Four hours of wonder

In the deep darkness of the 5 a.m. morning last Saturday, I heard a strange sound. I had to dig into the far-back recesses of my memory to figure out what it was, the part of my mind where I keep those fuzzy memories of being in the church nursery as a baby or of blowing out the candles on my third birthday cake. It took a while, but I eventually pinpointed the sound: rain!

Texas has turned colorless this summer. The skies are pale, the grass is dead, and the flowers just don't exist at all. For the past two months we've had 100+ degrees of stillness, with not a drop of water falling from the sky and not a hint of a breeze rustling the leaves. Between the drought and the heat, Texas seems to be falling apart.

The earth is splitting:



The bricks are cracking:



The foundations are shifting:



We need rain.

That's why this Saturday, when that strange sound woke me at 5 a.m. I got up to watch the miracle that is water falling straight from the sky onto the cracked earth. I postponed my run to sit around my apartment and listen to the rain. At 6:30, I went to the park to run for an hour, and I don't think I stopped marveling once during those 60 minutes. The cold rain hitting my skin, the water collecting in puddles, the drops sitting on the blades of glass -- incredible. Sixty minutes of pure childlike awe.

The rain lasted till 9 a.m., and I sat on my porch watching it until it stopped. Texas had returned to normal by Sunday: 105 degrees, no breeze, no clouds, no rain. Now the earth is still split open, the bricks are still cracked, and the foundations are still shifting. The ponds still smell like rotting fish, the grass is still sharp enough to cut a bare foot, and I still have to drink 75-90 oz of water a day. But at least I have the memory of those four hours of rain. That's something, right?

The Toyota oven

If you know a Texan, you probably know it's been a bit toasty here. You probably know because said person has been mentioning the weather every few minutes and posting way too many car thermometer photos on Facebook. There's a reason for this. 110 is hot. It's hard to think of anything else when 110 is on the other side of the door. Simple, really.

Texas is making this the hottest summer on record, and the days of 110 degrees aren't about to end soon. So we're finding ways to make it work. We're exercising at 5 a.m., we're taking cold showers three times a day, we're keeping the blinds closed, and we're baking cookies in our cars.

ERCOT claims DFW is about to go off the electric grid and is threatening rolling brownouts. Please use less electricity, they're begging. Fine, who wants to use an oven in this weather anyway? We'll just use our Toyotas.

A crowd of neighborhood kids came over for the activity. Since I'm a teacher, I had to start them with a bit of educational hypothesizing. I sat the squirts down in the living room and asked all sorts of questions, like whether they thought we should use a large car or a small one, a light one or a dark one, how long the cookies would take, and what would their texture be when finished. Questions answered and time estimates given, we were ready.

Thing 2 helped me put the cookies in the oven. It was tough being in the heat for those 30 seconds, but he powered through. The other kids were too chicken and stayed inside.



Then began the waiting. Most of the kids guessed that cooking time would be around 30 minutes. It was a pretty logical guess, really. Since cookies take around 10 minutes in a 350° oven, the kids figured they'd take around three times as long in a 150° car. Unfortunately, they were wrong, and the afternoon wore on, kids came and went, piano lessons were taken, pet hamsters were played with, books were read, and the cookies still had not finished.

Finally, after about three hours, the cookies were done. Since it was 6 p.m. now, and a whole two degrees cooler, a larger crowd went out to retrieve them.



As my little students predicted, the cookies were soft and chewy instead of crispy, and the chocolate chips had sunk to the bottom of the cookies. They still tasted pretty good.



After supper, we finished up the day with some car-baked cookies topped with ice cream while I introduced the kids to the creepiness that is "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang." Lollipops, anyone?

Losing my loyalty

I returned from a vacation in Washington and British Columbia to find a broken air conditioner. Now, if you're from Texas, you've probably experienced a broken AC in the summertime before. It's one of those experiences that make Texans who they are -- like crawling onto a pile of fire ants at least once during infancy, or buying that first pair of cowboy boots. As a kid, I looked forward to the AC shutting down. That meant we'd go into survival mode -- milkshakes and smoothies and mornings at the pool and afternoons at the library. The adults were never as excited, though.

I guess I've joined the realm of adults, because when I walked into my apartment late on Friday night, felt that wave of heat, heard the overheated smoke alarms beeping, and saw the needle on my thermostat maxed out at 105, I just wanted to be back in Seattle.

I didn't pick the best week to come back to Texas, either. This is the forecast for Bellingham, where my grandparents live:



And this is the forecast for Denton:



That's hot, folks. That's the type of heat that can knock you over. It smothers your breath before it has a chance to escape. It turns blue skies gray and green grass brown, and it makes the whole world shimmer like it's trapped under water.

I love visiting the Northwest. I love everything about it, from paddling Lake Union in Seattle to hiking Grouse Mountain in Vancouver, from drinking single malt scotch with my grandfather as we watch the sun set over the bay to eating salmon and halibut and sablefish by the water. The best part, though, may be all the things I don't do while I'm there.

-I don't drink 1072 oz of water each day to keep from getting headaches.
-I don't get up at 5 a.m. to run before the temperatures hit triple digits.
-I don't hear my smoke alarms beeping all night because my AC quit on me.
-I don't put said smoke alarms in the fridge to cool them off when the 97-degree night air won't do the trick. (Is cooling smoke alarms in fridges even legal? I tried googleing it but got no hits.)
-I don't stick my head in the freezer to cool off.
-I don't take cold showers or eat copious amounts of ice cream or sprawl out on the tile floor or do anything else to lower my body temperature.
-I don't ever confuse myself with a vampire. I go out during the day. I open windows and blinds during the day. I don't hide from the sun. In fact, I love the sun.

Suffice to say, if the temperatures insist on staying in the triple digits for a third and fourth month, this Texan may just be bidding farewell to her native land.