Heatwave survival - school closures, thermal comfort window strategy, reading update, and thankful it's only 24 degrees now.

It's finally not as hot.  I am still very hot.  It turns out Birchie may be a fortune teller:

When I saw her comment that it was hot and then it became gorgeous I thought "sure, gorgeous days, that's something that exists but this heatwave will probably break into rain for endless weeks because.. Wales.  

However... she was right!

As boring as it is, I am looking forward to it being cool enough to clean my house.  We haven't hoovered in weeks, and we've been doing paddling pool, there have been muddy feet everywhere, and everyone has been up until 9:30pm with the heat, and basically our house is a tip.   It is kind of stressing me out how dirty my house is... but not enough to clean it now.  It's still 24 degrees and that's still hot.

Also, I'm just going to be open and transparent here, but there is an actual fly in my house and it drives me insane, but the UK doesn't believe in window screens, so it is part of life and it is gross.

On the hottest days, I embraced the recommendations from the Heatwave toolkit and covered all our windows on the outside, to help deflect heat.  We looked like a completely crazy house, but it was only 31 degrees inside while the outside was 34 so that's kind of a win.

Exterior Thermal Shading of Loft Velux - old blackout blind

Shading of twins room window

Interior view

Many local schools were closed due to heat - our primary was the only one I know of that was open.  They did make school optional for Wed & Thurs, which I think was nice for my kids as classrooms were quiet.  I was in work both days, but had to finish at 3pm because my office is in the loft and it was touching 35 degrees and I could not think. 

After finishing work at 3 I got the paddling pool out, which may have been a mistake because it has a hole (I think they are one year use) and the kids still enjoyed using it before it deflated but they were so loud and I already felt so tired.  I would say there was a definite inverse relationship between the kids paddling pool joy and my own paddling pool experience.

I am sliding into the weekend very worn down and tired and hot and demotivated.  On the plus side, because no one has been sleeping well I have been cracking through this weird book:

It's pretty odd so far, I'm near the end.

Also, I finished What You Are Looking For is At The Library which was just as cute and lovely as everyone on the internet said it would be

Not going to give too much away here, but one story is about a career building mother's return to work and it felt pretty... close.

This weekend my brother is coming to visit (YAY!) and I'm carving out some Rachel time on Saturday morning (it only takes one parent to do 4 kid breakfast, right??) so hopefully that will give me a bit of energy to do the everything else.

What is your heatwave strategy?  Have you ever hung things outside your windows to deflect heat?  Would you be more embarrassed to live in the crazy house with blankets on the outsides of all windows or the house that is dirty and has a fly in it?  (Lucky for me, I don't have to pick just one)