It’s been hot here in Texas. People are baking cookies in their car.
No, seriously. I read the story on social media where a mother baked chocolate chip cookies in the family car for two hours, and then had to stop when her husband needed the car. They didn’t rise as much as expected, but her kids enjoyed them. The next day she was supposedly going to try baking cinnamon rolls from a can, but that post never came across my feed.
My husband’s car temperature registered 118 degrees F one day. It struggled to get home. A main bridge was buckling from stress fractures caused by heat and they had it closed down to one lane. A lot of people’s plants are not coping well; some of my husband’s blueberry bushes have bit the dust.
And our house projects have slowed down immensely. It’s just too hot to be raring to go all the time so mostly we do it only when needed. Like last weekend when there was a leak in the well plumbing. The shop was flooded so my husband turned off the water and we assessed the situation like a well-oiled platoon.
“I’m going to cut out that section and put in a bypass valve,” he said, “while you get the salt bags and re-fill our water softeners.” We had two because my husband hated the feel of hard water on his skin or in his mouth. Now our water tastes pristine. We have become water snobs.
But I was dreading getting the salt bags. I’d dropped them off a few months ago after purchase on the other side of the acre, and now I would have to wheel them across the intrepid heat to fill those water conditioners.
So there we were, in the heat, baking while carrying CamelBaks, trying to get done before the day got any hotter. Eventually we succeeded and didn’t suffer heatstroke. We slithered back into the a/c for the rest of the weekend; my husband mostly slept while I caught up on computer work.
Know your limits. In the midst of the extreme thrive if you can, but don’t cripple yourself. There’s too much left to plan, see, and bake in your car.
Oh, and to commemorate the heat, I created some cat art. Below is a fire map of Texas with a mad-as-fire kitty.
Just something to remember the heat by when it starts to freeze outside and you wonder why you wished the hotter temps away. My favorites: I like the fire map on the travel mug and the fire kitty on the workout shirt. Because who doesn’t want to sweat with a fire feline glaring at you to finish?