Summer Forces Unconditional Surrender

A couple of nights ago, our power went out.

Normally, this would be no big deal. But we happen to be in the middle of a monstrous heat wave, and even though it was only an hour before midnight when the power cut out, the house was still oppressively hot, and outside was not much better.

But, it turned out to be a great time. We called the power company to report the outage, went to CVS to pick up some cold drinks, and then came back and sat on our front step with our upstairs neighbors, our next-door neighbors, and another neighbor from down the street who we had never met before.

We stayed out there for nearly three hours waiting for the power to come back on, dripping with sweat, choked with heat, but having a great time. We met several of our neighbors who we'd never spoken with before, because as soon as everyone's fans and window air conditioners went off (none of the houses in our area have central air), it was too hot to keep sleeping and they all took to their porches and sidewalks.

I remember spending a lot of summer nights outside on porches when I was a kid, or hanging out in basements, garages, and even under bushes to keep cool.  Sometimes I sort of regret having air conditioning because it tempts us so strongly to stay inside all the time instead of getting out, getting used to the heat, and slowing down a little bit.

Would you ever consider getting rid of air conditioning in the summer?

Eww...

Summer is here, and with summer comes my least favorite group of creatures--bugs.

There's a long list of critters that I hate, hate, hate! Spiders, centipedes, cockroaches, flies, ants--I can tolerate them outside, but when they get inside my house, I am not a happy Mrs. Scrimp.

Unfortunately, ants and flies have both arrived in our house--mainly in the kitchen. Our kitchen has a door that leads into the back steps and then right out into the driveway, so it's not really a surprise, but it definitely is an annoyance.

The problem is, I refuse to even let chemical insectisides into my house. So, what's to be done? Well, I did some poking around online and have some ideas.