It’s hot. My car said it was 113 degrees when I got in it yesterday after Sam’s swim lesson. And yes, some numskull is going to post a comment about Southern Oregon’s DRY heat, so much more pleasant than that HUMID heat in the actual South, and that is why they’re numskulls. Hot is hot. Especially when you have a history of being a person who is unable to really function in heat. My mom tells stories of when I was little and as soon as the thermometer hit 85 degrees my face would turn beat red and I’d burst into tears if anyone spoke to me.I was living in Cincinnati, Ohio during the hottest summer on record in the history of our particular galaxy (except maybe for that summer the meteor killed the dinosaurs, that may have been hotter). I spent many nights in our charming 1910 apartment sleeping so close to the fan that my breathing sounded like someone fwapping through the pages of a book with their thumb. From my weakened state, lying on top of the sheets at 3:30 a.m. gazing through the fan out the window, the cicadas were a buzzing menacing heat machine, lightening bugs seemed like overkill and actual lightening, when it came close (one one thousand, two one thousand CRACK!) presented itself as an opportunity to ditch this urban oven and take my chances in hell.
Ashland, Oregon summers are only better in that we are now above the poverty line and can afford to air condition both our house and our car. Heat is merely the experience of a hot blast of crap you must endure house to car and car to house. And I’ve realized, looking out our window into the silent dry heat, that the reason I am unable to function in heat is not just the physical discomfort, but the recognition that Mother Nature could grind me, anyone, into a fine white moist powder quite easily if She had a mind to. I have no defense. Take my air conditioner, put me outside with no shade and what? Oh, let me drink a lot of water! Keep hydrated! No. I’d die. People die from heat all the time. New Mexico. Arizona. They are dropping like flies. So it’s really my sense of powerless against the elements that renders me useless in the heat. Well, that and it’s really hot.
4 comments:
I agree. Let's go get a Slurpee.
You are correct about the dry/humid nonsense. It's all misery. MISERY.
We're getting a slight reprieve due to hurricanes or something, but it won't last. I know how hot Ashland can get and I grieve for you.
I once read an article about a summer version of SAD. One of the examples was a woman who froze water every morning in 2 liter Pepsi bottles and then put them in jumbo zippie bags and slept with them.
I feel her pain.
I love this summer version of SAD -- it explains so much! Maybe I'm not crazy after all! Tonight is thunder storms/rain, so I'm feeling a little easier about it all...
Julie
hilarious. this reminds me of the rants my sister and i make to each other all summer long while we are swapping 'heat' stories and trying to see who's actually 'hottest' (she living in that hotbed of humidity atlanta, and me most of the time in the swamps of new york city).
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