August is Hell on Earth In Texas

I just hate August in Texas. (Although any idiot knows an August day in Texas beats the hell out of any day in Oklahoma.) You go to bed hot, you get up and it is already 80 degrees at sun rise. Throw in about 90% humidity, and you have a recipe for a sidewalk clambake ala homosapiens. Heat so oppressive you will try anything to alleviate it. St. John's Wort so far has no effect; neither does overindulgence of caffeine-filled soda nor thoughts of the artic. Someone I knew once had the brilliant idea that the heat was "all in your mind" and that to induce a cool atmosphere you only had to imagine yourself in a frosty, snowy place. What a bunch of bull hockey.

On the way home today, I treated myself to a large dipped, soft-serve ice cream cone from Dairy Queen with a cherry Coke on the side. Worked for about, oh, fifteen minutes until the chocolate became a melted brown ribbon around my wrist. At a red light before merging onto the freeway, I am hastily licking and biting my way through the mound of melting ice cream heaven. I glance over at my fellow commuter's car and the gentleman is staring at me with either lust or envy, couldn't tell which. Probably more like amazement that anyone could eat DQ ice cream that fast and not suffer from full brain freeze. Don't you hate that? (The brain freeze, not the lustful looks.)


This little poem is a fine example of Texas heat:



The devil wanted a place on earth
Sort of a summer home
A place to spend his vacation
Whenever he wanted to roam.

So he picked out Texas
A place both wretched and rough
Where the climate was to his liking
And the cowboys hardened and tough.

He dried up the streams in the canyons
And ordered no rain to fall
He dried up the lakes in the valleys
Then baked and scorched it all.

Then over his barren country
He transplanted shrubs from hell.
The cactus, thistle and prickly pear
The climate suited them well.

Now the home was much to his liking
But animal life, he had none.
So he created crawling creatures
That all mankind would shun.

First he made the rattlesnake
With it's forked poisonous tongue.
Taught it to strike and rattle
And how to swallow it's young.

Then he made scorpions and lizards
And the ugly old horned toad.
He placed spiders of every description
Under rocks by the side of the road.

Then he ordered the sun to shine hotter,
Hotter and hotter still.
Until even the cactus wilted
And the old horned lizard took ill.

Then he gazed on his earthly kingdom
As any creator would
He chuckled a little up his sleeve
And admitted that it was good.

'Twas summer now and Satan lay
By a prickly pear to rest.
The sweat rolled off his swarthy brow
So he took off his coat and vest.

"By Golly," he finally panted,
"I did my job too well,
I'm going back to where I came from,
Texas is hotter than Hell."

If ya'll come to visit Pattie in August, better bring along some tolerance for heat, humidity, and bad hostess manners. Any other time of year I am June Cleaver, but in August, Macbeth's crones couldn't hold a light to me. Did I say I hated August in Texas?