Not too hot to blog

It is still punishingly hot here. Today's high is going to be 96 Fahrenheit, my phone says, and outside it already feels even worse than that. The sunlight is scorching and presses down on your shoulders like a lead weight. Everyone is indoors who can be, with their blinds drawn, the air-conditioning on if they have it, fans if they don't.

People have been going out for gelato, though.

What makes it worse is that this is our last week here. Only a few days left, but it's too hot to cook anything fabulous, too hot to go for pleasure outings. Our usual three-mile round-trip trek to the big supermarket is unthinkable. Moving from one continent to the other is always a wrench, but I suspect the mid-70s temperatures waiting for us in California will make the transition a little easier this time.

Weather like this makes me appreciate our tapparelle, the exterior blinds that have replaced shutters on many buildings here, part of the array of protective household armor that Italians can't feel safe without. (Fidenza is a quiet town without a lot of crime, but our apartment came with a steel door with multiple locks reminiscent of the barricades people used to live behind in the East Village in the 1970s.)

The blinds roll up and down on the outside of the windows, and when they're shut tight they function like blackout curtains; when they're up they disappear into a box above the window.

You can also lower them but not shut them tight, allowing some air flow and making a pretty polka-dot pattern. I love the way they look when they're at half-mast like this.

Our sedentary life is also giving me time for a last-minute flurry of blog posts. I've had a number of things I've been wanting to record before they stop seeming strange and interesting to me (for example, our polka-dot blinds), and so I'm planning to do a lot of writing as I sit here in the dark. Those of you who aren't trapped by climate change can catch up with me at your leisure.