Hot, with a capital H.

I have no idea why my husband continues to check the weather.com site every morning. The weather hasn't changed much here since early May. On any given day, it is either a little hot, a lot hotter, baking hot, or broiling hot. Add to that forecast a hopeful comment by the weather wizards: "We might just get a rain shower this afternoon, folks... keep your fingers crossed and hope the sky opens up because we all sure do need that rain." (As my cousin F in NY says: Hope floats. We don't exactly know why hope would float, but it sounds good -- sarcastically optimistic -- and she says that every time someone says "I hope....")

The Hill Country weather hasn't been much different than the Clear Lake or Houston weather. Each area has been setting heat and dry-spell records, although a few good soaking rain showers pelted both Clear Lake and downtown Houston not too long ago. Our part of the Hill Country had showers last Friday, but that seems like a century ago now because they weren't heavy soaking showers, and the rain that we did have just made everything hotter and steamier. (We're just never satisfied, are we?)

I spoke to my Aunt Dolly this afternoon. She is finally, after two years, getting used to her new home with my cousin S in Florida. After living in South Ozone Park (Queens, NY) for 85 years in a house built in 1922 by her father (my grandfather), she was more than reluctant to leave that big old house. When my grandparents landed at Ellis Island more than a century ago, they settled in an apartment in Little Italy. When Grandma and Grandpa decided that "the city" was getting too crowded and too busy for their growing family, Grandpa bought land out in the countryside of Queens and built his three-story house, complete with a full basement that had a big kitchen (to use when the first-floor kitchen was too hot in the summer) and a little wine-pressing room. "La gandine," they used to call it-- and I'm not at all sure of that spelling.

That house on Inwood Street was the family home for all those years, until just two summers ago when my cousin S finally, finally convinced Aunt Dolly to move to Florida with him and his family. South Ozone Park was very family-friendly when I was growing up. Needless to say, with the passing of years, that section of Queens isn't exactly "the countryside" any longer.

So there's Aunt Dolly, in "too sunny, too hot Florida" (her words), making the best of it in her nephew's home. He has a beautiful house near Orlando, and most of Aunt Dolly's furniture is right there with her (whatever would fit into her private rooms), but it still isn't her house and that's what took so long to get used to. My 96-yr-old Aunt Dolly is as sharp and as active as she was when I was a kid..... there is just no slowing her down. Since she's been living in Florida and not having to take care of a big house all by herself, she feels she isn't getting enough exercise. Every day, Aunt Dolly walks up and down the staircase of S's house at least ten times. Eighteen steps up, eighteen steps down, she said, and she doesn't run because she doesn't want to encourage S's children to run up and down the stairs. "They could fall and hurt themselves," she told me.

I had mailed my aunt a beaded hair net that I found in an antique shop last week. It's a vintage net, in its original package, and hadn't been opened till I slit the cellophane in the shop to check the net before I bought it. Aunt Dolly has been wearing her long hair in nets for every minute that I can remember. Everyone in the family has been searching for the nets for months now, because she couldn't find any in Florida. "These stores down here have nothing good, nothing important," she told me. (I told my aunt not to say that out loud if she happens to be walking near the Florida Chamber of Commerce offices.) She did find some "wear once, toss away" nets that are worn by cooks and food servers, but they weren't "lady-like," she told me.

She was thrilled to get my package with the beaded hair net...... and now, of course, we're all back on the search again. One hair net is fine, but more would be better. Aunt Dolly wants to have one net for every day, one for Sundays, and one for "special" days, as she said.

I told Aunt Dolly that feeling so great and still looking as pretty as Loretta Young at 96 years of age should make every day a "special" day.