Wow, is it hot.  For the past two days I've been retreating into air conditioned stores or staying in the car with the A/C on.  Granted, it's only been in the high 80s and 90s, but it's been enough to make me desperately wish for winter.  I even made my desktop a winter scene, in the hopes that if I see it I'll believe it.  Think cold, think cold, think cold... 

Even with all my precautions I still ended up getting heat cramps and a headache.  At least it wasn't partial:  yesterday the right side of my head split open; today it was the left.

I am so thankful for iced coffee.  I call it "air-conditioning-in-a-cup".

It only has to be about 85 before I go cracker-dog and start wiggling Jell-o.  When it gets into the 90s I end up on the verge of tears because my body can't do anything else to cool itself down.  In the Army they said that if a person had suffered a heat or cold injury, he or she was more susceptible to having another one.  We had to wear these arm bands or some other kind of marker to show that we had had a weather-related injury.  I hit the ground during a Change-of-Command ceremony one time because it was hot and I hadn't taken care of myself.  Since then I've had a hard time with the heat.  But I'm sure that being a native northerner has a lot to do with it, too.

So last night there was nothing I could do.  I just sat in front of the fan and wished for rain.

I know a lady in Albuquerque who wrote that it had hit 104, and she thought she just might have to turn the A/C on in her car... and she's pregnant.  Those are some tough people over there.

So anyway, lately I have been mostly occupied in getting our new apartment ready for moving in.  I cleaned, painted, and moved appliances around.  We got our washer and dryer (woo-hoo!) and the landlord measured for a new refrigerator today.  There aren't any hook-ups, so I'm getting creative with the dryer vent.  If I can, I'll post a picture.

Painting was quite a learning experience.  In Bible School we were repeatedly told that "Preparation is never wasted time."  Boy, did that ever hit home.  Only about 40% of painting actually involves applying paint.

So, after I got all that done, I decided the carpet needed to be deep-cleaned.  So yesterday morning--the hottest day of the year, heat warnings all over the place--I got up at 6:00, after getting to sleep at 2:00.  I got to Wal-Mart at 7:00 and it was already 82 degrees.  I was very tired and on the verge of crankiness.  I walked into the customer service area to get a Rug Doctor-rip-off-of-all-time-machine (not realizing it was a rip-off yet).  So I'm standing there attempting to study the machines and bottles of chemicals through bleary eyes, and the lady behind the counter begins telling me that this is the wrong day to do that, and if she were me she'd do it another day, and she went through the entire weather report, which I had just heard in the car, and then she began talking like I wasn't the one she was talking about.  This pushed me over my grumpy edge, and I thought, "Why don't you just shut up and let me be a customer and you just smile and say 'Yes, Ma'am, thank you, have a nice day' and let me DO WHAT I WANT TO DO, THIS IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS, DON'T YOU THINK I KNOW HOW HOT IT IS!?!"  Grrrr.  But there was a voice in the back of my head saying, "You know she's right."  Well, harumph, I could get it done before it got too hot (it was three degrees from cracker-dog, remember?). 

Then I started adding up how much it was going to cost, and suddenly that lady became a woman of wisdom, endued with superior knowledge and judgement.  I had gone in there gritting my teeth because I thought I was going to have to pay $30 to clean my little living area carpet.  Oh no, it was:

$22 for the machine

$12.99 for ONE LOUSY BOTTLE OF CLEANER

$5.00 or so for the little bottle of anti-sudsing agent, which for some reason they can't incorporate into the cleaning solution in the first place.

$5.00 or so for tax (gotta love New York)

Somehow my weary brain was able to calculate all that and figured out I'd be spending nearly $45 to clean a carpet about the size of a small bedroom, that wasn't all that dirty after all, on the hottest day of the year, when I felt half dead.

So I took her advice and I walked away--right over to the display of carpet steaming machines for sale in the housewares section, and saw that for $20 more I could OWN one that didn't require any chemicals, just water.  What a rip.

So I went home and took a nap.  Then when I woke up, I went shopping.

Moving is not very spiritual, and now I'm realizing that doing something like this really requires that extra attention be paid to the little, routine things; like prayer, spending time with my husband, plain old eating right, laughing.  I'm not going to kill myself simply to get it done.  Today we had a nice prayer meeting at church, and it just felt good to take time out to say "Thank you".  It got my mind back on track, and He helped me realize that:

1. Everything I do is to bring glory to God.

2. Stressing myself out does nothing good for Him or me.

3. He is truly a comfort.

"I got a feeling everything's gonna be alright..."

1st Brigade is back from Iraq and the stores and streets are filling up again.  They got back about Thursday, and so Saturday a lot of the guys and their families were out at the mall and such.  I saw some new fathers, obviously not sure which end of their new child was up.  One dad was trying to hold his daughter, who couldn't have been much older than a year, and she was squealing at the way this strange guy who just invaded her life was carrying her.  Dad just looked perplexed and dismayed at making her cry.

Then there was another soldier who I've seen before.  His boys--who probably were just learning to talk when he left--had him wrapped around their little fingers, and were acting like they were with a babysitter, yelling for mom when a serious situation came up--which gave dad an opportunity to beat a hasty retreat.

It seemed like a lot of the moms left them on their own on purpose.

In the rural areas of New York, I've noticed that little towns and villages use sirens to call the volunteer fire-fighters to a scene.  In Port Jervis, where I grew up, it was usually a series of blasts from a loud horn given in code to indicate where exactly they were needed.  Up here in Northern New York, they use air raid sirens--all out, nuclear-war-is-imminent air raid sirens.  I can only imagine what all these infantry soldiers are going through--especially the ones who are coming here for the first time after being deployed to a war zone.  One of my neighbors, a Blackhawk pilot, told me that when she first moved here, it totally freaked her out; she froze in fear.

To make matters worse, they not only use it for calling volunteers, but they also use it to tell us all the time.  At 12:00 noon, it's not that bad.  But every night at 10:00 p.m. they set it off.  I think it's supposed to let everyone know that the curfew is in force, if there is still one.  In reality, it's more like, "WAKE UP, EVERYONE!  IT'S 10:00!  NOW THAT ALL YOU SOLDIERS ARE PARALYZED WITH FEAR, IT'S TIME TO GO TO BED!"  Honestly, can somebody use some brains up here?

So that's about all that's been going on.  We're not going to have such easy access to the internet for a few weeks, so it may be a while before I post again.