It's HOT. HOT is YUCKY.

The Seattle area is in the midst of a heatwave. And of course, what's the best idea on the planet in the middle of a heatwave? A heatwave that is itself, in the middle of a month or more with no rain?

Let's light things on fire and shoot them into the sky and NOT pay attention to where the embers land!! This sounds like FANTASTIC fun.

Yeah, there were fires all around Washington from Friday on. Yesterday (the 4th of July, obviously) the sound of the fireworks being lit off illegally all around me were counterpointed by the wail of fire engines as they rushed hither and yon to try to control the fires being started from the fireworks.

A friend of mine said she was driving north from Tacoma late last night and watched tree after tree explode into flames from a fire.

I'm all for understanding our history, and celebrating the fact that Americans stood up for what they believed in and won the fight. Absolutely.

But I think the message has been lost. I don't think people remember what those fireworks are supposed to represent and remind us of. And I think that's evident in more than just the fact that they don't care when they set fire to things... it's also evident in our laws, culture, and government.

But I'm not going to get into that. That's all I wanted to say on Fireworks.

It's hot, did I mention that? It's so stinky hot that I don't sleep all night long most nights. I get a couple of hours of napping, and then I'm up to get a LARGE drink of ice water and stand on my deck for a bit so that I can cool off.

I haven't cooked food on or in my oven/stove in almost 3 weeks because it's too hot. The last time I did, it was a pasta dish that thankfully tastes wonderful cold, and cooking the noodles and sauteing the veggies nearly made my house uninhabitable.

Tomorrow, I may set the box fan in the front doorway and set it to blowing cooler air in for a bit. Right now, it's by the sliding door, trying to pull air in.

I am hoping to get the house bearable tonight because tomorrow I really probably should cook so that I can have another week's worth of food in the fridge.

For the 4th of July, I made a large bowl of "Greek Vegetable Salad" (I put it in quotes because it's about as greek as I am, the greekest thing in there is the Kalamata olives, and I think they came from California.) But it's one of my favorite salads, and ended up being breakfast, lunch, snack, and part of dinner yesterday. I went from having probably a good 12 cups to having maybe 2 cups (3 tops) to go into my lunch today. But there wasn't much else that I could stomach eating in this weather. I did put bratwurst into the crock pot. I had forgotten to buy apple juice (I know, a lot of people like beer for cooking brats, but I don't and especially not in the crock pot.) Since I didn't have apple juice, I threw in a cup of homemade applesauce (I was hoping it was my habanero applesauce, but I don't know if it was or not.) I also added several cups of chicken broth and a large sweet onion sliced up. This then cooked all day and was phenomenal for dinner when I finally felt like I could eat something.

I had some of the brats for lunch today too. ;)

I would really like it if the heat would break at least for a few days. But I don't think it's going to. The weather reports say it might cool off by a couple of degrees, but not much and not really any time soon. Not only that, but they can't predict more than a couple of days in advance with a lot of accuracy, so it's a-suffering we shall go.

Hope you guys all are cooler than we are!