Today has been a scorcher! I walked Penelope several times and had to wash the sweat off my face after every walk. The sky was pretty but you can tell the seasons are gearing up to change. The sky just has a different look. Today’s sky made me think of the my last days of summer as a child, happily heading off to the swimming pool knowing there weren’t many swimming days left before school started. Tried to sit outside but the humidity drove me back in. Even the birds knew to stay in the shade today. My faithful heaven sent cardinals came sporadically to eat from the feeders. They know I love to catch a glimpse of their beauty every day.

Did my monthly grocery pick up from Wally World and Stew and I almost had heat strokes carrying the groceries from the car to the hot kitchen. Didn’t grow up with air conditioning and didn’t even have air conditioning in my dorm in college the first two years. I don’t remember being hot as a child spending all day outside and drinking from the hose pipe when we were thirsty. I do remember how hot the first water was that came out the hose pipe, though. And all those band practices in the summer heat, learning the halftime shows for the Friday night football games. I don’t remember being hot then, either.

I love all the southern expressions that pop up in conversation when we talk about the heat. I bet I’ve written, “It’s not the heat — it’s the humidity,” in every blog I’ve written lately. I love talking about frying an egg on the sidewalk and frying an egg on the hood of the car. Never heard this one till I read it today — “Crank up that AC unit till it’s blowing snowballs.” I love that one. I’m guilty of saying, when friends call, “Man, it’s hot as all get-out.” I say that but I have no idea what all get-out is. Need to research that.

We southerners also like to say, ‘It’s a hotter than…” Only phrase I hear and say is, “It’s hotter than blue blazes.” Now, that is hot. Blue blazes is a euphemism for hell. When looking around for other “hotter thans” I found these. “It’s hotter than a blister bug in a pepper patch. It’s so dang hot that I just saw a hound dog chasing a rabbit — and they were both walking.” I can just hear that coming out of the mouth of an overall clad granddaddy followed by a chuckle and a knee slap. And then he’d wipe the sweat off his brow with a bandanna. I love “Hotter than Georgia asphalt.” I’d change that to “Hotter than Alabama asphalt” after I walked barefoot to get the mail today. The best one is “It’s so hot the ice cream truck melted.”

Then we talk about places that are hotter than the day — Hades, the devil’s armpit, Satan’s house cat, and hinges on the gates of Hell. Those are some scorchers for sure!

Southern Living magazine says southerners have physical and mental reactions to the summer heat. And we have “colorful ways of describing how the heat gets to us.” I love, “I’m burning slap up!” And, “I’m sweating like a hog!” And I know we’ve all said, “I’m sweating bullets.” And I think it would be hard to sweat a bullet! I guess the prissy ones can say, “I’m wilting.”

Then as our porch conversations about the heat winds down, someone says, “How many days till fall?” Well, as of today, the 25th day of August, we have 29 days till the first official day of fall. Course Mother Nature will not turn off her summer heat then. She’ll drag it out. But what wondrous porch days she’ll bring for us porch pondering souls when she cools off the days. I can’t wait!

“Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it,” — Russell Baker