October

October seems to be a crazy month...with all the baseball playoff surprises...what's with the Yankees? But I have to say that the weather here has taken me by surprise. I know that I talk about the weather alot but it seriously has me confused.

Back in May, when we were hitting 120 every day, people kept telling me that it would get cold in November and December, that winter would be 'in the 80's every day and it would be very nice'. What they so conveniently 'forgot' to mention is that October is the hottest month of the year. This morning at 9 am it was 110. I don't even know what the temperature is right now, but I can tell you that it's dang hot. And to make it worse, the wind was blowing.

I never thought that, at any point in my life, I would come in from outside and actually seriously say to someone 'the hairdryer is on high today'. Before I moved to the Sandbox, I thought that a nice breeze could always make a hot day a little more bearable. Well, here, it's like someone's holding a hairdryer to your face...and today that hairdryer was turned on high.

So here's how the seasons work in the Sandbox. You have summer in May, June & July where you easily hit 120 everyday. Then you have the 'rainy' season, Aug & Sep, where you have 5 downpours (total) but, because there is no drainage system, there is water and mud consistently everywhere. It's still hot, at least 100 everyday, but there's also humidity. Then there's October...hotter. And then Nov & Dec where it should only be in the 80's, however I haven't seen it so I don't know whether I believe them or not. It's just not a natural flow...I mean, it should be hot and then gradually change to cooler, then gradually back to hot again.

This one rather warm month is really throwing my clock off. It's so hard to imagine that baseball season is winding down and football is just getting started because, for my whole life, these things are associated with fall weather and I think I really miss both...the baseball and football seasons and the fall weather. We were getting lots of football on satellite for about 2 weeks before 'they' decided that they were going to shut off satellite. So now we don't get anything...no football, not even BBC, just this one channel that is constant sermons in Arabic...entertaining!

We joke that it's a secret plot to get the foreigners to leave...first they shut off the satellite, then they took away the pringles (you used to could find them everywhere, now all I can find is this knock off/locally made brand that's just not quite good)...who knows what they'll take away next!!!