Isn't it Ironic

We had a long summer this year. The heat, as we know it, stayed until the beginning of November. With the October fires, some of the worst we have had, the Santa Ana winds blowing the ash and smoke, and the 90 degree heat wave the atmosphere was anything but pleasant and the air was heavy and dark.

Los Angeles area residents were told not to use any electrical appliances, such as washing machines, vacuums, dryers, air conditioning, and to ration all water usage. Long Beach has been on a water conservation program for over a year. The city council even encourages residents to ’report your neighbor’. I haven’t seen any suggestions that we talk to a neighbor. The local paper repeatedly says, “pick up the phone and report the violator to the city.” The city wants us to send the water police knocking on our neighbor’s doors. Depending on the misuse the water police can leave a ticket with a hefty fine. It sounds like a nasty opportunity to get revenge on the neighbor with the barking dog.

I fast got overheated with the weather, the fires, and the city. When my doctor asked me how I was handling the heat I answered that all I wanted to do was get out of this chair and run around naked in my backyard. I was being plagued with heat rash. Her sympathy extended to a prescription for an ointment and an “everyone I have seen today has heat rash” and a chuckle.

November finally arrived and brought with it some welcome fall weather. I’ll admit that I’m a spoiled native Californian. We don’t have, as John says, “real weather”. But I have lived my whole life with California’s non-weather and I suffer when it deviates from it‘s normal course. We are now waiting a northern storm. It is supposed to hit tonight. We desperately need the rain, but the powers are mourning the possibilities of mudslides. As for me, I’m happy once again. I’m cold, but I can deal with cold sitting in this movable chair. I can layer the clothes and still look stylish. I can put on several pairs of socks and still look presentable. I can throw the ointment away. The cold doesn’t cover me with a rash.

There is only one little problem, John. He claims that he was doing it for me, but I have serious doubts about his motive.

“I woke up chilly this morning. I turned on the heater. I have the house all warmed up for you. Come into the kitchen. It’s much warmer in there.”


My son and grandson get up at dawn on Saturday mornings to go to an English Pub to watch British football, or what is better known here as soccer, with a group of their friends. They were just getting home as John was finishing his tale of a toasty house.

My son walked in the door and before any of us could ask who won the soccer game I heard, “Who turned on the air conditioning?" “It‘s colder then hell in here.”

It may have seemed toasty to John, but he’s from the other coast where they have snowstorms and temperatures that fall way down on the thermometer. Anything above 40 is warm to him.

He now claims that we all over-reacted. “It was just a bit of cool air. In Buffalo it gets below 0.”

Cool air! My son’s nose was covered with icicles.

This little ‘good deed’ of John’s is very ironic. We couldn’t use the air conditioning when we were in a heat wave and the air was smoky and ashy, but it gets turned on when the temperature is in the low 40’s.

My granddaughter hasn’t had her tonsils removed as of yet. She had dozens of school reasons that she couldn’t take the time to get it done this past summer. She is now so sick the doctor is trying to get the surgery set up for Christmas vacation. He says it has become an emergency thing now. We got a letter from the school that she is ahead of her class and on course to graduate so she doesn’t have any school excuses left.

I think she has finally decided that the time has arrived. She is tired of being sick all the time, my son is tired of having to run home and take her to the doctor, I am tired of being a non-Jewish grandmother that has to make chicken soup all the time, and my grandson is tired of having to run her errands.

John must be tried of her being sick too. She came out of her bedroom barely able to talk to ask, “who decided to turn on the air conditioning?” “The vent is right over my bed and I was freezing with that icy air blowing on me.”

Merry Christmas from John.