All winter long I thought I was living in Seattle. Forty-five days of rain straight without stopping? Where am I?

Now I believe I've been transported to Baja. Today was supposed to be cooler than the past two days, and I think it is, but right now *in my house* it is 99 degrees F. Julian is napping in a pool of his own sweat. I can barely move. OK, 99 degrees is cooler than 103, but it still sucks.

Yes, we really should turn on the airconditioner, this is insane. But we've had it on for the past two days, and today was supposed to be the beginning of a cooling trend, so figured we should just open every window and door and turn on all the fans and deal.

Until I saw that it's 99 degrees in here. Yeah, I think I'll go turn on the AC now. Or maybe I should just go wake up J and go to the pool.

The poor chickens haven't laid eggs in two days now. I go mist them down and feed them frozen peas every few hours. I fill up their water bowl with ice cubes and by the time I'm done misting down the area, the cubes have all melted.

I picked all the plums off our tree, and I really need to get started making jam with them, but the idea of boiling a large pot of water on the stove for 35 minutes, NEXT to another large pot of bubbling jam for 25 minutes, and having to stand near those two large hot boiling pots on a hot stove billowing steam...not very appealing. I even turned off the stereo today because the receiver almost burned my hand when I touched it.

Thank goodness we have a barbecue with a standalone burner. I've been making all our meals outside lately because it's unbearable to turn on the stove or oven. But even then, it's right next to the chickens' new home under the big sycamore tree, and I don't want them to have to endure any extra heat, poor things.

I can't even imagine what other people are enduring right now. Our house is shaded by big trees and bamboo and very open and well-ventilated. If it's 99 degrees in our house, it must be *well* over 100 in other homes, and I shudder to think about people living in upstairs apartments. The upstairs in our townhouse was an absolute INFERNO on even mildly hot days when we lived there, and our AC in that place was worse than useless. It just blew hot air around. Yikes.

OK, what's the craziest thing ever? I keep seeing joggers go by. Geez, it's over 100 degrees out and blazing sun, I think I'll go for a nice jog right now. Why bother waiting until later when it cools down a bit? Nuts!

Tomorrow we're headed to the beach, where I'm sure it will be lovely. Those refreshing icy Pacific waters are going to feel GREAT.