It's hot.
As I'm sure you're aware. It's even hotter, though, when Nashville, TN breaks a 50 year record with the heat, recording 104 degrees in the downtown area, and you drive a fossil battle-damaged car from the late 80s with no A-to-tha-mothafuckin'-C. So yes, my ass is still actually in my car, sweated off by me earlier on the way home. Which is ridiculous. Either the heat has modified my brains into noticing stuff I wouldn't otherwise, or it's cooked the grey matter of the folks in the other cars - and on the streets - 'cause I've been seeing some really weird behavior lately. But there again - maybe it's always been there.
Driving out Monday morning, I glanced over to see a man shaving his face off. Not just shaving in his car, which I've seen, but bleeding profusely from three or more places in the process. Either he needs new shocks, a new razor, or just not to shave in his goddamn car. I helpfully shouted such to him, but as it's hot, everyone else has their windows up, enjoying the A/C, not hearing my top-volume, custom designed wisdom. I hate them. I have a grey T-shirt in the front seat I wipe sweat on. I don't even flare up my pipe on the way home anymore, because it's too hot. I do sing along loudly to Stevie Ray Vaughn, Bobby Blue Bland, Vini & The Demons, and yell at NPR stories. I find that helps.
Coming back from lunch yesterday, I saw a homeless guy pissing in the parking lot between the dumpster and where one of my co-workers parks his Mustang. Again - not weird. But this guy is carefully pissing in a bottle instead of letting fly against a fence, tree, or the dumpster, one of the most pissed on features of the urban environment. When I went in to advise my colleagues of the odd pissing going on outside in the sweltering heat, I was informed that people on meth frequently do this to harvest leftover piss-meth. Anyone else ever heard this? It was after this we found porn in the other dumpster.
Max was drawing a picture of people with wings in his room tonight and didn't want me to see it. My wife just dressed, got her keys and left suddenly, with no explanation. My daughter's been cranky for about two days now, on and off. Finally, in the category of How to Win Friends the Squidbag Way, we have this exchange with one of my co-workers from today, a man who's universally regarded as being absurd, smart-ass wank;
HIM: (busting through into the shop area) Hello, ladies! (his regular standard greeting) Catch you at a bad time?
ME: Anytime you're here is by definition, bad, by virtue of your presence. What the hell do you want?
OTHER COLLEAGUE: Damn, I thought it was hot outside. Do you smell a burn? I smell a burn.
Stay cool, everybody.