I’ve been neglecting my favorite blog these days due to too many other things going on. August is a month where I will get very little agility training done due to a program I’ve enrolled on on-line, which is intensive, and takes all my spare time. So as I think about it, August is not a bad month for this to happen in due to the heat.

By the way, a shameless plug, but you can still vote for both Bunny and Dudley for “the cutest dog” at the links below.  We’d appreciate your clicking on our behalf.  Bunny, in particular, got Raven’s goat last night.  Usually, she sleeps in her crate, but everyone was loose on that night, and she chose to sleep on Raven’s spot on the floor.  This is why, several times somewhere in the night, Raven barked at her placeholder to move.  That didn’t work, and Bunny wouldn’t move.  I had to intercede, as the windows were opened, and Raven’s operatic voice is an acquired taste, especially in the wee hours of the night.

This brings me to why the windows were opened in August and no one was sleeping in their crate.  On Sunday afternoon, somewhere around 1:30 pm, the air conditioning unit stopped working. Boink! I savored the last bit of coolness in the house, and prepared for what was coming. I ran over to Lowe’s first, after talking to the a/c repairman. There was still some cool in the house, so the dogs wouldn’t cook, especially with my speed racer driving. OK, it was more like a fast Sunday drive, but I didn’t hesitate.

At Lowe’s I got the fuses the repairman suggested may be the problem. I got home, switched them out, and nothing. Then I ran back out to Home Depot and looked for two oscillating fans, but they had none as the summer season is almost over.  They only had box fans, and that wouldn’t work.  Didn’t know there wasn’t a fan market in South Florida year round.  So I went across the street to K-mart, where I found what I was looking for, hurried back home, where I remained for the rest of the day and horrid night.

Sunday night was one of the worst nights I’ve spent trying to sleep on this planet. It was hotter than during the day. There was a blanket of humidity smothering us all, and those couple of fans helped little. Raven had diarrhea, and it was just not a good night. The morning came, and I was not feeling well.

The a/c man did come out and thank God he fixed it.  He pulled out a dead lizard with some tweezrs.  Mind you, I found petrified lizard in the fuse box, and had to deal with that the day before, not to mention the dehydrated frog in the main fuse box.  These reptiles are everywhere!  This one who cost me some money had short circuited a part.  By the way, I think it was this one.  Luna missed catching it as she unsuccessfully played her role in the Fort Doberdale Lizard Posse early Sunday morning.

Tonight was the Run and Done run-throughs in Miami.  I was just not feeling well tonight at all. I went thru the motions, got the map out and the more I thought of it, and felt the heat, the less I could go through with it. I wanted to go, but my body was ill from all that heat.

I am usually good with the heat, but it had been 89 degrees in the house for over 24 hours, and that wasn’t counting the humidity. All night…it was just awful. I’m still recuperating and so are my beloved kids. I don’t think any of them were feeling so wonderful today either.

It is a very hard thing to recuperate from, extreme heat.  Even though I did what I could, including putting out our olympic colored pool. Dudley has a much higher water-baby comfort level than Raven.  Both are seen here interacting with the pool.

So from this experience and the fact that I’ve been feeling guilty about not training, I’ve decided that I’m not able to do everything I want to do all the time, and it’s OK to take August off to finish up an intensive class I am enjoying.  September will be here soon enough.

Helen

P.S.  The bees finished off the blooms on that fan tail palm tree.  By morning, the next day, there was hardly a bee or bud left!  You can see some of the empty shells on the right of this picture.  They fell in a cupped palm of the tree.