Hot, Hot, HOT!!

We are not talking attractiveness (for which there is no charge) or awesomeness (ditto), when we speak of hot. (We are fans of Kung Fu Panda at my house.) We are speaking of--when you walk outside the air-conditioned cool of the house or office, the heat smashes into you like a brick. A really hot brick. Yeah, it got hot this week.

I am not surprised. This is Texas. It is summer. Texas + summer = HOT.

The temperature is not that hot, here on the island. It's 89F, (almost 32C) which would be reasonable--if the humidity were not somewhere in the vicinity of, oh, 900 percent or so. Yes, I do realize that technically, it is impossible to have a greater percentage than 100. But it feels like 900% humidity. If you were here, you would agree with me. Walking from the front door to the car door will have the average person sweating through his T-shirt. (Yeah, I know it sounds gross. How do you think it feels???)

So, of course, the crepe myrtles are blooming. They like the hot weather, don't really get to blooming much till the hot as Hades weather arrives. Our little island doesn't have as many crepe myrtles as I'm used to, in other Texas cities. We have oleanders, and the oleanders have been blooming like crazy for at least a month already. I figure they've got most of another month to go. Oleanders bloom a long time. Galveston has lots of oleanders, I'm told, because they are salt-resistant. They are not salt-proof, because the oleanders which were submerged longer and/or deeper in the Hurricane Ike surge have not returned. But most of the semi-submerged shrubs are putting out new shoots, or blooming valiantly on the few stems left living. Those less swamped are solid pink or peach or white with blooms. They're just gorgeous.

The granddog and I went for a beach walk today. It was hot already at 8 a.m., but there was a stiff wind blowing, which helped. Dolly was a very good dog, didn't pull, didn't try to go smell the other dogs or lick the people. The sand was extremely soft and hard to walk in, even where it was wet. We were there right at high tide, so the wet sand was dry underneath, hence soft. Tired me out right quick. So we didn't walk very far, but it was a good walk.

I think part of the reason Dolly was such a good dog is her little "adventure" last week. I went out to go walking one morning, and there was no Dolly in the yard. I made the boy get out of bed (before noon!) and he went to see if she'd gone to chase birds at the beach, and I drove down to the humane society. Apparently, she got out of the yard (a board on the fence came loose) and got picked up as a stray and taken to the humane society. Her boy tends to take her collar off when she's in the yard, so she didn't have her collar or tags. I was able to identify her right then, but we couldn't take her home till later when they officially opened for the day. She looked very mournful when I didn't get her out of the cage right then, all--"Gigi! Don't leave me!" And she was VERY happy when we did come get her to take her home.

Spent the weekend visiting with relatives, seeing the nephew graduate. Nice, snappy ceremony, with eating to follow. Ice cream the night of the graduation, and cook-out with cake and M&Ms the next day. I made myself go upstairs and work Saturday morning, and got almost 6 pages done. That's a lot for one day, the way things have gone lately. It was a good visit.