More of the same...

...expected temperature today in The Sandbox, 123°. Pool temperature yesterday was 90°. Still cooler than the air, but not cool enough to be refreshing. Temperature for tomorrow expected to be not as "hot" as today. Ahh. The patio tile is too hot to walk on with bare feet. The Boy was out with me yesterday afternoon for almost an hour, working on his tan, laying in the grass. The Baby was out, too, but she only lasted for about ten minutes. Sooo cute to watch her do the "jumping" thing she does with her little feet. She doesn't want her paws touching the tile - and I can't blame her - it really is hot [I may try to fry an egg outside today, just for fun] - so she lifts her little feet one at a time to keep them from touching the patio - and since she cannot stand with all four feet off the ground, for obvious reasons, it is like a little dance she does. Oh my gosh. What did I do for entertainment before The Boy and The Baby?!!

In the news, today...

This just makes me ill. I don't care who you are, or where in the world you live. And, personally, this is the kind of story I would expect to see come out of a city like Chicago, or Baltimore or New York. But certainly not from this part of the world. A woman is accusing her husband of "giving her 18-month-old daughter heroin." [I didn't even know heroin had made it to this country, although why that surprises me... It shouldn't.] The mother of the baby took her to the hospital and "told doctors that her daughter had become a heroin addict after her husband had given her doses of the drug in her feeding bottle." He did what?!! The baby is till being tested and will be treated "if it is proved that she has indeed become addicted to the drug." Examinations are also being carried out "to determine... whether she had been sexually assaulted or not." We're talking about an 18-month-old child! If the toddler is found to have been sexually assaulted, I hope authorities hang him by his you-know-whats. I wish the same upon any man, anywhere, who does this to a small child - a toddler - a baby. As if that is not horrific enough for one family, the mother has confirmed "that she has a 3-year-old son in the Social Protection Home." Why, exactly, is your three-year-old in a social protection home? What happened to him??? Drugs? Sexual abuse? Obviously, something happened.

A grandmother is accusing her ex-son-in-law of torturing her 12-year-old granddaughter. [Isn't it odd that we read about so many ex-wives and ex-husbands - an awful lot of divorces here - for a country that sees and tends to deem itself as being so morally and virtuously superior...] The grandmother has reported her ex-son-in-law to the police and submitted a medical report which indicates that her granddaughter has been "physically abused since doctors had found signs of burns and bruises on different parts of her body." Where is the mother? Why isn't she the one making the report on behalf of her daughter? The little girl's parents divorced when she was only a year old and the little girl was in the custody of her mother until she she was forced to relinquish custody of the child, who was eight-years-old, to the father at eight-years-old. [That is just the way it is done, here; the mother has custody of children when they are small and then the father takes custody of the children. I do not know what the cut-off age for this is.] After the father got custody of his daughter, the grandmother was allowed to visit her twice a year. The gist of it is that a school social worker contacted the grandmother, suspecting "that the girl was being physically tutored [sic] [tortured?] for she [the social worker] had noticed some burns and bruises on her body." Kudos to the social worker for being so proactive and for taking action. Apparently the mother is involved albeit indirectly and the grandmother now seeks custody of the child. The little girl does not want to live with her father, according to the grandmother, who says "that the girl told the police that her father used to beat her with electricity wires." What kind of father does this? Anywhere in the world?!? The matter is not resolved, and will slowly wind its way through the system, here.

288,000 Saudi citizens undertook pre-marital tests - medical examinations - last year. The test results "uncovered 62 new cases of HIV/AIDS, 3711 cases of hepatitis B, 871 cases of hepatitis C and 10,931 cases of sickle cell anemia in Riyadh last year." 62 new cases of HIV/AIDS does not sound that significant - what is that - approximately some 20 people out of every 100,000 [rounded-off] tested positive for HIV/AIDS. Something like that. [Don't hesitate to correct my math if you see mistakes!] Statistically, how many per 100,000 people in other countries test positive for HIV/AIDS, I wonder... [take Africa out of the equation - doesn't that continent - with all of its third-world countries have the highest rates of any in the world?]. Although the reported number of those who tested positive for hepatitis B is a much higher percent than those testing positive for HIV/AIDS, it is still only [approximately] some 1,250 or so people per 100,000 and doesn't seem all that astounding - especially since hepatitis B isn't usually life-threatening. Even the reported number of those testing positive to hepatitis C - what some [approximate] 300 of every 100,000 people? But the sickle cell anemia figures - that comes out to - what - like 4 out of every 1000 people? Did I figure that correctly? That seems high, to me.