How to Stay Cool this Summer

In my never ending quest to discover a Tuesday blog theme, I have come to the conclusion that the reason my brain is not giving me the creative genius required to think of a permanent theme is because it has been parboiled. Unless you live in Antarctica or you have been trapped in a pile of hoarded McDonald’s Happy Meal boxes, you may have noticed that someone has hit the nuke-fry button on the planet. As I sit here writing this post I can actually see the windows of my house starting to boil. What is a writer to do? You can fall back on the traditional eat popsicles till you have splinters in your tongue or you can think outside the box and have a little fun.

Not helping Costco Jedi, not helping.

I live in Las Vegas and have had to endure my fair share of triple digit days, but that does not make dealing with them any easier. A few summers ago I’d had it. Right there in Costco I went insane, being driven there by dehydration and, well, being at Costco on a Saturday. Just as the eighty seven year old woman stationed at the exit handed my receipt back to me with the highlighter smiley face drawn on the back, I snapped. Being the last line of defense for the super store the elderly woman had received extensive training on the minute body language changes of the average shopper and saw my freak out coming. She placed a steadying hand on my forearm as if to say, “Calm the ef down!”, you know, if great grandma’s used words like ef. Costco and their grey haired Jedi would not be winning this battle of wills.

Segway, the latest in retail anti-terrorism.

I flipped my shopping cart filled to the brim with 273 rolls of toilet paper and a ten gallon vat of mayonnaise around and made a beeline for the frozen foods. I heard the exit guard yell into her walkie talkie, “We’ve got another one! Code green, code green!!” All of a sudden Costco commandos appeared out of nowhere. I swerved and dodged, jumped and pushed. Eventually I sacrificed the TP and mayo when I threw the cart into a crowd of former Navy SEALS who’d found fulfillment with a life of giving shoplifters a stern talking to. They’d made a fatal error that day. They’d underestimated their enemy. They did not take into account that I was a woman on the verge and that I would bring that whole damn store down if necessary in my pursuit of a cool down. My internal temperature had spiked to one hundred seventeen point four, so really this was a temporary insanity situation. 

Not really what happened, but close.

I won’t lie, there were some casualties that day. Boxes of Pop Tarts and buckets of pistachios were lost when I armed myself to take down the oncoming horde. I pelted the security officers with stale toaster pastries and used the pistachios like a sniper uses a Barret .50 cal making precise shots to their faces. Eventually, after a long and bloody struggle, I’d made my way to the frozen foods. With salvation in sight I couldn’t stop. It was all or nothing baby and I wasn’t going to settle for nothing. When the right moment came I opened the door to the chicken cordon blue and leapt through the ready-made entrees to sweet, sweet Siberian heaven. Steam poured off my overheated body melting the frozen peaches into a sticky gooey mess, but I didn't care, I’d found glacial Shangri-La. Naturally, this utopia was not meant to last. I don’t remember a whole lot after that. I remember something that felt like a thousand volts of electricity running through my veins and someone wrapping me in a really tight jacket, but that’s it. I woke up three days later strapped to a bed in a psychiatric facility. I spent the rest of the summer there, they had great air conditioning.  Needless to say, I'm no longer welcome in Costco, anywhere, ever.