It's after 9:00 p.m., and the garage has just cooled down to 80 degrees or so.

I'd sleep on the balcony tonight, but there are lots of bugs in the air out there. And some of them are very, very big. They're, like, the size of mice. They'd hurt me, for sure.

I seem to remember sleeping on the balcony at my grandparents' place in Whittier, California on hot summer nights when the air was still clean enough that one could see Catalina during the daytime.

This would have been back in the 1960s, before they got air-conditioning at the family homestead on that hill. (Yes. It's still in the family; it's the only structure left from my early childhood, ever since my aunt-on-my-mother's-side burned her house down. The Whittier place has been in the family since the 1930s, and my other grandparents' house is still intact, and down the hill from it. Though now strangers own it, and someone chopped down one of the lemon trees in the front yard. Fascists.)

Hey, bro—are you reading this today? Didn't they have us crash on the balcony sometimes in the summer, on those outdoor chaises? Or am I making that part up?

Now someone is going to ask me why I don't just turn on the AC. Because I don't do that until it hits 100 around here: I may be a hedonist, but I'm not wasteful.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:25 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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