The Dog Days

So having spent the better part of the summer either out of town or engaged in planning massive social events, one would think that I'm happy to be back home, enjoying life that has more or less returned to normal.

Enter the un-air-conditioned classroom on the Monday morning following a weekend where temps and humidity soared to torturous heights. Even my students accustomed to Thailand's climate told me that this was the hottest they'd ever been in their lives. There was no mistaking their words this morning: "Teach-ah, it so hot, I think I DIE!"

True, they also told me that they thought they were dying last January, but I couldn't disagree with their assessment of our current weather. Tomorrow I plan to teach entirely from a sitting down position. Should be interesting.

60 Hours To Go

So my parents and my brother and sister-in-law will arrive tomorrow, bearing some 50 pounds of fruits and vegetables, and hopefully most everything else that one needs to successfully host a backyard barbeque for 85.

Mark and I are frantically trying to prepare for the crowds, many of whom are my out-of-state relatives who have not yet seen our house. The pressure is intense, which is why I just spent the last 45 minutes crawling around our entire main floor on my hands and knees with a damp paper towel, trying to eradicate those ubiquitous hardwood floor dust bunnies.

Of course, I might be making better progress if I actually stuck to my to-do list, which includes things like sweeping, cleaning the bathrooms, dusting, raking and watering the garden. It does not include painting the basement, which I decided nonetheless to do yesterday on a whim.

The bathtub may be grimy (who will see that anyway?), but at least the Harvest Brown walls look gorgeous.