I’m getting a bit tired of all the complaining (mainly from me) about the heat. Saw this on Facebook and have to share here since it made me laugh:

Today, being the smart cookie that I am, thought I would ride the bus home since a) it is so hot outside, b) I had bags of stuff to carry, c) the walk is a slow burn up hill, d) has no shade to think of except the 8″ shadows cast by weeds on the sidewalk, e) is along a busy roadway with heat generating vehicles, and f) my shirt was a poly cotton blend and I don’t want my poly cotton blend to get all stinky.

Well, what does that walk have that the bus doesn’t? AIR MOVEMENT. The bus was a tin can of contained unmoving heat with fellow humans in various stages of sweat. So I arrived home just as hot and sticky as if I walked back.

But I made it home safe and sound, albeit hot, sweaty and a teensy bit grumpy.

Priority number 1: Snap, faaaa-twang! Off comes the bra. Sweet sweet relief.

Priority number 2: Hydrate.

We have the plain old water option. Takes it forever to get cold from the tap, so we keep a  jug in the fridge. If you are a neat-freak, I ask that you ignore our gunky spray head that we have carried with us from apartment to apartment for over 20 years.

Now, if you are not a plain water sort of person, we have this option, Robinsons Lemon Barley Water (link will take you to an adorable ad from 1957, and note that the cartoon man behaves exactly as my husband does when drinking this stuff).

Barley water, for the uninitiated, needs to be diluted with water. It is quite refreshing and a nice thing to perk up plain old water. They have been drinking it at Wimbledon for 75 years as a non-alcoholic beverage, which is good, because we need people able to drive us around. Us being the people that would opt for magnums of champagne and bowl fulls of strawberries instead.  Click this:  Robinsons for a link to their website.  Around town, you can pick this stuff up normally wherever English sweets and stuff are sold. We got this at the Candy Bouquet in St. Albert.

Michael and I have both become buy-by-the-case load fans of San Pellegrino water. We agree that the bubbles are the perfect size. Yes, we are bubble specialists. For instance, in some soda waters the bubbles are big and hard, others, the bubbles are so fine you think the water has gone flat. San Pellegrino is usually a fair and consistent price at The Italian Centre Shop. If you know of a locally produced bubbly water that is reasonably priced, let us know.A hot summer day usually equates to icy cold beer, but the two I have left are a bit heavy duty for a day like today.

Instead, I think would have been happier with a plain old Lethbridge Pilsner from a Coleman cooler buried in watery ice, to bring back memories of camping with my family when I was a kid. I studied this label for hours as a child (remember, this was before iPods, Game Boy, and the internet, and only slightly after the Gutenberg printing press, so I needed distraction):

Now here was an option with possibilities: an icy cold blush syrah. But wine needs to be consumed with someone you love or while watching Coronation Street. At the moment, Michael is at work, and Corrie isn’t on yet, so this idea lasted as long as it took to remove the bottle of wine from the fridge, and put it right back where I found it.

Here we go. Ahhhhh. Ice. Glass. Lemon juice. Icy tonic. Shiny new bottle of gin. But you knew this was coming, didn’t you? 😉

Of course I’m supplementing this with buckets of water for proper hydration, but nothing beats the gentle fizz of the tonic, the tart of the lemon, the smooth gin that puts you in a mellow frame of mind, and the drippy condensation on your favourite glass…. a perfect way to relax at the end of the a busy (hot) work day.