Too Hot for That

Puck artfully elaborated on the front cover of his bulletin that morning, using my special black pen to create a world of Minecraft TNT. But he still listens, if not sometimes incorrectly…

Sin had left a crimson stain… sang the congregation.

Puck leaned over to whisper to El Oso, “Did they say, ‘Sin had left a prince in Spain?’”

Carrie monitored baked spaghetti in the oven as she prepared lettuce on the counter. Snuggles trotted into the kitchen meowing for scraps. Carrie was not in the mood to deal with the weirdo that afternoon.

“Shut it, Snuggles! It’s salad.”

Fortunately there were no empty seats at lunch, or the yellow eyes of both Snuggles and Pumpkin would be watching just over the edge of the table waiting for the time when no one was looking.

We discussed the afternoon and the heat and what we should do, and the heat, and how it was too hot to do anything.

“You know, when your mom and I were first married,” Dad started to say, “we had no air conditioning. Just a fan.”

“Dad,” Carrie interrupted, “the sun was bigger back then and we didn’t have atmosphere.”

“This was in Arizona?” I asked.

“No, Iowa,” Mom clarified.

When Joe and Jaya arrived in the afternoon, and the heat index had crawled somewhere just shy of 110, people were feeling snacky. Joe rummaged through a container of bad peanuts.

“Oh, throw those away, Joe,” Mom told him.

“NO!” he declared. “I’m gonna make plants!” and ran outside to toss handfuls of unshelled peanuts into the grass. “Pops is gonna have fun mowing over that,” he snickered.

So around the time Mom baked up sheets of JoAnn’s famous quesadillas, both Linnea-Irish and Joe had involved themselves with the ice bucket challenge in the backyard.

“This is stupid,” Joe said more than once about the whole situation. “The Pope condemned this you know.”

But I’m pretty sure his bucket didn’t contain any ice.