We finally took down the Christmas trees, took the mattress that Dylan slept on when he was here back to the garage, re-arranged the plants and cleaned up my desk. The holidays are officially over.

It’s too hot to work from home (we don’t have AC) even if the second floor has plenty of windows and two sliding doors that open to the deck- but what is 26 degrees compared to a summer’s day in Pangasinan or maybe Dubai??

And yet here I am, topless, sipping water every hour and feeling that heat lethargy where half of your brain feels like mush.

And yet I have fallen in love with summer, with sunshine. I read somewhere that a man needs vitamin D to boost testosterone; so maybe I had been feeling the ‘boost’. But I’m still wary of it. A decade ago, people I knew were laughing at my SPF 80 sunscreen but look who’s laughing now. The last three years, the sunscreening has expanded to include my neck and my hands.

They say there’s a hole in the ozone right over New Zealand, so even if a 31 degree day in the scheme of things isn’t really hot, we got it worse.

It’s a bitch to deep fry in the heat, but the easiest meat in the deep freeze to cook are boneless chicken thighs so fried-chicken it is. I have the recipe for ‘popcorn chicken’ down pat which is really all in the batter. I never used to have a measurement for it, hence, the inconsistency but now I do. The ratio of flour to tapioca starch (or cornstarch) should always be one to one with a teaspoon of baking powder. From there, I just make variations on the flavouring. I’ve always been partial to Chinese five-spice or plain salted- this is because I always eat it with rice and a buffalo-ranch style of coating doesn’t really suit.

We bought the viral KMart mini rice cooker and it’s perfect; I don’t eat any more than a cup of rice and it makes enough for dinner and for lunch the next day.