Heat Wave

Posted on July 5, 2018 by TJ

I hope everyone in the USA had a wonderful Independence Day!

We had a quiet, uneventful holiday, which is just the way we like it. Both EJ and I are introverts who are re-energized by beauty, quiet, peace, nature, and animals. We don’t like crowds or drama.

JJ, his girlfriend, and her 3-year-old daughter stopped by for about an hour. They were going to eat with us, but apparently the day got away from them. They were very busy: JJ said that they went to a parade, swam in a river, and after visiting us were planning to go to his girlfriend’s Mom’s place, then visit a couple other people. JJ is completely different from we are. I think he is an extrovert who needs many people and much stimulation. After hearing about his day, I thought that, yeah, I’m really glad he is on his own now so we both can have the type of life we want.

Hannah Joy was happy to have visitors. We aren’t quite sure how she will act towards new people. She is lovable, but quite protective. We usually shut her in our bedroom if delivery or repair people come here because not everyone likes dogs and usually pitbulls/mixes aren’t given a second chance–so we want to protect Hannah. But since JJ’s girlfriend and her daughter will probably be repeat visitors, we wanted Hannah to meet them. She did very well, although she got super excited.

If it hadn’t been so terribly, terribly hot and humid, it would have been a perfect sort of day. It was about as uncomfortable as last weekend had been. We had all sorts of plans to work around the house this week and to maybe go rock hounding one day, but it’s been so hot and humid that our energy has drained away and we gotten little done. And our plans to get new flooring also morphed into needing to get our geo-thermal heating/cooling system repaired.

EJ and I discussed several times the possibility of buying a window air conditioner so we can alleviate our misery. EJ isn’t sleeping well at night or breathing well, and the smallest movement makes me sweat. The problem is that an AC would cost several hundred dollars and as soon as we get the geo-thermal heating/cool system fixed, it would be unnecessary. We were still seriously tempted to get the AC, but we decided to endure because we didn’t want to spend the extra money when we knew the repairs on the geo-thermal system would be expensive. So we melted in front of our fans and ate Moomer’s ice cream. We’ve been having basically one meal all week: hotdogs or hamburgers, potato salad, coleslaw, chips, watermelon, and Moomer’s because we didn’t feel hungry for anything too “heavy” and we didn’t want to heat up the kitchen/house by using the stove too much.

We got the estimates for the repairs to the geo-thermal system this morning. It’s kind of an “ouch” thing, but it pretty much will cost how much I guessed it would. I’m just glad it wasn’t as much as I was afraid it would be–my imagination kept pushing the numbers higher. EJ called the guy this morning to get things moving, because the sooner the repairs are made, the sooner we can have AC. It will make me feel better to have the geo-thermal system fixed because I imagine running out of propane in the winter and the trucks not being able to make it up the driveway to refill our tank.

There was a slight chance of rain yesterday, and we hopefully watched storms approaching on the weather radar on our computers. Our clouds got dark and thunder rumbled–but the storms veered off just a few miles away and we didn’t get any rain. Bummer. Our power flickered off and on a couple times. I said to EJ, “You know, the only thing worse than having no AC during a heat wave is have no power to run our fans.”

EJ read an article out loud to me this morning about a terrible heat wave in New England in early July 1911, and I realized it could be much worse. According to the New England Historical Society article, a terrible heat wave lasted for eleven days in 1911. At that time, ice and electric fans were luxuries and air conditioning was unknown. People fainted, many went insane and/or committed suicide, and thousands died because of the heat. People read newspapers each morning to find out how many had died overnight. Horses dropped dead in the streets. Tar bubbled up from streets. Boats oozed pitch and began to leak. Rail lines were bent by the heat and trains derailed. Trees dropped their leaves, grass turned to dust, and cows stopped giving milk. A police officer described nights during the heat wave as “the Big Wail” because exhausted mothers walked up and down the streets trying to comfort their crying babies. They feared putting their babies down to sleep because some never woke up. Thousands slept out on the streets or in the parks or on their roofs trying to find some relief. It’s an interesting article, and makes me very thankful that we aren’t experiencing such terrible conditions as they did. We have it easy.

After reading the article about the 1911 heat wave, I googled other historic events that happened in 1911. I read articles (and watched actual footage on Youtube) of “The Siege of Sidney Street” in London, the Krays, and the Ratcliffe Highway murders of 1811. I read about the terrible “Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire,” and about the destruction caused by the dam failure in Austin, Pennsylvania. I love following “rabbit trails” through history.

Hannah loved her broth-flavored ice bones. She chewed on them until they were gone.

There are several dozen lilies blooming along the driveway. There are more almost ready to bloom and lots of them that will never bloom because the deer ate them. They sure are pretty.

Mama Turkey brings her babies up the driveway every evening. I love watching them! They are out there as I write this post.

Tonight the temps are forecast to dip into the low 50s (F) and the high will be only 76 degrees. I’m hoping there won’t be so much humidity because that’s what really makes the heat unbearable!