Howlin' baby blues....

Have you ever sat in the back seat of an old, beat up Chevrolet Chevette for 8 hours down the 5 freeway as you are assaulted by the heat and humidity?  When you try to remove yourself from the vinyl seats, you find that you are stuck to it like a human colorform.  You scream a bit as you peel yourself off of that ancient vinyl and for the rest of the day you feel like a soggy potato chip.  It takes a special type of temperature to achieve that type of memorable joy that I am speaking of.  It takes the heat that we are having in Southern California right now.
        I am risking electrical shock by writing this in the bathtub that I have filled with ice and blue Gatorade (blue is a flavor, by the way!  Also, if you do attempt to emulate me, do not drink the Gatorade you are soaking in.), but that's the type of risk I am willing to take to stay cool.  I know I could write with a pen, but all of my ink pens have evaporated and become some sort of sentient poisonous vapor cloud that is wandering the house, cursing at the fact that we don't have air conditioning.  The kitchen is sealed off for this reason.
     Chunky fellows such as myself do not function well in the heat.  You could be wearing baggy M.C. Hammer parachute pants and your deviled ham like thighs would still rub together.  You find yourself encrusted in talcum powder like a sumo wrestler.  It's bad for me in the heat, but it is far worse for my toddler.  She is recovering from tonsil surgery so the humidity turns her poor throat into a desert wasteland of exodus proportions.
     As I went to work yesterday, my wife was blessed with my daughter's pleasant company the entire day.  Did I say pleasant...I meant to say maddening.  As parents, we have endless compassion and patience.  Endless in the same way that the "Never Ending Story" never ends.  The story ends.  And somebody is usually limping away into the shadows (Usually me, while the baby sits in the arm chair, victorious and smug.)  By the time I arrived home, my wife's nerves were obliterated, but the baby was finally relaxed and calm, albeit in a hair trigger hand grenade type fashion.  It's amazing that a mother can work for hours to calm a child, but a goofy father can destroy all that work in a matter of seconds.  I just come in and make a funny face..."Hi baby!".  Suddenly the cuddly calm baby is gone and she is transformed into Joe Pesci.  "You think I'm some sort of toddler?  Do I amuse you with my girlish giggles and cherub like smile?  You asked for it, pal!" Then she starts screeching like a barn owl on fire.  It gets to the point where my wife just yells, "Go...just go."
    So I spent the rest of the day in the kitchen with the poison cloud.  He's not that bad of a guy, his name's Tim and he likes show tunes and misses the original Law and Order.