Hot. Hot. Hot. Summer bad. Hate summer. Hot.

I finally made it to a NaNoWriMo write-in this morning, in which we hid from the offensively hot weather and tapped away with the help of cold cordials, iced tea and chocolate scones.

The good thing about writing at  godiyeva‘s house is that, while our laptops might not be connected to Google, she’s still likely to have a reference book to answer any random questions we might have, whether it be about ancient greek clothing and geography, or how to make a mint julep.

The mint juleps weren’t relevant to anyone’s book, it was just so hot that the topic came up, and we much enjoyed the reading from a very ancient and judgmental tome that listed the controversies surrounding whether or not to bruise the mint, and other period details.

Mmm, mint juleps. It’s so a day for them.

Jem was really very good, dividing her time between lying on the baby gym (she has that ‘I’m about to roll’ gleam in her eye but so far has only managed it when precariously balanced on cushions which not only doesn’t count, but is Very Bad Mothering) and actually sleeping in a stray cot.

My honey  aifin unexpectedly arrived at lunchtime, having skived off work (well technically I suppose he’s allowed a lunch break but it was suspiciously long) to sort out my some-bastard-ripped-my-wing-mirror-off problem, so we swapped cars and went to find somewhere air conditioned to grab lunch first.

Lunch was very nice and very air conditioned (ahhhhh) but I did feel guilty about the fact that my baby had to be strapped to me the whole time and thus was probably not getting the best benefit of the cool air. I brought her home after that to spend the afternoon playing the exciting new game ‘look, it’s a wet washcloth on your tummy, hooray’ and watching Days of Our Lives.

It’s allowed, okay? I am ahead on wordcount! Also it was a very exciting episode in which the sweet, innocent geekboy is revealed to be a murdering madman, hooray! The plot moved startlingly fast for a single DOOL episode, which made me wonder if they’ve changed things around there or if I just lucked out and got the one plotty episode for the year.

Now the baby is asleep, the schoolgirl is off somewhere with her Toto (translation: grandfather who actually has never seen the Wizard of Oz) and I can lie around in the heat wishing I had a mint julep while I thumb through my spanking new copy of Jeff VanderMeer’s Booklife. You may all be jealous of my lifestyle.

If only the bottle shops and herb farms delivered, I could actually have a mint julep. Provided I was willing to take a position on mint-bruisage.

Tags: imaginary foodstuffs, jem, mama writer, mothering, nanowrimo, soap opera, weather, writing