Pudding, Steak, and Cake

I've decided to devote mornings to priming the rental house. It's been close to a hundred degrees for forty-five days this month alone, and it may not pay to put off painting until it cools down, because it's possible it will remain this temperature until approximately 100,000 years after the death of Sen. Mitch McConnell (Rep--Kingdom of Coal). But it's been horribly warm in the mornings too, and that is how I discovered the precise temperature at which primer turns into pudding and slides off the house.

It's always something, with pudding. You put in all the ingredients and then you stir and stir and stir over low heat and nothing ever seems to be happening and you re-check the recipe and sure enough it does say "over low heat" but you start to lose confidence and you crank up the burner a little and start casting a longing eye toward the drawer with the cornstarch in it, and then all of a sudden, BAM, pudding. In fact, pudding that can stand up and march out of the pan. So it's all very temperature-dependent. And the primer on the rental house turned into pudding at precisely 10:38am, and when I checked the temperature graph for the day I found out that it was, at that moment, a bazillion degrees. So mark that down.

If I'd waited until afternoon, I could have stuck my paintbrush in the can and pulled out a can-shaped block of primer on a stick. It's fucking hot, is what I'm saying. Dave, as usual, went for a long walk and when he came back he was brown all the way through and his juices ran clear. I spent some time outside also, and by mid-afternoon I'd started to pull away from the sides of the pan and spring back lightly when pressed in the middle. I was a little flat, but that's because I don't have any eggs anymore. I should be presentable with a nice topping of the little crisp, crumbly bits that used to be my garden. So we're totally ready for company, if they should happen to be cannibals.

I've had some experience with this nonsense. I grew up in what would have been the shadow of Washington, D.C., if it had any shadows in the summertime. We coped. We opened up the house at night and exhausted the air out with a fan and then sealed it up tight in the morning and drew the shades, and usually we could get all the way to early afternoon before having to lie down on the linoleum in front of the little round black oscillating fan, breathing shallowly, waiting to die, and dreaming that some day someone would invent air conditioning.

And someone did, and we all love it. Even though it is helping make everything hotter, we all love it.

7/29, 45.53N 122.67W, 107.7F

The second sound you heard the other evening was the sound of me weakly stabbing myself in the head with an ice pick. The first sound was my neighbor saying "it's supposed to get down to 104 degrees tomorrow."

In other news:

It is not possible to lay your wrist veins open with an oscillating fan. The blades just quit.

The cord from the ceiling fan is not strong enough to hang yourself from.

Spoiled fruit will not kill you outright.

If you put your head down and charge straight into the pointy corners of the refrigerator, it feels pretty good until you come to again.

Thighs can be removed from a plastic lawn chair by gently inserting an ice pick under the edges and prying up. To remove skin from a metal lawn chair, allow to bake until crisp (fifteen minutes), scrape up with a spatula, add barbecue sauce and serve.

All the doorknobs are hot. Just open it and go in.

Just because the toilet seat is unusually warm, it doesn't mean it's turning Japanese. You can wait all day, and it's not about to squirt water at you or dry you off. You're still on your own.

Your local newspaper is offering helpful tips to cope with the heat, right on the front page. "Wear Sun Hat" is one, accompanied by a helpful drawing of a Sun Hat. "Seek Shade" is another. There is a helpful drawing of a generic tree in profile with a dark spot next to it, an arrow pointing at the dark spot. You are one of the last fifteen people who still subscribe to your local newspaper, and your local newspaper suspects you are a moron.

Black fur absorbs heat. Fur can be removed from the thighs with a damp sponge. Cats can travel about fifteen feet in the air before returning to earth. The Band-aids are in the pantry.

There is a temperature above which your computer tower will actually begin to pant. Windows Vista, however, still freezes.

About ten degrees before the point at which life ceases to exist, humor dies. I am not funny. You are definitely not funny.

Why, yes, it IS hot enough for me, thank you! Ha ha! Have you met Mr. Ice Pick?