"It's Too Darned Hot!"

Ack! It's hot. Oh, so hot. And humid. Oh, so humid. Pretty typical for Richmond this time of year.

I shouldn't complain; we've had a fairly mild summer to date, but these last few days--yecch! All I want to do is fill the bathtub with cold water, climb in, and stay there till fall. Even Sid the Cat, who's normally pretty stoic when it comes to the heat, has taken to perching atop his Kitty Condo directly in front of the only air conditioner I have (or can have, because of the aging circuitry in my apartment--people, I STILL HAVE FUSES instead of circuit breakers) and giving me that "Somehow, this is your fault!" look.

And with summer heat comes summer thunderstorms, which you'd think would cool things down a bit--warm air mass collides with cold front, rain, coolness, comfort--but, NO! 'Round these parts the hot concrete and asphalt re-heat the air, turning the rain into instant humidity, and then, to add insult to injury, the various lightning strikes almost guarantee a power failure somewhere.

This afternoon the power failure was on MY block--a LOUD-ASS clap of thunder immediately followed by an EXPLOSION in the alley, which meant, once again, the local transformer had blown its top (it does this on a regular basis). No air conditioning, no fans, immediate darkness, and one freaked-out kitty, who, by the way, would like you to know he wasn't really scared, but, rather, was seriously concerned about my well-being, hence his astounding leap across the room and into my lap--he wanted to...comfort...me in this crisis situation.

He did NOT appreciate my laughter.

Well, even on the brightest of days my apartment is pretty dark (I don't like the heat and I'm not all that fond of sunlight, either) and stumbling around the clutter (and avoiding Sid's tail, a difficult task as he insisted on walking between my legs--you know, to keep me from being scared) is not my idea of a good time. Fortunately, I had my trusty emergency Coleman Pack-Away Personal-Size Lantern nearby, which puts out simply oodles of krypton-powered light and makes litter box and food bowl location a non-problem. After all, these are the important things and once those were resolved Sid had no issues with my abandoning him for a couple of hours to open a Super-Secret Support Group meeting. In fact, he was curled up by the lamp and blithely ignoring me as I walked out the door.

He's a brave little kitty.