updates | bloodteethandflame

July 10, 2026

Overheated.

Today’s ‘outside temp’ in Florida is a blistering 96°F

(Though ‘feels like’ temperature is unfortunately closer to 100°F)

And my central air conditioner is broken, and it does not function…not even a little bit.

So we’ve got several fans going and a small portable room AC in the bedroom.

It’s not helping much, I know, even though it’s been running 24/7.

Because according to my home’s thermostat, it was 96° in my house at 11 AM:

So, like a crazy person, I walked to the store to pick up a few things, because I had to.

(And for a few other reasons, the least of which is that my husband and I have been cranky with each other lately because you could say that we’ve both gone a little crazy in this heat…

Well… a little crazy could actually be an understatement.)

I wanted to get away, you see, because even if it is a two-mile walk to the shopping plaza, I know that at least when I get to that plaza, all of the shops’ interiors will have their ACs set to a blissfully cold 68° (and I won’t have to deal with said husband or the lack of a working AC) for a while.

So I did my little bit of shopping and did some more puttering around for good measure, and then had myself some lunch and at least a gallon of water to drink.

Then, when the time to return home drew closer, I decided to make a stop at the library to pick up some books they had on hold for me.

And I decided I might grab a few moments of quiet in the ‘quiet area’:

…to read a few chapters of one of the books.

It was, I found, sort of a misnomer – because it wasn’t *quiet* at all.

Perhaps there are a lot of faulty AC units in town besides mine because the library was peopled with more bedraggled wilted folks, lounging in the AC, including two sets of harried parents and at least three sweaty children full of the kind of loud boisterous energy that only those of the 2-4 year old set can muster up in a usually empty suburban library

Which was surprisingly not so empty today.

And so here I am.

Sharing the not-so-quiet area with a toddler Spiderman battling a mermaid princess while another child narrates the action scenes for all of us, library etiquette be damned.

🙂

February 13, 2021

The final piece, and a weird little coincidence.

In other news, I received the final piece in my commission to become a Florida notary public this past Thursday; my commission stamp finally arrived in the mail!

As you might imagine, I am excited to begin to work as a notary public, as it’s another great addition to my skill-set.

But while I was out with my kid at the grocery store yesterday (Friday), I experienced a strange coincidence.

This guy had walked up to us, asking for money. He claimed to be homeless, and he launched into a story about how he needed $17 for food, and $50 for – I kid you not – notary public fees.

He then admitted that he’d already gotten $4 of the amount that he needed by pulling the four one dollar bills from his wallet as if to show us proof of his honesty.

Now, since I have recently become a notary public – my commission is marked as beginning on 3rd February 2021 as a matter of fact! – I thought that $50 sounded like a huge amount for notary fees.

Why?

Because, according to the state of Florida, “a notary may charge up to $10 in notary fees for any notarial act… If you charge a higher fee than prescribed by law, the Governor may suspend your commission.”

So I was wondering what in the world this guy needed notarized that required *five* notarial acts to be performed to be considered legal.

I mean, barring the solemnization of a marriage, or signing for a mortgage on a house (which can require, on average, two stamped notarizations) I cannot fathom why he’d need $50 just for notary fees.

It definitely struck me as the oddest part of his story – his insistence on needing money for notary fees!

So, between us, my son and I gave him a grand total of $13, for which this man was grateful – but for some reason, it did not occur to me to offer him my newly minted notary services.

But it amuses me to think now that I could have!

What a weird little coincidence, I could have said to him, I just became a notary public as of last week…!

LOL

4 Comments

August 31, 2019

Dodging or crying.

Hello there.

As usual, I have not written in a bit, beyond the sharing of clever memes and posts of other people’s (excellent) poetry.

So for those interested, here’s an update on what’s been going on with me lately:

— This past week, I’ve been fighting a rather nasty sinus cold with more than enough congestion to leave my sinuses feeling as raw and the rest of my body as exhausted as if I have just been rescued from a week-long bout of drowning.

Though speaking of drowning, I found it more than ironic to notice that this blog has had a surprisingly high amount of hits to two particular posts that reference my feelings of metaphorically flailing and drowning in regards to my spirituality, as well.

But really, I’m doing fine.

Though I was getting tired of being notified daily about the repetitive hits to that one post about Lydia (from a tight cluster of specific locations in the U.S) so, in case anybody wonders why, yeah, I did mark that particular post as private for now.⁽¹⁾

— As well, you may have heard about Hurricane Dorian – which it is/was speculated to hit Florida sometime this Labor Day weekend.

Hurricane Dorian is the first storm of the season, and not surprisingly, the meteorologists around here in Florida have been whipping everyone into a frenzy since Wednesday about the possibility that it might make landfall as a Category 4 – which would be one hell of a destructive storm.

The local news showed Dorian’s trajectory to encompass most of the Floridian peninsula. The weather maps showed that even Central Florida would be hit hard:

So my family and I – along with everyone else in Florida – have been ‘battening down the hatches’ as it were, boarding up windows and doors, collecting supplies (bottled water, canned goods, matches, candles, propane, batteries) and filling up with fuel for our generators/vehicles, making sandbags, and putting any and everything we value into storage/safety/out of harm’s way.

As of Friday morning, the Florida governor officially called for the evacuation of coastal areas, and most local shelters were opened to accept evacuating people and pets.

People were already settling into the shelters on Friday night.

Local schools and universities canceled classes for Tuesday, September 3rd.

Supermarkets reported that they’d run out of bottled water and gas stations were closing due to being out of fuel.

However, this morning – Saturday – I woke up to the local news,

reporting that it looks that perhaps Hurricane Dorian would not be hitting Florida at all.

So guess who’s freaking out and calling for evacuations now?

South Carolina and North Carolina.

*sigh*

So I don’t know anymore.

Either way, the storm that is Dorian is hitting the Bahamas now.

And the newest news from the meteorologists is that Dorian may/may not make landfall somewhere in Florida by Monday or Tuesday…

and might hit the Carolinas by Wednesday.

But no one knows for certain.

So: Are we dodging the bullet of a devastating storm….or are all these meteorologists just crying wolf?

Who the fsck knows?

I predict that whatever happens, the next storm to come to Florida is gonna take us all completely by surprise because I can tell you that all this manufactured panic that has been created by the local news has got everyone around here feeling really exhausted and more than a bit skeptical.

So I guess we just wait and see.

~~~~~

(1) And to that one person that is so obsessed with that ‘Lydia’ post enough to hit that blog post several times in a single day – what gives? If you are who I think you are (based upon your IP) stop reading into what you think I am saying in that post – because you are wrong. Better yet, you might want to stop reading my blog altogether. Thanks.