What A Day!

Yes, my day has been eventful. As of this moment I am sitting here with a wet washcloth wrapped around my neck with my thermostat reading 87 degrees. Yes, my A/C decided to take a little break today. The A/C guy has been called but you know how that goes. He'll shows up when he shows up after you have sat at the house all day waiting on him. Your at their mercy and they know it.

I'm really a little nervous about it all. Mobile is hot and muggy but not near as hot as it gets here in central Texas. In Mobile the sun is filtered out by the humidity. Here there is not much humidity to shield you from the blaring sun and high temps....nor are there many tall trees for shade. At least we have massive wind here to circulate the triple temps around. (eyeroll) Top all this off with my menopausal hot flashes during the night and you have a demon waiting to be unleashed....bless my family.

I always try to think of a positive side to things. The only one I could come up with was that I was glad it was not my washing machine that went on the blink. Laundromats aren't my thing....quite honestly I haven't even seen one since I have been here. Nor do I have anywhere I could hang the clothes to dry if I decided to hand wash them....let's not even think about that one. No need to draw anymore negative manifestations my way.

So, on with the next eventful part of my day. After Summer and I finished school we were sitting down to have our lunch. The doorbell rang. I answered it only because I saw it was my next door neighbor. She speaks very little English but I sense that she can understand a good bit.

To make a long story short, her toddler had locked her and her 4 year old out of the house....the toddler was locked inside of the house with food on the stove boiling. She was frantic and wanting my house key so she could open her door to get back into her house.

It was really a sad now that I look back on it. First of all there was a HUGE language barrier. Second, for some odd reason she believed that my house key could open her door. You should have seen my trying to communicate to this poor soul that even though our houses look alike, our key are in no way the same.

I finally got the point across. In the meantime she is in panic mode and I am beginning to feel the same way myself because I can smell the burning food inside of her house. I also felt for her because like me, she is alone here. She has no one but her husband and her kids when she is in trouble. If her hubby isn't available then she is "shit out of luck"...just like I am.

She finally communicated to me that she wanted me to call the police. I called 911. I didn't know what they could do for us, but I figured they could at least give us some idea. I told 911 what was going on. The operator asked me why the neighbor didn't call herself.....odd question to me, but I told the operator that my neighbor could not speak much English.

The operator then told me the only thing they would do is break the window. I told the operator..."O.K., then that's what we will do.". I then had to go over there and communicate to her using "sign language" of some kind that we needed to break the window to get in. Geeshh...I now now why our ancestors drew pictures on the walls!

I learned in the process the windows in these houses are pretty thick glass. We finally got the smallest window we could find broke. Mary climbed in and unlocked her door. I could hear her in there using a few choice words in Spanish....even though I didn't understand most of them, I'm sure they weren't nice ones. :-)

I truly felt for my neighbor and totally understood her panic. I wanted to wrap my arms around her and tell her that even though I couldn't understand her words that I could totally understand her human dilemma.

After my experience today, I am even more convinced than ever that of all the crazy stupid laws our government has why in the world they don't make it a requirement that someone getting their "citizenship" has to know a certain amount of English. Who cares if they know who the senators are or who is in the cabinet.....hell, most American citizens don't even know that anyway.

It's getting hotter and hotter in here by the minute. I need to go wet my washrag and open some windows now that it is nightfall......