I was going to call this "Summer mugging, happened so fast" but that seems sort of tasteless

Why does my child have such a hot head? I mean, literally. I just kissed her hair as she sat on my lap for a bedtime story, and her (not feverish) head was radiating with heat. Poor girl: hers is the warmest room in the house, and the A/C just doesn't really reach all the way up there. Maybe her hair is actually pure cashmere, or perhaps it's just all the brain cells buzzing furiously in there that generate it all. She wakes up sweaty headed from naps and in the morning all summer long.

Which brings me to the fact that it was 94 F out there today, and it's not even June yet. It's amusing that in Ireland we consider summer to begin in May, when in reality of course it never begins at all, or might take place for a week in late April or a few glorious days in September, whereas in America the official start of summer isn't till June 21st. The fact that this date is also called "Midsummer's Day" doesn't seem to confuse anyone over here. Maybe it's only called that at home.

Anyway, we are technically still in Spring, but the weather is all gung-ho for getting as close to the magic 100 as it possibly can, with thunderstorms to boot. It was a while after moving here before I could get my head around the idea that "hot and sunny" could sometimes be a negative comment. In Ireland, there is no such thing as "too hot" in weather terms: now I am all too familiar with it, along with "frickin' hot", "bloody hot", and "too damn hot". Also, "disgustingly humid".

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A friend's husband was the victim of a mugging last week. His iPhone was taken as he walked to work in broad daylight, and he was hit in the face for good measure. He's pretty shaken, and my friend wakes up in the middle of the night panicking about what might have happened.

They live close to us, in what might be called a slightly less "nice" part of town, which is still "nicer" than the area a little further down the road where we lived for four years. We never had any trouble there, or saw any (though my upstairs neighbour did say I was terribly naive and that there were drug deals going on on people's front stoops every day).

It does give one the heebie-jeebies, when someone blatantly disregards the social contract like that. I mean, we all exist here in some sort of harmony because we mostly agree to be nice to each other. If that's taken away, then it's just a free-for-all. Statistically, my friend's husband was just horribly unlucky; but emotionally, when something like that happens close to home, it makes you start thinking that every day you make through unscathed is amazingly lucky. It shouldn't have to be that way.

Anyway, Mabel heard about the incident and it's moved to the top of her list of things to perseverate about, along with why that boy fell off the slide, and the time Monkey had his face painted, and why Grandad hurt his leg (in 1971). The conversation goes something like this:

- Why did someone take his phone?
- Because they wanted it.
- They should have asked him for it.
- Well, he probably didn't want to give it to them.
- But he has to share it.
- Well, I don't think they were going to give it back.
- But why did they take his phone?
- They were just bad people, Mabel.
- I don't know why they took his phone. Maybe the bad guys should have just played checkers.

Yes, that's the solution to the world's problems. If only the bad guys would just work out their differences with a nice game of checkers, and we could all feel safe.