04 | September | 2013 | Adventures and Musings of an Arch Druidess

It’s 103 today outside. That is too damned hot. I love LA but sometimes Sept and Oct are hotter than the summer months are supposed to be. And it’s muggy. When I was a kid it was never muggy here that was for people that lived back East. Back East to a native California is anything east of Bakersfield. This drove my dad nuts as he didn’t view Illinois as East but we got that from my mom since she was born in a midwifery in downtown L.A. and her mother got here January 1, 1901 from Toronto Canada. My dad was the newbe. He only got here in the 1930’s when he came to live with his aunt during the Depression.

When I was little the SF Valley was barely settled. I remember when it was mostly farming land as far as you could drive. But then people moved onto the farms and the oranges, walnuts and bean fields disappeared and were replaced by big lawns and pools and the weather changed and every year it gets more muggy and gross. I hate it. We are a desert and we steal the water we waste on lawns and pools and water features instead of using drought tolerant plants. We have two huge native sycamores out front so we have some shade and we have more leeway than places with no shade but we have plants like rosemary and lantana that are drought tolerant and the camellias are pretty drought tolerant because they are in the shade of the sycamores.

Anyway, the weather her has sucked this week and last night after I drove my sister to work at midnight I did something I never do, I slept with the ac on. It was the first full night deep sleep I’ve had in weeks because it’s been so hot. It was 82 at midnight last night and the walls were radiating all the heat they had collected during the day. I felt like I was living in an easy bake oven. The cat has been sleeping in the bathroom downstairs and ignoring me but last night she slept with me for the first time in a month. It was great until she decided to hunt the wild pigtail and made me levitate off the bed but I shoved her over and went back to sleep. I’m going to try to convince my sister that we need it on again tonight because I have to be at work early and I’d like to sleep. For once we can afford the electricity. Sleep before work is important. And if there is a breeze it’s my relatives rolling in their graves.