Puppy On The Couch

September 2, 2019September 2, 2019 / momsequitur / Leave a comment

When The Kid turned 15, Petey and I were constantly high-fiving each other. We had a teenager who was kind, polite, helpful, and an all-round joy to be around. We were the best parents in the history of parents.

And then.

And then, The Kid went upstairs for bed one night and didn’t come down the next morning.

Instead, what came down those stairs was some kind of monstrous, hideous mockery of our sweet child. We, the parents, were deemed too lame to exist. There was so much eye-rolling it’s a wonder blindness didn’t ensue.

We asked ourselves how we could’ve been so wrong about our parenting skills. No two worse parents ever lived.

Before Crowley, our Yugo-sized Akita, we had another Akita, Steve, and a 200-pound Anatolian shepherd named Riker.

Riker was the most loving dog I’ve ever known, and Steve was as gentle as the breath of a fawn. Although a full-blooded Akita, he never showed a hint of the aggressiveness that many people think define the breed.

So, of course, Petey and I thought, “We got this. We could make rabid badgers docile enough to sleep with newborn babies.”

Then, we got Crowley, a black Akita puppy as solid as a tank.

He and I walk miles a day around our neighborhood, greeting everyone we meet.

Everything went well until Crowley was about eighteen months old.

He started becoming aggressive. With us, and a short list of humans that he adores, he was and remains, sweet and wildly affectionate. But he’d growl when anyone else got too close.

Then came the day my father; the man who gave me my love for canines, the man who’s almost more dog than man, met him. When he knelt down to him, Riker knocked him over on purpose. My dad wasn’t hurt, and Riker didn’t bite him, but my heart was broken.

*My Dad and Riker. Can you see the grin on that happy dog’s kisser?*

I felt like a parent who’d raised a serial killer. I called our vet, crying so hard I could barely tell her what happened. She suggested a behaviorist. We made an appointment.

The thing was, he didn’t do a thing for the dog.

I was the patient.

I kept saying, “But Steve…”

Finally, he said, “debbie, this is not Steve. You need to accept that and help Crowley to have the best life he can. He’s not dangerously vicious, but he is what he is.”

So, we learned coping strategies to keep him focused and bought a soft, flexible, plastic muzzle for when he’s outside. It’s really for me (no smarty-pants Gentle Reader, I don’t wear the muzzle). It’s so that I know no matter what happens, my dog will never bite anyone, human or dog.

I’ve kept up the long walks, and he’s become calmer and steadier. We’ve begun carefully reintroducing familiar people, and each encounter has gone well. We’re cautiously optimistic.

The lesson I learned with Crowley is something we should keep in mind with everyone, every day. Preconceptions, and assuming someone knows the lines of the script we’ve written in our heads is the road to disappointment, discord, and the deepest of doo-doo.

Like that dog shrink said, “This may not be exactly what you expected, but it’s what you have. Deal with the reality you’ve got.”

And that horrible teenager/hobgoblin that resembled The Kid?

About ten months after it showed up, one morning our sweet child came downstairs for breakfast, and the teenaged beast was never seen again. Heck, every once in a while, The Kid even apologizes for the trauma that pod person rained down upon us.

So yeah, I think we crushed that parenting thing…

Thanks for your time.

Contact debbie at d@bullcity.mom.

An Upcycle Made By Two

August 26, 2019August 27, 2019 / momsequitur / Leave a comment

In my high school, there was a girl named Kacey.

She was imposing, and fully, forcefully, occupied all the space her body inhabited, like a warrior queen. She was neither self-effacing nor apologetic. Kacey was quiet but not shy. She had a gaze that could quell both the boisterous and the boneheaded. Even someone as illiterate to the subtle as me could interpret her silent condemnation.

I admired her. She was kinda my hero.

Kacey was an amazing artist and her mom was a decorator. The inside of their house was a revelation. It looked like a spread in House Beautiful.

But the furniture and accessories didn’t fall into any one category. There were pieces from various periods, ethnicities, and design philosophies. They also used repurposed found objects; this was the first time I’d ever seen a trunk used as a coffee table. I asked the name of this style.

“Eclectic.”

Kacey’s mom explained that meant using many different styles to make a harmonious whole. I loved it. And I loved the idea of repurposing well-worn items to new uses.

The Kid has an apartment with a small patio containing a hammock chair. I offered to get a table for the space.

But there were a few, very specific requirements.

It needed to be tall enough that The Kid could easily reach it from hammock height. It needed to be impervious to weather. It needed to be either heavy enough to not blow in around in a storm, or easy to bring inside.

I also wanted it to be unique and look good. Purchasing something purpose built that had the qualities needed would be very expensive. I would make like Kacey’s mom and create a table from various parts.

*Not my collection. For illustrative purposes only.*

There’s a thrift store nearby that I love to visit. I’ve bought a really cool lamp for the living room, books, old Corning Ware which I collect, and other items I find that are interesting and cheap, even if I have no idea what to do with them.

I have a wooden stool in my kitchen that I painted years ago. I also did one with an Argyle design for The Kid’s kitchen for Christmas one year. They come in handy all the time. During a visit to the thrift store, I’d scored another for $8 ($40 at Target). I put it away until I figured out what to do with it.

Then I had a thought. The stool would be the perfect height for that outdoor table. Then I found a large tray to top it, about two feet across with a ridge around it. I planned on just gorilla-gluing it to the stool.

But then Petey began collaborating on the project.

He had a much better idea than glue. We went to a hardware store and he helped me choose the right product to make both parts weather-proof. But instead of glue, he suggested Velcro.

But not the regular Velcro that’s on jackets and children’s sneakers. He showed me industrial Velcro. This stuff holds fifteen pounds per square inch. And the entire tray didn’t weigh three pounds.

Then Petey really stepped up and helped me with measurement, placement and assembly. It turned out great; The Kid loved it. It fit perfectly in the back of the car for the ride to its new home. But if it hadn’t—Velcro; it could’ve been broken down for transporting.

The total of supplies came to around $30. A quick google for something similar shows the cheapest version online starts at around $80.

So, if my math’s right, I think my project might have earned me fifty bucks…?

Thanks for your time.

Contact debbie at d@bullcity.mom.

Keep Your Mitts Off My Moola

August 20, 2019 / momsequitur / Leave a comment

The Kid calls me a bunny rabbit, and as loathe as I am to admit it, it’s kind of true. My default setting is to trust.

My mom will correctly size up a stranger in mere seconds. It likely comes from being a Jersey girl. The Kid is a probably much healthier combo of both world views. But despite protestations of massive amounts of street cred, my sweet child falls much more on the bunny rabbit side of the scale.

Actually, rabbits are probably much more suspicious of people than even my mom. Have you ever met a bunny in a grocery store and exchanged not only chicken recipes but life stories? Most of the time the mere sight of you in the frozen food aisle is enough to send them fleeing in terror. There is very little love and trust for humans on old Watership Down.

But I would much rather live my life leading with my heart and assume that everyone around me is good, and true, and full of the milk of human kindness.

Except.

Except for when it comes to my money.

Then, Gentle Reader, I make Sherlock Holmes look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm on ecstasy. Every penny that leaves my hand has been run through a rigorous series of checks and double checks. If you send me a bill or ask for money, you’d better have an airtight case, or you ain’t getting a penny. You’d have a much better chance of getting a kidney out of me (literally; I’ve offered a kidney more than once to dialysis patients).

You’ve got to deserve my money and play fair.

When my cable goes out, I always call and request a credit for the time I had no service. The other day one of their representatives said, “It’s not worth you calling us for this outage. It only comes to sixty-three cents.”

Um, excuse me Miss Spectrum. When you’re paying my bill, you get to decide that. But right now, I’m responsible for it, and yes, I want every darn penny of that sixty-three cents.

When we bought our house, I had only lived with my parents, then with Petey in a tiny little mobile home park, and an apartment. I’d never lived anywhere where I was responsible for a monthly water bill.

One day, about eighteen months after we’d moved in, I got my first water bill.

For $1300!

The city informed me, when I called in the midst of a financially provoked stroke, that they’d neglected to bill us since we’d moved in, so what I was holding in my trembling hand was for the entire time we’d lived there.

Yeah…nope.

As I politely explained and kept politely explaining over a week-long conversation, I had openly called the city to turn on our water. My mail box is right in front of our house. The house is not hidden behind a bush, we were right there, out in the open, using water, every day. This was 100% on them, and I was not paying. But they were free to start sending me a monthly bill with new charges, and I’d be delighted to pay it.

I won.

So, if you’re having a dispute with your credit card company, or you think you may have won a trip to the Bahamas from a contest you never entered, or you’re thinking about ordering a brand-new, authentic, Vera Wang wedding dress online for $40, give me a call.

‘Cause you might be all starry eyed and gullible, but I’m a bunny rabbit.

A bunny rabbit that’ll take you out.

Thanks for your time.

Contact debbie at d@bullcity.mom.

True Confessions

August 12, 2019September 26, 2024 / momsequitur / Leave a comment

I’m a terrible boss.

The entire world should rejoice every morning that the only things I am the boss of are my dog and myself, and even that’s hit or miss at best. The dog still won’t do calculus, and would the boss of herself have eaten their weight in cake last night? Possibly, but if they did, they wouldn’t feel guilty about it.

And, FYI—when you eat your weight in something, you double your weight.

When I was in the second grade, I was in the Brownies. This was back when the gas currently in your car was roaming Pangaea, looking for a fellow T-Rex to share its life. When the troop voted for a leader, I was elected. It seemed easy, and natural.

Until junior high, I was a leader in my classes and among my friends. In the seventh grade, I ran for class representative to the student government. I assumed I’d be elected, no prob.

It was one of the biggest shocks of my life when I lost. My whole world view shifted, and things were never the same.

Then growing up did what it does to everyone, especially women. It knocked the heck out of my ego, and made me question and at times abandon, the confidence that was an intrinsic part of me like my buck teeth (now fixed) and widow’s peak (still there).

I retained parts of that gutsiness inside me, but it was fractured, with large chunks of it damaged or missing. Sadly, like a pitcher in a slump, I got all caught up in my own head, second guessing every instinct.

For five years in the 80s, I managed a clothing store. That’s what utterly convinced me that although I’m great at being bossy, I’m horrible at being the boss. Some of my badness had to do with immaturity and the cure has come with advanced age.

But some things are just part of me, things that, until the day I die, make me singularly unsuited to be in charge of paid employees.

A boss should be willing and able to make the tough, unpopular decisions. If you’ve ever had a boss, you have, at some point during your association, been unhappy with them. They have to tell you no, or you can’t have that week off, or your work isn’t good enough.

I hate, hate, hate it when people are mad at me. It makes me feel like a kicked puppy. And I spent too much time worrying about whether or not my employees liked me—sometimes to the point of something close to paralysis. Somehow, with The Kid and our dogs, I’m able to be the bad guy when really needed; I guess deep down, I know the stakes are so much higher.

A boss needs to know when to just back off and let an employee do their job. Petey, when he was a charge nurse at Duke was awesome at this. His co-workers adored him and always gave their very best. I asked him what his secret was.

He didn’t quite understand the question. “If they work here, I assume they know how to do their job, and I let ‘em do it.”

With a sad combo plate of little trust in my staff and no trust in my ability to teach and inspire, I was a micro-managing Matilda. I exhausted myself, so I probably brought my poor, bedeviled employees to the edge of violence.

So, give thanks.

Give thanks that you can look at that questionable photo of me in the paper, and say with feeling, “You’re not the boss of me!”

Thanks for your time.

Contact debbie at d@bullcity.mom.

Winner, Winner, I’ve Got Dinner

August 5, 2019 / momsequitur / Leave a comment

“You can’t win it if you’re not in it.”\

That’s Petey’s response whenever there’s a lottery jackpot that nears a billion dollars and I start mentally spending it. And I’m never in it—I don’t know how to buy anything other than the automatic computer-generated ticket or even its price.

But we do both make the occasional appeal to Lady Luck in the form of entering the odd drawing, both online and in person.

I once won a Lindt milk chocolate Easter bunny. It was delivered in a huge Styrofoam cooler the size of the trunk the Astor’s took on the Titanic. The candy was the size of my hand. It was delicious.

Years ago, the convenience store near our house had a drawing for a child-sized, pedal-powered Oscar Mayer wiener car that Petey entered, and won. It was just like the one in the commercials that they drive around the country. But shrunken down for a kid the size of a three or four-year-old.

Unfortunately, The Kid was seven or eight. Our poor child looked like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson stuffed inside a Smart Car. Can you smell what the Rock is driving?

So, we gave it to the three-year-old daughter of a close family friend. You should have seen her zooming around the neighborhood in a seven-foot hotdog—it was a sight to behold.

A few years later, I was in a Hallmark shop and registered for another drawing. It was for a very large stuffed dog, modeled on Coconut, from the American Girl dolls collection.

In a shocking twist, I won it.

Then the fun began. This thing was honestly the size of a Shetland pony. Getting it in the car was an adventure accompanied by much struggle, sweat, and many PG13 to R rated words. Driving home, we looked like we were trying to smuggle a fat white buffalo. Then, The Kid had to find a place for this behemoth, although at thirteen or so, my poor child was actually kind of over stuffed animals, even fluffy ones that took up as much space as a circus calliope.

Finally, a few years later, The Kid was able to pass it on to a patsy, I mean a friend, with a much younger sibling who loved owning it.

Which brings us to my latest win.

A few weeks ago, Petey and I ran into our local Panera. In the summer, I down gallons of their green smoothies. They’re healthy, tasty, filling, and I feel particularly virtuous drinking them. In the restaurant’s entrance, they had a jar for business cards from which they would periodically draw a lucky winner.

So, I tossed in one of mine.

Last week, catering manager Jamonda called and informed me I’d won, and the prize was lunch for my entire office. Since I work from home, my normal officemates are couch, dog, and Petey. So, today I gathered together in Greensboro, many of the friends and family that regularly donate time, elbow grease and expertise which facilitate getting this column into print.

And I took up a little something from Panera. A little something contained in two love seat-sized bags; drinks, soups, sandwiches, salads, crusty baguettes, and a variety of their freshly baked pastries. It was a crazy generous bounty, and everyone ate like it was Thanksgiving dinner, with leftovers that Petey and I have been snacking on all evening.

So, to sum up; unless somebody wants to give me three quarters of a billion Samolians, I’ll take the Panera spread every time.

Or maybe the chocolate—the chocolate would be good too.

Thanks for your time.

Contact debbie at d@bullcity.mom.

Is There A Ball Pit In Heaven?

July 29, 2019July 29, 2019 / momsequitur / Leave a comment

The Kid and I just returned home from GalaxyCon, a pop culture fan convention in Raleigh.

This convention reminded both The Kid and me of another fan convention that took place five years ago in Illinois, called DashCon.

My child flew up to participate in the inaugural event.

The first night there was an opening night soirée they called a prom. And, early in the evening a faint whiff of trouble began to circulate.

Suddenly, the music stopped and Megg, one of the organizers, took to the stage and addressed the crowd. She told them the hotel had suddenly changed the terms of the contract. Unless $17,000 in cash was given to the hotel within an hour, the convention, Megg informed them, would be canceled.

In addition to requesting everyone present to go online and request their friends and family donate everything they could to a PayPal account, a literal hat was passed around with exhortations to, “please give, anything you can, even a dollar”.

Somehow, the money was gathered, and the convention went on.

It’s important to note, that to this day, the hotel insists that they did not make an eleventh hour change to the contract.

The next morning, The Kid and friends were headed out to a pancake breakfast, and they ran into organizer Megg, crying hysterically. Vendors and guests were fleeing the event, there wasn’t enough money, they needed many more staff than they had, and everything was ruined.

One of my child’s friends, Christine, volunteered The Kid and company to help out. Breakfast was postponed, and everybody pitched in.

My child ended up working with Megg and assisting the senior staff. The first item on the agenda was to convince the weekend’s biggest draw to stay.

Welcome to Night Vale was a hugely popular scripted podcast. One of the first big hits of the genre. They were at DashCon, and were planning on doing a live episode in front of a large crowd that had purchased tickets.

The arrangement was for the troupe to be paid in full before the performance.

Except, there were no funds available.

With The Kid in tow, Megg attempted to get them to perform now and get paid later. Sensing a fiscally troubled theme, the podcast creators declined, and departed. An hour after the podcast was to begin, a packed room was informed that the podcast was canceled because the cast tried to hold up the convention for more money.

*This is the actual ball pit at Dashcon.*

At a crisis meeting, one of the staff had a brainstorm. One of the attractions was a ball pit. Because of either a mistake, or cost-cutting measure the size of the pit was similar to a backyard blow-up pool. To appease the hundreds of ticket holders for the canceled Night Vale performance, they were offered an extra hour in the ball pit.

The decision has since become infamous and a symbol for the fiasco that was Dashcon. If you google, “ball pit dashcon”, it will return 104,000 results.

As day turned into evening, it became clear that the event was a huge flop, and at a hastily convened Q&A which descended into bitter recriminations and tearful excuses it was revealed that there already lawsuits being organized. The Kid was still assisting, and still had not had pancakes, or anything else to eat.

Freshly arrived home from her disastrous trip to Illinois, my child recounted the weekend’s adventures. Multiple times during the telling of it, I laughed so hard that I almost fell off my chair at Elmo’s, a diner in Durham, where The Kid was partially hidden behind, finally, a huge stack of pancakes.

Thanks for your time.

Contact debbie at d@bullcity.mom.

A Flying Update

July 20, 2019 / momsequitur / Leave a comment

About a month ago, in The Couple Next Door, I spoke about the widowed goose and her four goslings.

Well, I have a very happy update: the children have learned to fly! John, whose house backs up against the pond is also keeping an eye on them. And, early in the mornings the kids have been getting airborne. He sent me some photos to share.

Thanks, John, for the photos.

Thanks for your time.

Literally Awesome

July 16, 2019July 16, 2019 / momsequitur / Leave a comment

As an English major and a semi-professional peddler of words, it’s kind of embarrassing.

Although I can be a tad judgmental concerning other’s use of the English language (please, for all that is holy, it’s new-clea-er, not new-cue-ler), I am not grammar perfect.

I’m fond of the occasional ‘ain’t’, I call the tv remote, the ‘clickety’, and Petey will be happy to inform you that I regularly pronounce po-ta-to, ba-tate-uh. And because I am a garrulous woman whose enthusiasm is usually set somewhere north of 8 out of 10, I make liberal use of the verbal crutch.

I’m not completely insufferable. I hardly ever use “like”, “literally”, or “OK”. But the word ”awesome” crops up in my writing and conversation way more than it should, thereby cheapening the meaning.

Dictionary.com defines the classic meaning of awesome as, “causing or inducing awe; inspiring an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, or fear”. Awesome’s not a coupon for a dollar off mayo, nor the fact that the shoe store has the pretty flats in size ten, nor is it the absence of a long line at the gas pumps at Costco.

So, this week, in order to pick up awesome and dust it off, I’ve decided to make a list of things that really do inspire me to awe and wonder. This is just a partial list, because I am caught off guard and moved by many things, every day.

Animals both break my heart and teach me the meaning of nobility. The absolute trust a dog shows and the faith it has in their people can only be described as an infinite burden of love. There has never been a human who even came close to deserving the high opinion in which their pets hold them.

And when things go wrong, and they experience pain, they bear it with gentle, unlimited patience. The power of their character almost brings to my knees. Their loving generous spirit truly inspire wonder and awe.

The written word, and the way in which a book can pick me up and set me into another reality. It’s just words. You can find every one of them in a dictionary. You use them to make a grocery list or write an email to your boss. But arranged by the right person they can change one’s life. They can inform and inspire. They can cause you to tumble, headfirst into soul-searing grief.

Imagination. Everything created by men and women was the fruit of creative thinking. Everything from the art in museums, beautiful clothing and shoes, to tools, and technology all started in somebody’s noggin. What is almost as awe inspiring is the fact that even after millennia, there is still original work being accomplished and thoughts being thunk.

Chocolate. Yeah, I know, it’s not Shakespeare, or manned flight, or Lassie. But think about it. In the hands of creative humans, a plethora of delicious treats have been created. If you have a broken heart, there’s ice cream. It’s not a picnic without chocolate cake. I have a stash that I keep in case vexation by humans goes beyond my tolerance. And not much in this world says, “I was thinking of you” like a big stack of gooey, freshly baked brownies, studded with chocolate chips and topped with salted chocolate.

I wish I could promise you that I will hold awesome in higher regard and only use it in the classic, wonder-arousing sense, but I can’t.

I know the next time I’m as excited as a toddler jacked up on cotton candy and crack, and see or hear something that makes me happy, it’s gonna be awesome.

Thanks for your time.

Can You Spot The Difference?

July 8, 2019July 9, 2019 / momsequitur / Leave a comment

I have a few words of wisdom that have served me well, Gentle Reader.

1.) Don’t buy the Costco sample the first time you try it no matter how much you like it. If you’re still thinking about it on the next visit, go for it.

2.) If a corporation says that everything will stay the same when it buys a company, everything, and I mean Every.Single.Thing., will change.

3.) If someone tells you they’re a kid at heart, or a big kid, they almost always are not. It’s the same type of weird narcissism as giving yourself a nickname.

That guy’s not childlike. They are almost certainly childish. One trait is delightful and endearing, the other is arrogant and exhausting with a barely concealed mean streak.

A childlike person makes a wish list for birthdays and Christmas. But they only offer it if asked. And if they receive a gift from the list, they are honestly surprised and delighted. A childish person posts their list to all social media accounts and emails it to their entire contact list. Upon receiving a gift; if it’s not from their list, they have no problem venting their disappointment to the giver.

If childlike messes up, it shatters them. Their hearts are worn flung around them like an oversized cloak. The guilt that they have made a mistake or hurt someone’s feelings is overwhelming because like an actual child, feelings come hard, fast, and one at a time.

Childish is never to blame. It’s not their fault and they have a whole encyclopedia of excuses and people to blame. In fact, they are the victim and they deserve sympathy.

Childlike is a butterfly. Their attention span may be short, but everything is embraced with passion and enthusiasm. Entrenched is a concept that doesn’t even occur to them.

Childish acts impulsively and without much thought to consequences. But when the chips start falling and questions are asked, Childish embodies stubborn. Backing off a position, or even listening to reason is not an option.

Childlike might try to lie on occasion, but they are so open and transparent, they’re terrible at it. And, they know it themselves. So, lies are neither frequent nor successful, but usually hilarious.

Childish is the center of the universe. If the truth is in the way, it is sacrificed to the altar of expediency. That lies fly so fast and furiously means that Childish is good at them. In fact, sometimes even when the truth is known it’s doubted because Childish appears to completely believe every pant-burning word that falls from their lips.

Childlike loves positive attention like the puppies they are. They also adore celebrating the specialness of the people around them. Negative attention toward themselves breaks them. Negative attention toward others brings out the fighting spirit of a loyal defender.

Childish needs attention like plants need sunshine. Positive attention reinforces their pathologically elevated opinion of themselves. But negative attention is not unwelcome. It brings out the rabid attack dog that does not stop until the enemy has been vanquished and ground into the dust, never to rise again.

We all have both childlike and childish inside us. The struggle is to nurture childlike but not so much that we turn into a charmless Forest Gump.

The childish should be acknowledged for a fuller understanding of ourselves, but kept muzzled.

On the television show King of the Hill there was a character named Connie Souphanousinphone who summed up this perfectly when talking to a friend, “We all have those feelings, Bobby. But, we never act on them

Thanks for your time.

I Need To See The Manager

July 1, 2019July 1, 2019 / momsequitur / Leave a comment

run birds Almost a hundred times a day I tell Petey, and anybody else who’s not quick enough to run away that I am not at all pleased with the way summers go around here. I have threatened for years to file a complaint.

I decided to put up or shut up.

Dear Mother Nature, mother nature small I am writing today to express my dissatisfaction with the summers you and your association have recently been distributing to humans. In the next seven days, the high temperatures for North Carolina range from 90 to well over 100 degrees. Today in Kuwait it was over 120 degrees. This week in France the mercury has risen to over 110 degrees.

How, in any sane world, is this acceptable?

Waxed and ready to go, but they all have to share one board.

In both song and story, we have been sold a meteorological pig in a poke. The Beach Boys in late spring are waxin’ down their surfboards, they can’t wait for June. Bryan Adams proclaims that given a choice, he’d be back in the summer of ’69; the best days of his life. George Gershwin assured us all that in summertime the living is easy.

I would beg to differ. sweaty The heat is relentless. It seems as if there is a personal, malevolent component to make everyone miserable and grumpy. Morning, noon, or late at night, being outside for more than ten minutes results in flushing, sweating, and frizzy hair. Everything and everyone is limp and lacks energy and enthusiasm. friends-eating-ice-cream-in-a-swimming-pool-20s-1080p-slow-motion_s2hejqvk__F0000 The result is no one wants to do anything except hang out in swimming pools eating ice cream. But people have obligations they must attend to, only a small population has access to pools, and a diet solely consisting of ice cream would quickly have a deleterious effect upon one’s health.

To resolve this problem, I have a few sincere requests. I would appreciate your prompt attention to rectify this situation. summernic Temperature: From May until late September the average high temperature should be no more than 80 degrees with most days being a comfortable 74-77 degrees.

Humidity: A range between 35 and 50% humidity, with an inverse correlation between the temp and moisture in the air. summer rain Rain: We need it, so I’ll leave it in your experienced hands, but the heat that causes soupy steam to rise from paved surfaces is completely unacceptable. I’m a North Carolinian so I understand that hurricanes are a fact of life, but tornadoes are unnecessary and just seem mean-spirited.

Wind: A nice refreshing breeze is always welcome. hot flashes On a personal note; as one woman of a certain age to another I am sure you can understand the discomfort I have been experiencing and the poor humor which then results. I unfortunately do not have the power to strike with lightening the most aggravating with whom I must contend. early fall 1 I look forward to your reply concerning these horrible summers that humanity has been enduring. I understand that you are a busy woman with a large territory under your purview which could make a timely and satisfactory conclusion problematic. Because of this I feel a fair resolution concerning this untenable weather should be achievable within ninety days.