112 Degrees

I don't think I've spent a whole lot of time griping about the heat we have had this summer in Oklahoma. I actually believe they are calling it a "heat dome," although I fail to grasp the technical meaning of this phrase. I've been sucking it up and dealing with the heat without much complaining for a few reasons:

• I don't want to look like a second-trimester-whiny pregnant lady when there are women about to give birth dealing with this same heat. The fact remains, however, that the heat is nauseating.
• I love living in Oklahoma and don't want to gripe about this great state. I lived so far away for four years and don't have the heart to gripe about my homeland because I have come to so appreciate it.
• What's the point? There's nothing I can do about it. Whining only makes other people whiny.

But today I feel kind of whiny. I think this heat is finally catching up to me. I always used to tell people when we lived in Minnesota, 'It's not the cold temperatures that get to me. It's the LONGEVITY of the cold that gets to me.' I remember specific days in Minnesota winters when the temperature was a blustery -25 degrees with a windchill at -50. On those days it was absolutely necessary for my wussy butt to take an extra scarf to breathe into or else my Southern lungs would have crystallized and shattered. But it wasn't those days that got me down and blue; no, it wasn't those days at all. It was the days in late February, and even late March, when I was speaking on the phone to loved ones in Oklahoma who were wearing shorts and grilling and enjoying the sun, and I still had months of winter to endure. THAT was the killing point for me, the times when the high temperature of the day was still below zero, and it was like that for 17 days in a row before (yay!) a high of 6 degrees was predicted in the forecast.

Now I face a similar exhaustion, only the temperature is in the other extreme. It's something like 40 days now this summer in OKC that temperatures have been over 100 degrees, and here is the forecast for the next seven days:

The great Nero Wolfe would say, "Confound it!" So confound it, I say! It's hot, and I'm ready for the fall! And from this moment forward I have decided to exchange all whiny thoughts to anticipatory dreams of the fall: orange leaves that fall and crunch, grilling out on the porch, sips of cider (I mean hard cider, so that's why they are merely stolen sips), pumpkin candles, baking, holidays, pomegranates and apples, light jackets, and FOOTBALL! It's coming! Hang in there, fellow Oklahomans! And Texans! This cannot last forever!