Did I say it was hot? 113 degrees at the moment, with 24% humidity and a chance of it getting to 115 degrees before the day is over, with no immediate relief in sight. According to www.weather.com it's rare that we have this kind of heat. The dogs go out long enough to relieve themselves and hustle right back in to the cool tile in the foyer. I can't blame them. We fill their water dish at least 10 times or more a day. I guess that is why the days are called dog day afternoons. So hot you just want to sleep the day away.
Next Thursday is our first chance for rain. There is a 60% chance for the wet stuff, at this point in time anything will be a welcomed relief. Even some cloud cover would be welcomed. We aren't too picky.
Actually I would really like to have some cool weather come through. Guess I would have to be a little closer to Canada for that. We are looking at about another 60 days or so of hot weather. On the Norman City website they have now started asking people to restrict the watering of their lawn on a voluntary basis.
I sometimes wonder how our grandparents and great grandparents kept cool. I can remember my mom telling me about how grandma would put a block of ice in the old washtub and set it on a chair, then set an electric fan on a small table and have it blow across the ice. Mom said that when she was little, grandma would strip her down to her panties for her nap, take a wash cloth, dip it in water then wring it out and twirl it in the air to make it cold then rub her body with it. She would then put talc on my mom and start up the fan blowing across the ice. Sometimes she would rub my mom down with rubbing alcohol.
We had a water cooler window unit in our house where I lived when I was 5. Mom would turn that on during the day as I was not allowed to go outside to play due to the heat. My dad saw that I needed to be outdoors so he rigged up a string of lights from our back poach out to my big swing set out at the back of the lot. Our lot was about 60 feet wide and 150 feet long with the house being up close to the road. As far as the swing set was concerned, this was not your normal sized swing set, but one made out of oil field pipe welded together to make a huge swing set. The string of lights lit up the whole back yard as each one was a 100W bulb, there were at least ten sockets for lights. Dad wanted to make sure I could see so I could play outside in the evening when it was cooler. I had a ball playing outside at night and riding my bike around the yard and exploring the depth of the brush at the back of the property. Does that make me a Vampire?
Now I understand why farmers get up before the crack of dawn when it is cooler to do their chores. I could never understand the concept of wearing long sleeved shirts when it was so hot, but as they get wet with sweat they become mini air-conditioners as the wind blows through them.
The main thing to keeping cool is lots of water for hydration. We have to keep the wet stuff inside us as well.
How are some of the ways you kept cool as a kid? What did your parents or grandparents do? Inquiring minds want to know!
Happy trails...with love
It got all the way up to 80 degrees here yesterday, but when I called it a night it had dropped to 60 degrees outside. This morning the outside thermometer was reading 58 degrees at 7 o'clock. Just wish you could share some of the Colorado cool!
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree with Alan!!! Being just 2 miles west of Alan our morning temp was 41* in the morning. You DO need to come up to big meadows next year.
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