It happened this morning, around 5 AM. After five days of high humidity, 95-degree heat, the clouds opened up and dropped cool rain on us.

I got up to close the windows throughout the house. By the time I finished I was also awake, and crept upstairs to get my e-mail.

The house is limp. We are largely fan-cooled, except for one tiny AC unit which I hooked up in the kitchen, so everyone could have a crack at it.  

The dog has been pinned to the floor for the entire week, his tongue swollen, his zest for life on canine hold. Poor baby, he doesn't know that at the end of the hot spell, I'm leaving him for two weeks. He'll be very sad for a day or two.

I looked in on my son Jon the other morning and realized that he has not opened his bedroom windows in a month. All this time he has been relying on a 5-inch fan in a sealed room. He was born dead, and was only revived with medical help. I suppose this is of a piece with that.

The hardest thing has been packing during the high heat. When the index is in that range, it does something to your head; it discourages you from hoping. Many people love tropical climates but I have felt the oppression of the jungle day, and understand how climate alone can keep people from summoning the energy to do things. And yes, I'm talking about Iowa.

Yesterday Jon made a really boneheaded remark in the car. I invited my mom to accompany me to pick him up at the Y. When he got in, he said, as if she were not there, or were even more deaf than she is: "What's up with gramma?"

It was precisely the wrong thing to say, as she has had him on her scope for a while now, taking note of the day-to-day rudenesses. There will be a reckoning, we all understand, and her fury will not be fun. When we stopped to buy some groceries, and Mary remained in the lot in the air-conditioned car, I asked Jon in the store what he was thinking of.

"Oh, I thought if she was along for the ride, maybe we were going to eat at a restaurant."

"Well, that's sure not how it came off," I said.

"Well, that's what I meant."

"Well, next you say something, say it to yourself, in your head, and ask if the statement is subject to misconstruance, which will lead to your defenestration."

"Huh"?

It puzzles him that his rudeness, which is really just an experiment of his to assume a more leveraged role in conversation, bombs out as often as it does. He's 14 and shooting from the hip, without first removing the gun from the holster.

And the heat has gotten to us all.