July 26
Well, today was at least a little bit cooler than yesterday, though it remains ridiculously hot out. I'm still a little bit embarrassed about the rock thing, though Thorin hasn't said a word about it. Oh! And I caught Frodo playing with Rocky this morning! He was so cute! And by "he", I mean Frodo – not Rocky. Anyway, there aren't many other entertainment options here; at least, not unless someone wants to get a sunburn and possible heat exhaustion.
So, on that subject, we picked up some Play-Doh for the younger kids to use inside when it is too stifling to go out. I say it is for the younger kids, but Fíli and Kíli (and, I'll admit, even Thorin and I) have been playing with it, as well. The Play-Doh is everywhere, of course – on the floor and ground into the couch and in the bathroom sink and on the doorknobs. And because of the humidity here, it doesn't harden very quickly; but while it was a bit disconcerting stepping on it on my way to the bathroom in the dark last night, it was also a relief when I realized that it was not a "present" that the dog left on the floor!
Oh, and about the dog! She is getting more fit by the day, and no longer stays in the shower stall to sleep (or else stepping on the Play-Doh wouldn't have been such a fright!). In fact, she can even get up the stairs into the trailer without pausing to work up to a leap! We've even taken to sticking the dog leash to the velcro on the hands of Gimli's stuffed Captain America by the door, so we can get to it easily when she wants to go out (which is more often than we care for in this heat!).
I did take some advantage of the weather, and made sun-tea for the first time this afternoon (usually we boil the water for iced-tea, then chill it). It turned out tasty enough, though I think I either didn't add quite enough tea bags, or I didn't leave it in the sun long enough, so it was just a touch weak. I'll try again tomorrow, and hope that I do it just right this time!
Thorin has been on a bit of a repair kick lately. He fixed the stuck front door with some brackets yesterday, since we couldn't keep scrambling over the kitty litter and all of the older boys' stuff to get through the back door. While he was at it, he also tightened a wobbly step, then he figured he'd replace the screens that the cat had torn holes in during the storm the other day.
And speaking of holes – I was complaining that I couldn't get comfortable in bed because my sheets were "pilling", making it feel like sleeping on gravel; so Fili and Kili, in an attempt to help, tried to "shave" off the bumpy parts of the fabric with a knife. They accidentally ended up putting about a dozen little holes in the sheet, so I had to put duct tape on the underside to keep the holes from getting bigger. It isn't really that noticeable when we're laying on them (except when we stick to the exposed duct tape), and the boys did at least get a lot of the pilling off! It's just too bad we didn't think to bring a spare sheet (we figured we could just wash ours when we needed to – we didn't count on holes!).
Oh, and when we all went to the shower house tonight, Gimli started battling against what he claimed was a giant mosquito. Unfortunately, in an attempt to hit it with a wet towel, he ended up breaking the light fixture on the shower-room ceiling. We'll have to pay for that, of course. But, well, the bug got away; and it turned out that it wasn't a mosquito, after all, but a crane fly. They don't bite, but we couldn't convince Gimli of that.