The jungle

I woke up this morning drenched in sweat, and although the dream I was having was a good one, it wasn't that great, if you know what I mean. Matt had already left for a big nasty Saturday full of meetings at work (somebody's got to do it, I guess), so I stumbled out of bed feeling hungover and strung out (I was neither, for the record) scrambled to the sink for a glass of cool tap water (thank ya Jesus) and creaked over to the thermostat to see just how hot it was in here.

EEEP! Matt must have brushed up againt the damn thing on his way out this morning, because it was set to ninety-five degrees. Fahrenheit. Good lord! I gasped, and swung the temp control lever down to its minimum, which is about 55 degrees. Hell, it's a perfectly decent 56 degrees out right now! Of course, we never set it at more than 70, more often we leave it at 65, because we're tuff stuff New England Yankee Stylee. That's right, in my house, you're told to Put On Another Sweater. Hell, the house I grew up in (where my mother still lives) still doesn't have upstairs heating. All through high school I had to wear two pairs of long underwear, wool socks, a hat and gloves to bed. I didn't have many sleep-overs in those days.

So I went around the house and opened every window that doesn't require a book or shoes wedged under it to keep it open (about 90% of all possible windows). The wind has been doing its November thing the last few days, rattling the leaves and the windows with gusts between 40 and 60 miles an hour -- there's no hurricane or anything, it's really just doing it because it can -- and so now the house is being scoured clean by high, dry, late Autumn (stiff) breezes. It's nice to be able to hear the leaves scudding across the driveway again, and the wind has pushed all the clouds out to sea, so the sky is a crackling bright blue.

What the hell am I doing inside? I'm outta here. It's time for a walk. Maybe the house will be less tropical by the time I get back.