When you're hot, you're hot....

Although we have a house full of large projects that need attention (painting the outside of the house, repair windows, dead front yard...), we managed to tackle a few smaller ones in the mornings this weekend that gave us a little boost.  R cleaned out a small area between our house and the neighbor's, mulched and tidied it.  I laid a little pad of paver bricks beneath our hose reel in the back yard.  He cleaned gutters for the first time since the roof was replaced, making sure we didn't have any stray nails, shingles fragments, or debris to clog them.  I pulled weeds and cleaned  more roofing grit off of the deck.

We removed a pretty sad excuse for two honeysuckle vines that I actually pulled out the the ground with my bare hands.  The hardest part was cutting them off of the trellis, but the vines had become really dry and brittle so it was easy to pull them through.  I also cleaned the top of cabinets in the TV room and kitchen (since it required a step ladder to reach, I'm documenting it because there are only a handful of people alive who could actually see the results).  Oh, and I cleaned out another small cabinet in the kitchen, assembling more Goodwill items.

We gave our pug a bath yesterday and trimmed her nails and cleaned her ears.  We hung our canary's cage outside yesterday morning when it was under 100 and it made him happy, then cleaned his cage today. Our cat went outside this afternoon and hasn't come back in yet.  I became worried about her a while ago, afraid maybe she got stuck in the shed or some other hot, hot space, and sent R out to check on her.  He found her sleeping under the deck, content.  Cats can take a remarkable, ridiculous amount of heat.

Today I made a batch of chocolate peanut butter cupcakes with chocolate buttercream frosting.  Heating up the oven was kind of a dumb choice because it was 107 outside this afternoon, but it was a cinch I couldn't go out there.  Besides, we had teriyaki wings for supper so the oven was already hot.  I made a cucumber and tomato salad to have this week, cleaned and diced fruit, and caught up laundry.  I still need to make my bed which I will fall into, exhausted, later on this evening.

I'd like to take a walk this evening to walk off the cupcake I sampled, but I'm not sure it will be cool enough to make it possible.  We're pretty good at taking the heat, but this is nutso.  I'm bringing the rest of the cupcakes to work because we don't need them tempting us.  It's silly to bake something we shouldn't eat, but baking reminds me of winter and I needed something to make it seem cooler than it is.

I'm watching a little bit of the Olympics but R isn't into them so I have to catch them on the fly.  We rented a movie last night which put me to sleep on the couch.  We're going to run out of inside activities before we run out of heat I'm afraid.  I will say, when this heat breaks there is going to be a HUGE improvement in the mood of nearly everyone, myself included, in spite of the fact that I'm a freakin' delight most of the time.  See?  The heat really is getting to me.