A Quiet Monday

It's the day for washing clothes and washing floors...waxing them too. An easy sort of day, no rush. Its still very hot here in North Texas, I believe its something like 17 days in a row of 100 degrees or above and that wears on a body. By the time I finished hanging up the last piece of laundry, the first ones hung up in that very same load, was dry. Its a bit like a furnace out there in the sun. I was thinking about the first family that lived in this house and how they just dealt with the heat. No air conditioning and no fans. Cooking still had to be done..hopefully they had a summer kitchen. I suspect they had to work in the garden, hauling water to the plants. Doing laundry in a big old tub, probably boiled the water over a fire for that. Hot work in those long full skirts. Sleeping at night must have been difficult too, no breeze to speak of. When we first moved into this house we naively thought we would not need air conditioning. How hot could it be ? We found out. I was canning peaches our first year here and the kitchen got up to 106 degrees. The next year we purchased an air conditioner !

Are we just weaker now then people were 100 years ago ? Are we so spoiled that we complain just about having to walk to the car from one air conditioned area to the next ? I suspect so.

We have it pretty good these days if you ask me, but only in terms of comfort. I think we are quickly loosing grip on some of the good things in life, like contentment, simplicity and so many of us haven't a clue who our neighbor is which makes finding a sense of community pretty difficult.

It's too hot to do much else today except do some reading in front of the air-conditioner !