Hotter Than Hades

We are in the midst of a freakishly boiling hot heat wave. Today it got up to 104 degrees. It was hotter in Shelton today than in Tucson (yes, really). Now don't get me wrong, I love warm weather and sunshine and all that goodness just as much as the next gal, but the line of comfort and happiness was crossed about 20 degrees ago. If you are reading this from Arizona or California or Nevada, go ahead, laugh at me. But regardless, It. Is. Hot.

I actually looked up what Hades means. It's Greek for Hell. Yes, an appropriate description for the temperatures this week.

Which leads me to a story...

Years ago, before we were married, Dale and I lived in sin in this housing development which was part of a golf course. You had to pay yearly dues (which were considerably reasonable) and once these fees were paid, you had unlimited water use. Because of this, obviously, Dale and I were able to water our lawn as much a we wanted.

So we did.

We had automatic sprinklers that ran twice a day and we had the most beautiful lawn ever. Our grass would have made baseball stadium's groundskeepers green with envy (no pun intended...heh).

Then we moved to our current home. As that first spring turned to summer the reliable rainfall came to an end, that meant it was time start watering our grass with our usual wreckless abandon. Naively and ignorantly we ran our sprinklers enough to keep our grass thick and lush and emerald green. Did we look around and notice that ALL of our neighbors had, at this point, let their grass die? I can't remember. Would we have made the connection?

Then our bill came.

The grand total for all the water we used that June 2003 was $647. I am not lying. I think when we saw that bill, it was a slow motion "Oooooooooohhhhhhh
ssssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiittttttttttttt..................." We were first time homeowners who failed to realize that because we now lived within city limits, we couldn't happily water away without being charged for every drop of it.

Lesson learned the hard way.

Which leads me to the rest of my post...

Of course our dead grass now fits perfectly into the neighborhood and has since July 2003. But it looks so bad. So bad. It's ugly and embarrassing. I swear if I see that camera robot that comes down your street to photograph your house for Google Maps, I will run out and put duct tape over the lens.

Here is a little teaser photo of our atrocious, hay-like, sorry, sad, dead grass. If Dale ever sees that I've posted this picture on my blog will curl up and die of embarassment.