Plus Two.

102 on the front porch this afternoon right after we got the Toad down for his nap -- and raining. I've never seen anything like it. We got that five-degree cooldown you get with storms, and then still it was 97. And raining. Half of me wanted to go get him up, show him, treat it like it was snow. Come see this. Remember this. The other half of me won out, thank god. Later the A/C would crash for the second time this weekend. Later I'd be bailing the attic drip pan with lasagna tupperware. Later I'd be showered and ginned up and planning exactly what I'd say to the A/C company who serviced our unit on Thursday, and then came back out Saturday to try to figure out what they'd done. This is how it goes on the Piedmont: Try to fix that which is only half-broken in front of the heat wave, break it for sure and certain in so doing.

Only supposed to be 96 tomorrow. Only. Big storms wanting to roll down out of the mountains again tonight. Each night during all this it's tried to rain. Each night—this afternoon included, if you will—it's largely failed. That Toad nap I wanted to interrupt—it rained for ten minutes.

The dryer's beeping. The Toad was in there today and seems to have reset it. There is the Toad. There is this damn heat. There is the novel, cooking out there in the shed, due for the last time at the end of July. It's July now. There's no coffee in the house. At least I know what I'm doing first thing in the morning. My god in all this furnace do we fall behind.