This whole week was me trying to decompress and stay cool inside the house. The temps for us, as they were for many of you if you are in the U.S. (especially the Northeast), were very, very high. We are not used to those high temps so many of us hid inside our house with the AC.

Our house doesn’t have windows that open up (they roll out) so we have to use portable AC units that usually cool the house down in summer but really struggled with a heat index that hit 103  to 110 for three days in a row.

We have two units – one for upstairs and one for down. The upstairs one is not doing much at all because we have to put it at the top of our stairs since these units need a hose that goes out through a window and that is the most centralized place to put it to try to cool the entire upstairs.

We are considering another, smaller unit in case we have more high temps like this later in the summer. For now, we will deal with what we have.

I hope you are all managing okay in the heat.

During the heatwave Little Miss had a couple of friends visit briefly. Sadly, neither of the sisters seemed to know how to play anymore because they had been allowed to go on TikTok – for what reason, I have no idea. The children are 9 and almost 11 and do not live locally year round so my daughter only sees them once a year now.

They couldn’t put their phones down and ended up only being here an hour before they had to leave for other things.

The first day the one sister left because Little Miss had a bit of a sinus thing/possible cold going on. The second day, the other sister left to see a relative she doesn’t see much since the girls now live in another state.

Even before, that, though, she sat on the floor and scrolled on her phone instead of playing with my daughter. The next sister to visit a couple of days later also couldn’t put her phone down and it was clear she didn’t know how to stop scrolling. I told her TikTok wasn’t allowed in my house so she did put the phone down but proceeded to have a dazed look the next 15 minutes she was here as well as deciding to play a game on her phone less than two minutes after I told her to get off TikTok instead of interacting with my daughter.

It was more than disgusting for me to see those kids so hooked on their phones that they couldn’t even look up from them – it was frightening.

We are losing our kids to devices and social media and I think a lot of us don’t know what to do because we are just as addicted. I have been addicted myself so I know that this epidemic of cellphone use and social media scrolling is not limited to children.

The problem is that children are way more susceptible to becoming addicted to sites/apps like TikTok because the frontal lobe of their brains are not yet developed and that part of the brain that controls addiction is very fresh and alive, ready to be manipulated.

It has been hard for me even at my age to stop scrolling or reaching for my phone to check Instagram. Any time I want to procrastinate, I am on that phone. I’m getting better but it is a true struggle some days when I am very down. Instead of doing things that could really lift me up or make me feel better – such as reading the Bible or a book or praying or writing or drawing – I go to that phone and zone out.

So if it is a struggle for an adult – yet we have a brain developed enough to know we need to stop – then it is really a struggle for young children/teens.

Sorry for going heavy on what is normally a light post but that really upset me this week.

Because Little Miss’s friends didn’t want to actually play, I ended up in the slip n’ slide with her and reinjured my knee a bit – not by sliding because I am dumb, but not that dumb. I literally said to myself, “Don’t kneel down on your knee when you get down to put your butt on the slide and scootch (word? I don’t know) down, and what did I do? Immediately, I knealt on my knee.

Luckily the pain didn’t last long and I was able to find other ways to play with Little Miss in the water and also cool myself off. I do not have any photographs from that experience and you wouldn’t want to see them anyhow. I am sure I looked quite ridiculous sitting on that slide with the water running around me. Sort of like a hog wallowing in mud.

Here are a couple photos from a few weeks ago of Little Miss with a friend doing the same thing. They are way more photogenic.

The Husband came home and immediately grabbed the house and soaked himself down, not even bothering to change out of his work clothes. That was how hot it’s been all week.

I stayed inside as much as I could because I, sadly, have legit health issues when I go into extreme heat. I spent my time watching the 1970s Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys show and giggling over it and planning to write a blog post about at least one episode.

On Friday we headed up to a town 20 minutes away to get our groceries and it was fun (not really) watching the car thermometer go from 85 to 88 to 95 when we drove into the town with all it’s concrete, asphalt, and brick buildings. I’m so glad it was just a quick pickup.

On the way back, rain started to fall and I watched the temp go down 20 points. It was amazing but by the time we made it back to our house, the temps had gone back up again. I thought the rain was following us and was very excited but then the clouds came over, dropped a few sprinkles, and moved on. Very sad.

(Look at those Pennsylvania roads — aren’t they just lovely. Yeah…..anyhow…)

Later that evening the dark clouds came in and there was lightning and thunder and we got excited again – hoping that would mean we would get a cooling rain.

Nothing happened. There was a crack of thunder, a flash of lightning, and then…nothing.

Today it is supposed to be more of the same – high temps and little relief with rain.

Tomorrow … yep, the same. By Monday the temps are supposed to be lower. About 80 and I’ll take that since our heat indexes have been in the 100s all week.

I hope all of you have been able to stay cool if you are in an area that was dealing with high temps this week. I also hope you remember to stay hydrated and not only with water but also with drinks that have electrolytes.

I sound like an old lady, now, I know.

“Make sure you’re staying hydrated!”

I just know the dangers of it since two weeks ago I was in the ER with what felt like a skipping heartbeat and they loaded me up with fluids and think that might have had something to do with how I was feeling. I think now the skipping feeling is actually related to something with my stomach, but they were right that I had not been drinking much that day.

Here is hoping that all of our upcoming weeks get better and we can enjoy summer instead of sweating through it!