Story by Jon Stalnaker AKA The Studebaker Dude
I believe that I can tell the difference between 99 degrees heat and 100 degrees. Back in my working days in California I tested that theory and I was right every time. I’m not talking about 88 degrees vs 115 degrees, I’m talking about one or two degrees difference. But that’s not what is going on the last couple of weeks here in Oklahoma.
I did appreciate 3 days of relief last week. It gave me a chance to mow the lawn before the triple digits returned. It’s time to mow again and it looks like we will get a similar reprieve this weekend. I can mow early in the morning if I have to, that’s one of the benefits of owning electric powered lawn mowers (they are quite quiet).
I like to keep my yard looking good, but I also appreciate not living in an HOA neighborhood. If I don’t get to it, I can just play the old man card. The desire to have a nice yard is totally self-inflicted, my neighbors are great. We only tease each other occasionally. The watering is the thing that is difficult for me. One of these days I will see about a sprinkler system. The problem is procrastination, but if you have been reading my stories, I have already confessed to that shortcoming.
We’ve been planting more flower producing shrubs and such, and we only have a few hours of tolerable outside time to get it done. There’s always tomorrow. Being retired is a blessing and we can stop, go into the house where the air conditioning is working fine, take a shower and hang out in comfortable clothes. We earned our retirement as we both worked jobs where we had to work outside despite the weather.
I am so glad that my experience delivering mail was in California where the weather was about as mild as it gets. We had our 100 degree days, but they were few and far between. The rain didn’t bother me either. I used to tell myself that once I achieved my saturation point, I stayed at the same level of discomfort for the rest of the route. And where I worked, there was no snow, period.
As I type away writing this story in the coolness of my office, my grass is getting longer and longer. It’s gonna have to wait for the double digit days of this weekend. According to our local meteorologists, this weekend will be good. I appreciate our weather people in Oklahoma. They are usually accurate and the storm coverage is first class. I was just telling one of my California friends about how they take the storm coverage very seriously. You don’t get warnings like that in California if an earthquake is about to hit. No time to seek shelter there. I almost got him convinced to move to Oklahoma. He would fit right in around here. Well into my 6th year and still loving it…