Summer Instability

Another hot steamy day today. A little more like late July than late June. Our pool time was disrupted by threatening thunderstorms. It appears the same may happen today.

My kids and I are a little disoriented, not really knowing what to do with all the time on our hands. There are only so many little in home projects you can motivate yourself to do in the infernal heat. Even the dog seems unenthused. He's basically planted himself firmly on a pillow on the floor of the family room for the past two days. I had such grandiose plans for daytrips to historic places, like St. Mary's City and Harper's Ferry. I wanted to go to the farm and pick fresh fruit, but I hate being out in the heat. What happens to all the motivation we have before summer actually begins? Even the kids seem to get lethargic. Their dreams of endless video games seem dull. Swimming into the evening isn't fun if the wrong kids are at the pool. The library is annoying if someone takes more then the alloted time to pick out their books. I'm sure we'll overcome.

My brain is cloudy and I need to start formulating a plan for dinner, yet I'm consumed with the lives of the characters in a book from the library. It's called "The Emperor's Children," and it's by Claire Messud. They are mostly late adolescents (emotionally, not chronologically) who live in the literary scene in NY, at least I think they are. I'might be wrong. I'm sure I'm supposed to find them endearing and pitiable, but I don't yet I still can't seem to put the book down. I find them all somewhat whiny and misguided. I think the main thing that keeps me interested in the book is trying to figure out who the patriarchical character (the emperor, I'm guessing) is going to bed. My apologies to Ms. Messud. I doubt she'll find her way to my blog where I oversimplify her work and slightly insult her. Again, I'm sorry.

My brother has a coworker who's mother is from El Salvador and she has shed some light on the whole dog doo blindness thing. It's of course, the obvious, a way to keeps kids away from dog poop. Still it seems a little extreme to me. She told him about a couple other Salvadoran superstitions. One is that you should never go to bed with wet hair or your nose will rot (sinus infection risk, maybe). The other is, place wet paper on a baby's forehead if it is in a room with a dog so evil won't get into it's brain. No clue what this is meant to prevent. I do feel relieved to know that the dog poop thing was a superstition that was meant for children and not something believed by the masses. I truly had no response to that.

I'm running out of pictures. This is one of my hydrangeas. I have 3, this one is blooming, another one is getting ready to, and the 3rd is not ready, and it doesn't appear it ever will be. One half of my garden gets virtually no sunlight and even shade plants struggle to bloom. At least they are green, and they certainly are better than the large gray gravel that was in the garden before we bought the house.