OMG, it is so freakin' hot here. being a life long resident of the south, i'm no stranger to heat, humidity and the resulting heat indices (that's right, ain't it?), but lordy, lordy, this last week has been hell, literally.

i'm the family driver, so i take everyone to work and pick them up. if you've seen the picture of my hoopty, you know it's not a glamous task. the heat makes the blue beast difficult to drive, every rpm reached being a major accomplishment. with black interior, no air conditioning and only two windows that can be rolled down, some days i'm in that stupid truck for an hour and a half at a time, and usually in rush hour traffic. by the time i get home, i'm as red as a beet and soaked head to toe.

charlotte's air quality leaves a lot to be desired, (i believe it's on the top ten list, somewhere behind houston and los angeles) so when the temperature soars, so does the bad ozone in the air because of all the cars on the road. i believe yesterday was a code orange day. in the summer, everyday is lazy and hazy.

the city is so spread out (urban sprawl in all it's glory), that we don't have a complete or thorough public transportation system. i can't even catch a bus where i live and to do so, i'd have to walk about two miles one direction, four the other. i'd hate to think what our air quality would be if we didn't have so many green spaces, because whatever charlotte's short-comings, we look good dammit! the home of the pretty people HAS to be pretty. most communities have a lake (that's a pond to most us), greenway nature trails that snake their way through the city, and loads and loads of public parks.

yesterday was the worst so far. i left the house to pick up my son from work, about a ten mile drive each way (taking the backroads to avoid traffic jams, and because in charlotte, there is no direct route to anywhere). it was surreal. i felt as though i was in the navada desert and was constantly checking the scenery for cacti. the air blowing through the cab was blistering hot. when i finally made it to the four lane street that would take me directly to z's work, i glanced at the sky (what else is new?). the heat was so stiffling, and off in the distance, towards concord (where lowe's motor speedway is) storm clouds were brewing.

however, i saw something i've never seen before. i'm disappointed that i didn't have my camera with me to try and capture it, but i'm not sure it would show up as i saw it anyway. it was so hot, the sky no longer held it's lovely carolina blue hue, it was pink. pink i tell you. four and a half hours before sunset, the sky was pink. that's hot folks. as i've never seen that, i thought maybe i wasn't seeing it correctly, maybe i was suffering from heat exhaustion. but when i got back home, and told mark what i'd seen, he said that's exactly what the sky looks like in saudia arabia.

today is going to be another hot one, but supposedly, we can expect a little relief over the weekend. man, i hope so.