[My apologies to George Gershwin.]

The weather got hot. The weather cooled off. The weather got hot again. Hour to hour, it seems sometimes. I’ve not left the house much these days, except to mess about in the garden or sit on the porch of an evening, a cool drink in hand.

I was hanging wash yesterday. As I clipped towels and facecloths to the line, I wondered why they’re call “terry cloth.” I went to my oft-used online Merriam-Webster dictionary to find out. For once, they didn’t know! I could get lost in their links, but I have enough in the house to get lost in, at least as far as organizing goes.

I’m on Martha Stewart’s blog, if that’s what it’s called. I used to - like lots of my friends - make fun of her when she had that long-running television show, which I never actually watched. Had I watched, I would have realized that she simply gave good advice on how to do things better. The reason for clicking on her link now was simply to see if she still sold her retro day-of-the-week kitchen towels, which I bought at K-Mart about a jillion years ago. I think I still have all 7 days, but a couple of them are torn; not that I or anyone else ever looks at them…

For the most part, I do household things the way my mother did. Moving south has changed some of that. And climate change is making me change as well. F’rinstance, I’m getting up earlier to walk uptown to check on my bulletin board across from Plott Hound Books. A couple/three times a week, I take down a Jehovah’s Witnesses booklet or a real estate brochure or a poster for an event that’s not even in Yancey County. It’s for community events and information, not selling things, although if somebody posted a yard sale, I’d leave it up; those are events for the common folk. Speaking of which, I had a yard sale a few weeks ago. It drew only three customers, netting a whopping $25. Someone pointed out to me later that with all the donations pouring in from all over the country for Helene relief, pretty much nobody around here needed more stuff. Duh.

The main household routine change is what I’m doing to keep cool this summer. A box fan in the living room window facing east sucks air out of the house, depending on the time of day and the difference in inside and outside temperatures.

When the morning sun is coming in through the east windows, I close and shade those windows, open the west (shadowed-side of the house) windows, and turn on the fan. When the earth rotates so the sun is baking the west side of the house, those windows get closed and shaded; the fan gets turned off. It works.

This house is 125 years old, and it does fine keeping me comfortable. The furnace it had when I bought it couldn’t warm the house. Rats were nesting in the floor insulation. I had the insulation and furnace removed, installing a kerosene Monitor in the kitchen and eHeaters (unobtrusive paintable wall heaters) in the bedrooms and bathroom. Problem solved. If the floors are cold in the winter, I don’t really notice; a pair of cheap fuzzy slippers from the discount store takes care of that.

When I started this ButtonDown, I believe there were going to be some pearls of wisdom to roll your way. Ha! Maybe some of you old-timers can figure that out; I need to move to the porch now with a cool drink.

Well, wait! Here’s something I just decided to add: Yesterday, padding back from the mailbox in my house slippers, I decided that since I no longer have a car, I no longer need a driveway, and I want that nasty old cracked asphalt torn up so I can seed it with grass. Anybody with a car can still park there or in the carport, but to have that environmentally unfriendly substance baking in front of my house every day (warming up the atmosphere, too, now that I think about it) just seems stupid. I haven’t got the upper body strength to do it myself. Suggestions are welcome.

Porch and cool-drink time, y’all.

Lucy