having my first “date” with Little that day or the nerves and anxiety that came with the anticipation of that.  I put away the laundry from the day before, swept the floors and cleaned up the kitchen.  Then I cooked and ate some hot dogs while I watched a little television and then it was time to shower, dress and head out.

I arrived at Little’s apartment a couple minutes before 2:00 prepared to take him for a fun-filled (I hoped) afternoon of Miniature Golf.  I was invited in and Little’s mother informed me that when the Big Brother of her other son came over, they hung out at the apartment for a couple hours so that the Little Brother and the Big Brother could get used to each other and would I mind doing that and we could go out the next time.  It made perfect sense to me; I just didn’t want to presume to invite myself to hang out at there house for a couple hours.

I asked Little to show me around, show me his room and his toys.  We sat on the floor in his bedroom for almost two hours and played with toy cars, ninja figures a batman figure and a…  He said it was a power ranger?  (I’m a little out of touch when it comes to such things.)  Then we did a jigsaw puzzle.  “It’s not mine; it’s my cousin’s.  It’s for girls,” he told me.  Then he pulled out some coloring pencils and paper and we drew pictures for each other.  He drew a turtle, a shark, a dolphin and a fish and colored the paper blue for the water and he wrote my name at the top.  I drew a bus for him (he starts the second grade today.)  He said it was cool and could I draw a car.  So I drew a red sports car, complete with racing stripe and smoking tire marks where it had peeled out.  Then he asked me to draw a motor cycle.  I’ve never drawn a motorcycle before but it turned out OK.   The rider was supposed to be a man in jeans and a leather jacket with a helmet but by the time I was finished it was clearly a dog… In jeans, a leather jacket and a helmet.

Then he asked me if I could draw a robot and when I was finished with that he asked me if I could draw it fighting with Godzilla…  Quite the imagination on this kid!  I am, by no means a great artist, but I did OK.

We checked in with his mother before I left and she said she could tell he was more comfortable now, so I guess you’d call the “date” a success!  I asked him  if he’d given any thought to what he wanted to do next week and he said he wanted to go to “the lake”.  I asked him if he meant Lake Merritt and he said, “Yes I want to go to Lake Merik.”

So, next Sunday, it’s Lake Merik!