Tuesday, April 30, 2024

C. Stroup: It gets HOT in Texas, Sugar!

There’s a somewhat dated but still popular idiom you may be familiar with… ‘Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.’ Certainly August’s hellish weather was the wrath Mother Nature unleashed after harboring a grudge for quite some time. While fuming in pain she released in excess of 45 days this year with temps over 100 degrees. And at this writing, still hot under the collar, she included more than 21 consecutive days upward of 100 degrees. For my money she needs to get a grip! And I’m not the only one who’s flaming fatigued from all these torrid temperatures. I notice folks are getting a little testy, myself included. It’s difficult not to when, day after day, you go from inside to out the door and into a crematory. This has rendered a once normal, brownish Texas yard into a desert of cinders.

Speaking from a woman’s point of view the humidity that accompanies the intense temps is cause for cursing. So many days prove fruitless to fuss with my do. It gets so frizzy I look as though I’ve encountered a live light socket. No product I’ve used can make it smooth.

And this kind of extreme heat can burn the bottom of your feet in a heartbeat. So why doesn’t it fry a cicada while it pirouettes on its head before zooming off in search of a mate? I’m curious as to the resilience of these pests to hot weather. They’ve been prolific this year and true to form a total nuisance while droning their cacophony. I’ve read that they actually prefer the heat, evidently even the 100 degree variety. If it weren’t soooo sweltering hot and you could sit outdoors and enjoy a summer’s eve on the patio…well, the cicadas would negate that idea by making it impossible to carry on a conversation over the din of their racket.

And speaking of frying things…I did find a little levity in a conversation I overheard while in the checkout lane at the grocery store. The lady in front of me and the cashier were complaining about (what else?) and the lady told this story: “My kids were out front and I noticed the eggs had been left on the kitchen counter. I went to chastise them and found them out by my car. My oldest son motioned for me to come over and see what they were doing. I almost had a stroke. They had literally fried an egg on the hood of my BMW!!! ‘Can you believe this, MOM? This actually worked! It’s that hot out here! Don’t worry, we sprayed the hood with cooking spray so it wouldn’t stick!’”

The checker was aghast but then couldn’t help but laugh when she saw the lady smile and shake her head. She said, “I told those kids I sure hoped they didn’t think I was going to let them eat that egg after they got it off of the car. Hard telling what was under it!” I thought this was very motherly of her to be so concerned about the health of the children. I think I would have insisted they eat the egg right off the car especially to include what was underneath! My bad! I guess I’m just being hot-headed, but really, can you blame me?

C. Stroup
C. Stroup
Cindy Stroup is a Double Oak resident and has been contributing to The Cross Timbers Gazette for over 30 years. Read her column each month in The Cross Timbers Gazette newspaper.

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