Besides, it’s a dry heat
Yesterday I didn’t go to work. I got to lie in with Magda and Adam, who joins us in the Main Bed every morning for milk and a dawn-to-six-or-seven nap. Here he is trying to make us late for our appointment with the OB-GYN:
Of course, it’s the mornings when he has to be somewhere that he sleeps the latest. This being Slovenia in July, we had to drive all the way to Ljubljana for this appointment, which was scheduled for 9:00. It’s a bit over an hour away, and since we were going to a strange place we wanted to have a little extra time for orienteering, bickering over whether to ask for directions, that kind of thing. We found the place with no problems, however, and soon we were watching the coming attractions:
Magda immediately pointed out, “twelve weeks old and this baby already has your nose, too. God help me.” The doctor also ran some so-called 4D ultrasounds by us, just to see what we thought. “Many do not like them,” she said. “They are too realistic.” We learned that this baby is on schedule in all of the various growth metrics, and in fact is ahead of the curve head-wise. At twelve weeks and one day old, this baby has the head of a 14-week-old. “Great, Adam, your new brother is going to have a melon-head. I can’t wait.” I think it’s the delivery rather than hat purchasing that Magda was being all sarcastic about.
After the appointment we wandered around the old center of Ljubljana for a bit and while scanning the offerings at the outdoor vegetable market we decided to make pickles. A kid with a skunk-stripe mohawk was selling cucumbers just the right size for pickling, and nearby we found a crone with a broomlike bundle of dill weeds. The final ingredient took some hunting, but finally we located fresh horseradish root and bought two cigar-sized pieces.
Me: What if we put some of those dried red chilies in?
Magda: No.
Me: When I was a kid in Houston, the best pickles I ever tasted had labels in Polish, and they had dried red chilies in the bottom of the jar.
Magda: I’m sure they were very good. It’s just against the rules.
We’re thinking about moving to Abu Dhabi. Magda is remarkably open to the possibility. I am ambivalent. Meanwhile, our local weather has returned to the hellish heatwave we were suffering through before our trip to Spain. It’s 32 before the sun is even well up, 38 by mid-afternoon. Our top floor apartment gets as hot as the outside air and never really cools down because the clay tiles just above our heads have been superheated like a Cajun’s cast-iron skillet. Yesterday CNN weather showed Abu Dhabi’s temps as 45. When I reported this to Magda, she said, “Honey, I’ve got one word for you: air conditioning in every bloody flat!”
Today we drove over to Italy to buy tomatoes and a portable AC unit. Adam really likes tomatoes, for some reason.
