A NORMAL SUNDAY AFTERNOON

The weather just broke with two hours of rain, ending two days of intense heat. It's been hot, hot, hot. Even sitting in the living room, with the fan on maximum and doing nothing covers me with a thin film of sweat. Goodness knows how many cold showers I have taken in these two days. I've been eaten up with envy for those lucky ones like SB, who are still enjoying spring coolness.


At least the weather meant that I had some motivation to do some cleaning and housework this weekend. This is when I am really missing the presence of a domestic helper. Anyway, I sucked it up and cleaned my room, and did the ironing, and caught up on the latest happenings on Animal Planet and Discovery Channel. These are what I consider excellent housework channels. Not so riveting that one would be tempted to stop work and just plain enjoy the show, but interesting enough to keep one entertained. Fact learnt today: Black rhinos are not as solitary as we thought they were (if we ever even think about them, that is).


For some people, hot weather is an excuse NOT to move and taking it easy, but I always thought that since I am hot and sweaty already, I might just as well get the tough stuff over and done with, have a nice cool shower and duck into the air conditioned room to chill out later. Which is what I did this morning. And now I'm reaping the rewards, chilling out in my neat and clean air-conditioned room and feeling virtuous.


Speaking of cleaning, despite having removed the glass cover on my table and given the table top a good wipe some time ago, I am aghast to find more tiny ant corpses littered below the glass this morning as I was cleaning up my room. What was it about their obsession with exploring the table-top under the glass cover? Apparently, the death of their predecessors have not taught these little things much. I was loath to go through the process of removing everything from my table, removing the heavy glass cover and exhuming the little emaciated bodies, having done that only not so long ago, so I just left them there this morning. I wonder how long it takes for them to reach the "ashes to ashes, dust to dust" stage.


And speaking of ants, we are still engaged in the ongoing battle with these little creatures in the house.....and it appears that they may be winning. They have expanded their terroritory from the dining room to two of the bedrooms, mine included. They are canny little creatures, and we just never managed to trace their nest(s). Actually they are pretty cute, and interesting to observe when there is nothing much to do, but it gets irritating when they take it into their heads to join us for our meals. It used to be that they will only swarm the food when we leave the food unattended on the dinner table, but these days, it seems that the ants have taken it into their minute brains that our inability to get rid of them constitute some kind of unwitting consent to their presence DURING our meals as well, and they turn up to partake the goodies while we are still happily tucking in. Having a few of their comrades swallowed up have not deterred them in the least. We are kind of resigned to having additional company at meals these days, and only make cursory swipes now and then when some of the bolder ones try to climb into our rice bowls.


And now, chilling out is over. I need to make some inroads into the stack of paperwork I brought home from the company, or I might just find myself chilling out permanently....