I hate July.
I hate it with the fury of a thousand mosquitoes.
It’s nothing but hot. Especially if you don’t have the money to sneak out of town this year to somewhere cool. If there is anywhere cool.
We can barely afford to sneak out to Lake Pontchartrain.
And then I hear on the news that experts say that New Orleans will become an island by 2100. I might still be alive then, what with modern medicine and all.
It sounds great. I never been to Hawaii, but we could do what they do — plant palm trees everywhere and wear hula skirts around. Get sun tans and enjoy ocean breezes. Throw our own luaus, whatever they are. Eat coconuts and pineapples. Lots of pineapples.
But it ain’t happened yet.
Now I am a tour guide, and usually I can get tourists to take a tour in the heat by offering my air-conditioned tour, going from air-conditioned place to air-conditioned place and gawking at the sights through the windows. And there are plenty of sights, I can tell you that.
One miserable day in the heat, I decide to make the best of bad, and finally put the Christmas decorations back in the attic. They been cluttering up the hall for six months now. Also a couple suitcases, which we ain’t going to be using this year.
So I climb up to the attic door — which is inconveniently situated over the couch, with the ladder running to one side of it — with one box of decorations. Then another. Then another. Then the manger set. Then my stuffed Grinch.
And finally the two suitcases, one at a time. I got to slide them to the back of the attic, so they won’t interfere with getting out the Christmas stuff, hard as it is to imagine Christmas in this heat.
That’s where I am when I hear, “CLONK!” Somebody downstairs has closed the attic door. Great.
They are going to find me roasted like a chicken if I don’t get out of there fast.
It’s dark in there with the door closed, but I scuttle over to the trap door as fast as I can, keeping my eye on the light cracks around the edge of it. By the time I get to the trap door, I am frantic, and I just heave myself up and jump on it.
It opens right away, thank God, and I tumble right out and land on the couch. Unfortunately, the couch is occupied by two people who don’t want to be disturbed — my son Gargoyle and his girlfriend, Lavania.
Gargoyle is not happy that his mother would fall from the ceiling on top of him and Lavania when they were “busy.” Lavania ain’t too happy either.
I am not happy that they would close the attic door without checking to see if there was somebody up there who could die of heat, and their skeletal remains not be found until it was time to take down the Christmas decorations. (“Ohhhh. THAT’S what happened to Mom.”)
Nobody’s happy.
But I am too breathless to say anything.
When finally I can talk again, I just point to the front door and say, “Out!”
And they slink out.
Well, as of today, Gargoyle is still mad.
Lavinia broke up with him. She says she is too traumatized by his mother appearing —“appearing,” not falling — from the ceiling, to continue the relationship.
However, Gargoyle is not too mad to eat the suppers I fix, although he and his sister do want to know why we have pineapple every day. I tell them to get used to it.
And that’s it for July.
