So what is it like, you may ask, taking care of two-year-old twins at 113 degrees?
Well, first of all, I'm not sleeping well because of the heat. We run the swamp cooler most nights, but it's been humid recently, so it ends up being too hot and I have night sweats and wake up feeling a little spacey and cranky.
Daddy goes to work, twins and I have breakfast, day gets going. Thursday has become a problematic day because it's library day, but the library doesn't open until 11 am. Normally we go to the park in the morning, but on these hot days I like to be home by 10, not sitting in the park at 10:59. So there's a problem.
We hung around at home, waiting for it to be time to go. I really needed to get online and do some banking stuff (a CD maturing in a few days, had to decide what to do with it -- what a bad time for a CD to mature, just when the interest rates are practically zero). So I worked on that, and for once the boos left me alone. They were outside on the patio, I could hear them, no screaming. Then I got off the computer to see what was going on and found them covered with crayon marks -- crayon pieces clutched in their hands -- crayon markings all over the french doors, the table, the water table on the patio... Where did they get these crayons? I still don't know. FORTUNATELY they were washable crayons, so I washed everything -- diaper wipes worked well on the french doors -- and got things back to normal.
Then it was 10 am and time to go to the park. With great trepidation I drove us there. On the way we passed 2 electronic signs on businesses that gave the temperature. One said 98 and one said 103. Either way, it was clearly really hot already. We got to the park, parked the car in a bit of shade, and headed for the playground equipment.
The boos' new thing at the park is they don't play on anything -- they just demand food. So we ate the package of animal crackers I had brought, drank our water, and then just sat around. There were some young ravens in the trees near us and we discussed the "ray-rays" at length. There were almost no other children at the park, but I noticed that the few others were also not moving much. And guess why? Could it be because it was hot????
At 11 I ended this charade of being at the park, plunked them in the stroller, and walked to the library. The children's section has a low bookcase covered with board books, and I parked the stroller there so that the boys could look at board books while I grabbed a few regular picture books. I was only a few feet away from them, but I didn't notice what was going on. Fortunately the head librarian wandered over and took a look. "Uh, Mom?" she said, politely. I ran over. "Yes?" She showed me what they had done -- one of the board books had paper in it that could be torn and either Baby A or Baby B had just ripped it to shreds. I was horrified. "I think it can be fixed, so we'll just charge you a dollar," she told me. (A dollar is their weirdly low standard fee to repair a book.) I wanted to cry, or at least pay more than a dollar, since the book did not look fixable to me. I figured it was time to go, so we checked out quickly (paying our sad little dollar) and left.
Next stop was the grocery store -- even though it was 11:30 and way over 100 degrees -- because when else could we go? I couldn't have gone BEFORE park and library, because then the food would have sat in the hot car cooking itself that whole time. I will say that Albertson's was deliciously cool and I would have liked to spend the whole afternoon there. But eventually we had to go back to our hot car and go home.
Lunch followed, followed by more rambunctiousness. We stayed indoors and that got old quickly. I tried to hang on, stay alert, and pay attention to their every move, since they obviously cannot be left alone for any period of time right now.
At 2:00 the patio thermometer read 110; by 2:30 it was 113. At 3:00 we left on our nap drive. I decided that I was just going to drive for the rest of the afternoon, and I did. We went to Olancha and back, and then I just drove around and around the block, essentially. My carbon footprint is the size of an elephant (not an elephant's footprint, an actual elephant), but really, what the heck else am I going to do?
Finally at 5:30 I gave up and went home. The house was an oven, even though we'd left the swamp cooler on. A storm was moving in -- yes, a storm -- and the humidity level was rising, which makes the swamp cooler useless. I turned the swamp cooler off and turned the A/C on. We have a very old, inefficient air conditioner that is very expensive to run, so we don't use it much -- but I just had to. It was still 108 degrees outside -- 87 degrees inside -- in the hallway, which is the coolest place in the house -- and it was humid.
And then I had to make dinner! I looked at the package of fish sticks in the freezer. It said: Preheat oven to 425 degrees. I closed the freezer door. But then I opened it again. What else was I going to make? Baby B won't eat eggs. I'm a lousy pancake maker. I set the oven for 425 degrees.
After dinner I realized that the sky had gotten very dark. Here came our storm! The babies and I went outside to feed the tortoises and the wind was raging, blowing dust in our eyes. I sat on the patio with my novel as the babies played around me, and I realized I was starting to see flashes of lightning. There was also a rainbow. No rain, though we did get just a little bit later in the evening.
And now here I sit, listening to the wind blow. We turned off the A/C, and the swamp would be useless. It's hot. The low tonight is supposed to be 79.
How do people survive this heat all summer? I'm truly baffled. Am I going to drive my car up and down the highways all summer long? Or maybe we'll just move into Albertson's.
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