Brain Melt

It is HOT here in Kansas City. I know the entire Midwest is H O T! A friend in lower Minnesota is complaining about 98 degree temps while here it is only 95. The humidity though sends the heat index to over 105. Another dog friend in Chicago has had high temps with power outages. Now that's awful! I'm grateful to have a powerful house AC that keeps us cool indoors. Hubby has finally found and paid for a radiator for the Aurora and they are picking up my car this afternoon to install it. That means that hopefully before the week ends we will have air conditioning in my little car. It's been darned hot driving around without it.

This morning I went to the dentist. I go to the UMKC Dental School -- have for the last 20 years. I really like it. If a mistake is made, they fix it, no questions asked -- and because you have students working on you, everything they do is scrutinized and supervised. Last summer we filled my last cavity just before my student graduated. Unfortunately, I had swallowed four Ibuprofen before I left home, not knowing that it was this aspirin that was interacting so badly with my prescribed meds. Anyway 90 minutes into the filling, I get violently sick to my stomach and then proceeded to throw-up every seven minutes until they got the hole in my mouth filled and could send me homeward. My student dentist, as would be expected, rushed the job -- and then immediately graduated (probably blessing the day she never had to see me again). I was left with a filling that did not make contact with my other teeth -- a huge yawning cavity that every piece of food that enters my mouth seems to get stuck in. This summer my brand new dental student, a strapping young man, is repairing the filling and also replacing a very ancient one in a back molar next to it. It's all good, but it was very hot driving to and from the dental school without air conditioning.

The news reports that Ed McMann died at the age of 86 today. I know he had been sick for some time. And the family with eight children, Jon & Kate something-or-other, are divorcing. I'm not sure why that story is topping the news. Their kids are cute but frankly I could care less whether the parents are happily married. The supreme court, contrary to expectation, upheld the voting rights act -- except for that complete idiot Clarence Thomas who wrote a dissenting opinion (of course). Three adults and one child were killed in the neighboring city in which I teach and no one seems to know why. A neighborhood just 40 blocks from my inner city house was judged the sixth most violent neighborhood in the NATION. Iran has election woes. Certainly the picture of the dead Iranian woman that topped international news last night was highly disturbing.

Tonight I have class from 5 to 8 p.m. I got my paper completed but I'm aware that it isn't up to my usual standard. I've delayed putting it in the Internet drop box so I can give it one last re-reading to see if I can fill in a couple of the wholes I know exist. I used the National Archives site to develop my Universal Design for Learning lesson plan for social studies. It's a wonderful site and if you haven't checked it out, plan to spend some time there clicking around on all the links.

The heat has me beat. I slept well last night but I think I'm ready for nap again this afternoon. We have at least five more days ahead of us like this. I wonder what the neighbors would think if I set up the lawn sprinkler and just went outside and laid down in it?