Hello, August

August 1. We are over half-way through the year. Hard to believe. And school starts August 22!

I survived my first week of work just fine. Let’s see how the second week goes. 😉

If you’re wondering how hot it is here, I took a picture of my backyard thermometer yesterday:

In case you can’t tell, that reads 116 degrees F. This is in full sun, about mid-afternoon and on the ground. The official high yesterday was 102. I think that’s 28 days of triple digits in a row now. We will continue the trend, though, through the week. The high on Wednesday is supposed to be…108. I seriously want to fling myself off a bridge. I’m so sick of summer. I’m sick of sweating the second I step out of the shower. I’m sick of the AC running nonstop from morning until night. I’m sick of waking up in the middle of the night…sweating. It’s just bloody hot. This is turning out to be the second hottest summer on record for us. It’s like the pit of Hell opened up and breathed on us or something. And it’s dry. We haven’t had a drop of rain in months. Everything is burning up. The yards are turning brown. Trees are dying. We’re spending hours watering our trees so they don’t die and fall on the house. I’m scared of the electric and water bills in the next two months. No one is mowing because there’s nothing to mow. And it’s too hot to mow anyway. You seriously could fry an egg on the sidewalk.

So. Yeah. It’s hot. Even my husband–who loves summer–has complained about the heat. August is normally our hottest month so I’m not very excited that we’ve finally made it.

I’ve been a little down in the dumps lately what with all the heat, the stress of going back to work and still mourning for my kitty. I come home from work and still expect to see him sitting at the garage door waiting for me with a yawn and a stretch. It hit me hard this week and I got emotional over it. Even now, I get a lump in my throat writing about it. A friend of mine suggested maybe the cure would be a new kitty. I’m not sure how ready I am. It hasn’t even been 30 days yet.

In an effort to get me out of the house and to cheer me up, the Man dragged me out to Southlake Town Squre Saturday (I slept until 9:30; it was glorious). I admit, I had fun. We got out early enough that it wasn’t too bad in the heat. I got a cute little cardigan at White House Black Market and then found a deal on some great classic black pumps at Nine West. Buying shoes is a great way to cure the blues, isn’t it? Then we meandered down to have lunch at Snuffer’s and by then it was time for the movies. We headed to the theater and saw Cowboys and Aliens. Loved it! If you want to know what steampunk is, go see this movie. Harrison Ford was excellent, Daniel Craig was hot and rough and tough, the aliens were gross and…oh, yeah, there were even indians. Good ones. Who teamed up with the cowboys to battle the icky aliens. I take my almost-10-yr-old to most PG-13 movies, but this one was a little on the intent/gross side. It’s not for kids under 13. Captain America, though, is great for the 10 and up crowd. We all saw that and loved it. I can’t wait for The Avengers next year (or the new Conan this Fall as a matter of fact).

After the movie, we meandered through Barnes & Noble where I coveted the new George R R Martin book, A Dance With Dragons. I didn’t buy it because I’ve just started book three and I’d really rather have it in mass market paperback size. I browsed through the new romance books but didn’t find anything I had to have. So we headed to Eddie Bauer after that and then Victor’s Secret where I had some coupons and got a steal on some unmentionables. 😉

By the time we left, we’d been there nearly seven hours. And we still had more shopping to do. We had a stop at Best Buy and JCPenney where I got the kiddo some jeans for school and me another pair of shoes (three total for the day). The cool thing was, I had put dinner in the crock pot so it was done and ready by the time we got home. I put bone-in skinless chicken breasts in the crock pot and covered it with this marinara sauce and let it cook all day. The chicken fell off the bone it was so tender. We made some pasta to go with it. Yummy!  

We had more errands on Sunday. We stopped in at Office Depot for some supplies, then headed to the pet store for fish supplies. I looked at the kitties up for adoption. They were all cute. Got home and did four loads of laundry and cleaned the fish tank, then baked a batch of chocolate chip cookies and made homemade enchiladas for dinner. I used ground turkey instead of beef and it was really good. I was surprised. I expected it to be…not so good.

Did a critique for a friend, wrote this blog entry and then got some words in. And then…the weekend was over. Time flies when you’re having fun, I guess.

Hope everyone had a great weekend and here’s to a productive (and COOL) week.