Well, things are finally settling down again. On Sunday afternoon I moved the dogs and the stuff I had already packed up into the Big House my parents still have on the mainland. It is deserted now - kind of undergoing repairs while they stay in the condo just down the road - but I still had to promise to keep the dogs in crates basically the entire time. They are not fans of my dogs because the dogs shed, they have a certain Bulldog Piquancy, and (Homer, at least) tends to chew things when bored.
Unfortunately, only after I had carried everything in and carted an additional (and very large) crate up from the basement for Napoleon did I realize that the electricity was out here too. But by now I was fairly exhausted (and very sweaty) from moving everything back and forth during the day, and I figured I'd just stay here anyway. My rather small place gets stuffy very quickly when there is no A/C, and I figured that at night -- since we previously had been experiencing low temperatures in the 70's -- it wouldn't be too bad.
Boy, was I wrong.
I flopped a mattress down on the floor upstairs (there are no bedrooms downstairs, nor any furniture to crash on) and opened up all the windows in the hope I could get some cool air. Since the house sits on the water I thought it might cool down fairly quickly, but it didn't. The night was very hot, very sticky, and completely still. So I lied on the mattress in my underwear, sweating and unable to sleep, and from below I could hear both dogs panting their lungs out in the heat. (Since I couldn't sleep anyway I got up from time to time to check on them and they seemed fine, just very uncomfortably hot.)
At around four in the morning, I think, it finally cooled down enough for me to doze off, but that only lasted until just after six when the rising sun and the screaming sea gulls woke me up again. I decided I had had enough, backed up the car and the dogs again and drove into town to stay with my grandmother. Once there I had to unpack again and set the dogs up in her garage.
That wasn't too bad for them. They had a concrete floor to lie on, a big fan blowing on them, and I even filled up a kiddie pool so they could wallow in the water but -- still -- there is no A/C in the garage and every time I checked on them they were once again panting their lungs out. This was a big concern for me, because English Bulldogs tend to overheat easily. Once, when I had left Napoleon with a friend while I was on vacation, I returned to learn that she had decided to take him for a long walk in the Miami heat and that about 1 1/2 miles from her home he had simply toppled over. She had had to call her husband to pick her up and they had taken him to the vet, where Napoleon was packed in ice and given an IV to rehydrate him. I certainly didn't want anything like that happening again.
But by Tuesday the electricity at the Big House was back on. I knew because I had had to get up early and drive to court in another county that morning, and I stopped by on the way to check the house. After court was over I drove back to my grandmother's house, packed up the car and the dogs again, and got us settled, finally, here.
I'm basically camping out on the second floor, while waiting to get power back on at my place. Apparently, the only electrician on the island has been fielding a lot of calls like mine, so I don't know how long that will take. The dogs spend most of their time in their crates, and I liberated from storage a small mattress that used to belong to a daybed I have and have flopped it on the floor next to them. They don't like the crates much, but it isn't too bad and at least I don't have to worry about them overheating.
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