Sweltering heat

Most will agree that San Diego has the best weather in the country. What they don't tell you is that, some time around the end of August, both the temperature and the humidity creep up. The evenings don't cool off as dramatically as before, and the lack of air conditioning becomes all too obvious. Your appetite diminishes, you stay parched, and you drape yourself across the sofa in your underwear as the tiny fan blows hot air in your face.

What makes this worse is this renovation we're going through. All day long the doors and windows are kept wide open for the workers to move in and out, letting in the heat and mugginess but doing little to clear out the dust from the construction. Without a kitchen, it is hard to locate a clean cup for water, and, anyway, we're filling the Brita pitcher in the bathroom. Even with the filter, the water tastes weird. Still, it is better than heat stroke, so I've taken to leaving a bowl in the fridge for when I get thirsty. I would have left a cup, but I didn't feel like washing dishes in the bathtub.

Saturday was particularly oppressive. The cabinet guys were here installing cabinets. Before they arrived, I was cramming to get the kitchen primed and painted, including the ceiling, because I didn't want to worry about painting around these brand new cabinets. It was so hot, I hardly ate anything. Geoff had to go to work to finish some charts before he leaves for LA for a week-long Boards Review Course. By 3 PM, I was spent. I grabbed a beach chair, my beach basket and Mishka (who was also spent), and we headed for the Coronado Dog Beach. Living near the coast is a luxury. You can decide on a whim to head for the beach in the late afternoon, a really lovely time to go. The waves were huge, crashing sometimes with sprays that would reach the horizon. Amazingly, though, it was calm enough near the shore to go wading, and Mishka and I enjoyed a few dips into the water, which felt much fresher and cooler than usual. The water also had a stronger ocean smell and there was no seaweed around. It was like a different beach. We found a tennis ball, and Mishka never got tired of chasing it in the waves or running up the beach after it. Usually she gets bored when we play fetch, but she was exuberant yesterday. Later on in the day, I got caught up chatting with another dog owner on the beach, and I spied Mishka running back to the water on her own to play in the surf with another black dog with a tennis ball. She ventured into the shallow water on her own!