I know in my heart of hearts that it’s foolish to bitch about the heat in Texas, especially in August, but this summer has been a doozy. It’s barely rained since May and the heat has been insane. We broke a record sometime this past month for number of 100+ degree days in a row. 2011 has been the year with the most 100+ degree days (at something like 90 of them), but this year has been every bit as brutal.

I just checked – Lake Travis is at 38.2% full as of September 4th. This isn’t as low as it’s ever been, but it’s worrisome all the same. I just checked our forecast for the next ten days – not a drop of rain in sight. I used to chuckle over some of our tourist literature – “300 days of sunshine” it said. I remember thinking that that was an awfully rose-colored view given our summers.

Thanks to our extreme drought conditions and the subsequent water restrictions, most of the yard is some degree of brown and crispy. We haven’t grilled all summer for fear an errant spark will start a fire. Our cold water currently measures 86 degrees Fahrenheit. Our local weather folks have told us these oppressive temperatures are in part courtesy of something called a heat dome. Evidently there was a huge and unmoving area of high pressure around us trapping in warm air from the gulf and from Mexico. That warm air evaporated the ground moisture from our nice mild spring, and once the ground was good and dry, any evaporative cooling we may have enjoyed was gone gone gone.

Thankfully, we’ve mostly been able to escape indoors this August. Lots of movie nights and family game nights and arts and crafts nights. Anything to not go outside. Even the cacti and succulents are losing the good fight. Even the weeds are browning.

Early in the month, we tried out the Museum of Illusions. It was probably a little expensive for what wound up being maybe an hour-long outing for us, but it was entertaining regardless. Plus, Ian at the time had been on a tear creating “impossible drawings” (things like the Penrose triangle) so it was fun to let him lean into that a little bit.

Maya liked bits of it I think, but spent much of the time feeling bored and audibly wishing she could not be there. She seemed to like trying to solve some of the puzzles toward the end, so at least that part was fun for her. And either way, we got a few fun photos out of the deal.

We had a night early in the month where we hung out with a few friends and played board games. I am ambivalent about board games and so for me mostly it was about trying out some interesting recipes and socializing a bit. For example, we learned that bacon wrapped pickles are friggin’ delicious. The recipe calls for smoking them, but 1 – reference my earlier commentary about our intense drought and 2 – Maya doesn’t like smoke. I made them in the oven instead and they were divine.

For our entire 20-something year history together, Sean has not been a tequila guy, much to my chagrin. However, after sampling this spicy margarita punch that I made for the event, he may be a changed man. Since then, we’ve tested out a handful of tequila and mezcal cocktails together, and I’m delighted to say that he seems to have turned a corner. Hooray!

The kids’ school ice cream social was on August 10th. It’s an opportunity for the kids to meet their new teachers and see their classrooms before the first day of school. The kids, especially Maya, have been looking forward to school starting so they can see more of their friends. Just before back to school night, we learned who the kids’ teachers would be. Maya found out that while she had one teacher, two of her best friends had a different teacher. To add insult to injury, this teacher that her friends were with had student-taught Maya in 4th grade and Maya absolutely adored her. She put on a brave face, but you could tell she was upset.

Ian had a guitar performance at a local coffee shop with his guitar teacher, Chris. It was a sort of low-key open-mic affair and for the first few songs, I’m not sure sure people really paid them much attention. I think it wasn’t till Ian started belting out AC/DC’s Thunderstruck on his nylon-stringed classical guitar, something familiar, that people noticed. He and Chris garnered some polite, coffee-house applause for their efforts.

And then on August 14th, the kids went back to school. Back to lunch rooms and recesses and homework assignments. Back to drop off and pick up and the end of the day discussion of how their days went. So far, the kids both seem to like their classrooms well enough. All the same-grade kids have recess together, so Maya still gets to see and play with her friends during the day.

Every year around August, our local Central Market grocery store celebrates hatch chile season. These delicious chiles are ripe and ready for harvest from Hatch, NM around this time, and Central Market (and many local restaurants) put them in everything. The smell coming from the grocery store grounds at this time of year is divine as they roast chiles and huge open-air drums outside the store. You can choose to buy them hot or mild, fresh or roasted. For me though, the fun is all the hatch-flavored stuff they wind up concocting.

Sean went foraging for goodies this year – he’s our primary grocery shopper. Let’s see if I can remember all the things he came back with (many of which wound up in the freezer): a whole hatch roasted chicken, hatch macaroni and cheese, fresh hatch sausages, hatch marinated salmon, hatch marinated shrimp, hatch crab cakes, hatch marinated chicken thighs, hatch marinated flank steak, hatch burgers, hatch hummus, hatch cheese, hatch tortillas, dried hatch enchilada sauce mix, hatch chocolate chip cookies, hatch creme sandwich cookies, hatch tamales, hatch cheddar biscuits, hatch sourdough crisps, and hatch cheese puffs.

And so far, except for the cheese puffs, everything has been really good! We ate the chicken and macaroni that very evening, still-warm from the store. All four of us really liked salmon and shrimp. And it’s been fun since then taking things slowly out of the freezer week over week and stretching out our hatch chile enjoyment.

On that Sunday, both Sean and Maya started feeling a bit under the weather – sniffly noses, headaches. As a precaution Monday morning (the second whole week of school, for anyone keeping track), we gave Maya a covid test. On the initial 15 minute run, only the control line showed up, but on glancing at the test a little while later, there it was: a faint positive line. I called the school and Maya was dismayed to find out she’d have to stay home for the entire week. She didn’t feel too terrible, so I went ahead and fetched some of her homework from school and that helped occupy her time a little, but for the most part, she was bored and frustrated.

Thankfully, Ian and I managed to avoid infection. I don’t know if it made a difference, but we wore masks around the house during the first few days. We ate our meals separately, and I slept in the living room. (They tested on Thursday evening and once no positive result appeared, even after a full hour of waiting, we chose to ditch our at-home precautions.) But Maya had to miss school for a week already, miss her first swim lesson, and miss her piano lesson for the week, none of which impressed her.

Maya and Ian have played soccer for the past couple seasons. Both of them seemed interested in testing out some other things, so we’ve decided to skip out on soccer this fall. Ian is still taking weekend archery lessons, and they’ve both started swim lessons with an eye toward joining swim team once they qualify. Maya has also again joined her after school choir group. And Ian has decided to try out cub scouts.

Ian’s first pack meeting was toward the end of August, and I’m gonna be honest: all of this is a little overwhelming. I have managed to register him with scouts, buy him a pack t-shirt, and get him to that first meeting. But I’ve not yet bought his uniform or handbook, signed him up for any of the events, nor figured out what’s going on with popcorn selling business. One of his friends from class, who also happens to be in the weekend archery lessons with him, is in scouts as well, so Ian is pretty excited. During their first pack meeting, they made rockets, and Ian’s rocket both held together and flew pretty well. Now his mother just needs to get her crap together.

Every summer, we daydream about living somewhere with a milder climate, but this summer may be the one that finally does it. We’ve floated the idea past the kids a little, just so they know we’re thinking about it. Maya, who is very attached to her friends, is dead-set against moving away from Austin. Even though she wishes she could play outside more, even though she wishes it would snow more, even though she likes the idea of maybe being a little closer to her grandparents, she does not want to leave. We Woodses don’t tend to move quickly, so she probably doesn’t have much to worry about for a while.