Yes, living in a hundred-year old house has its pleasures. The house has character, from the hobbit-hole window to the beautiful hardwood floors to the balconies and porches. Unfortunately, living here also has its problems.

Take the weather, for example. I’ve already written about fighting the rain — both flooding and leaks in the attic — but fighting the heat can be just as challenging. Our home sometimes seems like an oven.

Yesterday Kris and I fled to the movies to escape the heat. (We saw the new Pirates of the Caribbean movie, which isn’t very good. It doesn’t make much sense. Anthony Lane’s review is pretty good.) Today we enjoyed an air-conditioned restaurant (and a bad meal) and some time in the mall. You know things are bad if I’m going to a mall.

It’s too hot upstairs for me to sleep, so I’m bedding down on the love seat in the parlor. This isn’t ideal. Unless you’re a mosquito. In that case, it’s as close to ideal as you’re ever going to find: a large, juicy man full of sugar. Yum. Why not bite him? Many times.

My feet and legs itch like crazy from all the bites. I’ve applied calamine lotion, but so far it hasn’t worked worth beans. The ball of my left foot is so swollen that when I walk, it feels like I’ve got a stone in my foot.

Kris is taking a long-term approach to the heat. She’s decided that maybe we could plant a tree in the yard, preferably a fast-growing shade tree. She spent an hour tonight making a list: sycamore, chestnut, oak, hawthorne, etc. etc. Of course, the tree solution won’t help us for, oh, maybe five or ten years, even if we plant it this fall. But still, it’s a start.

Now it’s time to go apply some mosquito repellant.