The Devil envies Texas.

This coming Tuesday will be a momentous occasion.  On, Tuesday, August 23rd, Austin will break it's record for consecutive days over 100 degrees.  The temperature is too damned high.

The last few days I have not been working-my last day at the Rides was quiet and reflective-but instead I've been trying to pack our lives up into categories, sections of time, seasons.  It is difficult, for instance, to predict what we will need for the dog days of Summer in Oklahoma, then the beginning of Fall in eternally chilly San Francisco, and finally two years of service in Jordan.  Not to mention that from Oklahoma to California and back to Austin we will be flying, and want to avoid checked baggage costs and that the Peace Corps limits our checked baggage to two bags each, weighing a total of 80lbs with each bag not to exceed 50lbs.  It can make one's head swim.

And it is hot.  The kind of heat that conjures images of scorching deserts with weathered soldiers of fortune finally succumbing to heat stroke after weeks of searching for an oasis-and that was only walking to the car to pack in one more load of donations for Goodwill.

I'm no stranger to heat, the thought of winter is much more foreign.  The forecasts from Amman read like a brisk Austin Spring-90, 91, 93-and I think "I can do that."  I walk my poor dog across sizzling concrete from which his princess paws may never recover, amused once again that the first thing to break out into a sweat is always my knees and think, "Jordanian Summer can't be as bad as Austin, I can totally do that," and then I pause, looking down at my exposed, sweaty knees, under the fringe of cut off jeans.  I am between my air conditioned car and my air conditioned home, a place of business for my large refrigerator with automatic ice maker and closet full of sundresses.  Can I survive this heat with no hope of recirculated air?  Will I be so good natured when I am covered from wrist to ankle to chin, praying for a moment of privacy to reveal my flushed skin to the breezes of Wadi Rum?

"No pleasure, no rapture, no exquisite sin greater... than central air." Azrael, Dogma


Annie