Yes. It Was Hot.

Yesterday was the hottest July 11 on record in Seattle. How hot? 97° was the official temp, but The Spouse said it was 99° here. Of course, we have our thermometer on the south side of the house. So let's stick with 97° just for the sake of discussion.

No. I'm not going to complain.

I'm not a big fan of the heat and I've never been a 'slather on the cocoa butter and let's go sunning near a shiny body of water until our bones are tanned' kinda gal. (Which is why, I'm sure, I possess such a youthful appearance despite the nearing of the half century mark. Well, that and the portrait in the attic that is steadily growing older).

But I am not going to complain. I'm not going to complain because it's all about perspective. The way I see it, there is only the most remote of possibilities that it will get that hot again this summer. For why? Because we have all those mountains and ocean fronty things and such and the weather just changes too much. We don't get hot months, we get random hot days. Chances are it will not get as hot here again as it did yesterday. Which means anything lower than 97 is going to feel downright balmy. (Just like "cold" doesn't mean the same thing now that I know what it's like to sit in a dark house without heat for 4 days in December).

And you know what else? As far as I'm concerned it supposed to get hot in the summer. If it doesn't, well, then it doesn't feel very summery, does it?

Tomatoes don't ripen.

Roses don't bloom and bloom and bloom.

There are things to drink that seem silly and light-weight in November. Gin and tonic, the quintessential summer drink. Mojitos, too. Crisp white wines. These are the things you drink in summer and they taste spectacular!

Bees don't bumble amid the lavender.

If it's not hot you don't have al fresco dinners. And al fresco dinners have a lovely way of stretching into fine apres al fresco dinner conversations.

No. I rather enjoy the random super hot day the same way I enjoy the surprise snowfall that sticks. Because stuff like that just doesn't happen around here that much, even with global warming.

I will say that I have decided that oscillating fans in the bedroom ought not oscillate. And here's why. If you are sleeping with a dog that occasionally yips in his sleep and a Spouse that snores, add in an oscillating fan and you have a recipe for a sleepless night. The fan needs to be arranged just so and set on "blow" so that it wafts it's cooling love over the three hot bodies that are lying on top of the covers. That way, the lightest sleeper of the group is able to make the sound of the fan a part of her rhythm and finally fall asleep rather that experiencing this:

(nodding off, almost there)....yip um....Schoooooooooooooosh....Snort-gark-SNORT....shoooo....(oooo(nodding off)...ooooSchoooooooooooosh...yip um grrrr...

All. Frakkking. Night. Long.

But other than that, I'm not going to complain. I complained back in the summer of '87, when it didn't rain from May until October. Now that was unpleasant. It never got super dooper hot, it just didn't rain. Everything got dirty and brown and dusty. And the moss on my Northwest born and bred back dried up and that made me really cranky. But a couple of hot summer days? That is as it should be.

"But it's too hot to do anything", comes the complaint.

"Exactly," says I, smiling serenely. If it's that hot, don't move. Drink something cold, stick your feet in a bucket of ice if you must, fill the paddle pool and frolic. Read under a tree. Eat some ice cream. Hot days are God's little way of saying, "Enough with the heavy lifting". (And yes, it sux if you actually have a job that requires heavy lifting in the dog days of summer but I don't and so I am selfishly waxing poetic).

The final fabulous thing about hot days? Cold food. Crisp food. Fruity food. Spicy food that makes you forget. Grilled food that didn't warm up the house because it was, well, grilled. So you know what that means, right? I know it's been pretty hot lots of places this week and we could all veer toward grumpiness. So let's have a blogluck instead.

I'm making a big bowl of gazpacho and some Korean short rib kabobs. The wine is chilling and the citronella candles are lit. What are you bringing?