Hot.

[naomikritzer]

We didn't have air conditioning until the summer of 2000 (when I was pregnant with Molly, and due in September). When I'm not pregnant, there are only a handful of days each summer that I'm really glad to have air conditioning. Today actually would have been bearable: without a/c, we'd have spent most of the day outside in the shade. It was very hot, but for much of the day it wasn't humid, and there was a pretty good breeze.

Really hot nights without air conditioning are just awful, though. It's 84 degrees outside right now (at 1 a.m.!), and muggy.

Oddly, the grocery store this afternoon was empty. I can understand why a bad snowstorm keeps lots of people at home, but heat? The grocery store is air conditioned and plenty of people around here don't have any a/c. You'd think they'd not only go grocery shopping, some would take the opportunity to do nutritional comparisons on different cereal brands and things like that. Nope. Shortest lines ever.

The car was really hot, though, to the point that I wondered if I could bake a pot roast in the back seat of my car, if I parked it in the sun. I had to use my driving gloves to keep the steering wheel from burning me. (I keep a pair of cotton gardening gloves in my glove compartment. I got this idea from Ed; I'm not sure if he is unusually clever, or if everyone else but me has always done this, and I'm a dope for never thinking of it until I saw Ed's glove-compartment gloves. Ed uses them both on very hot days, when the steering wheel is too hot to touch, and on chilly days if he forgets his regular gloves. I can't recall every forgetting my mittens; I keep them in the pockets of my jacket starting in, oh, late September or something like that. But they're very helpful on hot days.)

We had dinner with friends (not pot roast, needless to say). And now I should go to bed. According to weather.com, the temperature has actually gone up> a degree while I was typing this: it is now 85 degrees. I am awfully glad I have air conditioning.

Comments

[irihs.livejournal.com]

Oh, I feel your pain. I actually have no idea what temperature it's supposed to reach here today, but that's because I just don't want to look. But I think the window fan in the bedroom was already blowing in hot air by 9 or so this morning, which is never a good sign.

I do wonder about the emptiness of the grocery store, too. When it got really hot when I was a kid (I grew up in NYC, which isn't exactly the south, but which often got really hot because of the lack of things like trees), I'd go to the Hallmark around the corner. I'd spend an hour or so there looking at greeting cards, which I thought were really funny. They probably hated me there, but I didn't care. It was way overconditioned and felt amazing. I'd sometimes go to the library, too, but that was a very long walk for a day when it was 90 or hotter out.

Thank goodness we have air conditioning in a couple of rooms here. We got the air conditioner when A. was studying for the bar last summer, because it was just way too hot upstairs, where his office is. I think I'm going to go camp out up there soon.

[springbok1.livejournal.com]

I haven't had a/c since moving to the Twin Cities, and I didn't have a/c for most of college in Southern California, so I've learned coping techniques to sleep when the weather gets really hot. I sleep by a fan, with a spray bottle next to me. When I wake up during the night, I spray myself in a few spots and the cooling effect of that with the fan is usually enough for me to get back to sleep. I also have a squishy hot/cold pack. I keep it in the freezer, and then I put that under my neck or back when I go to bed. Another thing that works to help cool things down in drier climates is putting a cold wet sheet in front of a fan. The evaporation of the cool water helps cool the room temperature down.

Better living through... thermodynamics!! ;)

[peacockharpy.livejournal.com]

My husband grew up in a house in Miami without AC. It still has no AC. When we visit in the depths of summer, we go into a whole other pattern of living -- everyone moves more slowly, and all trips to air-conditioned locales are scheduled for the hottest part of the afternoon. Cool showers right before we go to bed are the norm, so as to make nighttime more bearable.

I love my AC with a deep, powerful love, yes I do.

[probably-lost.livejournal.com]

What is this A/C of which you speak? Our apartment (shaded first floor apartment) generally stays pretty cool unless it's so hot that the apartment gets overwhelmed. Which is, alas, the case right now. Michelle is thinking of coming to work with me in the morning just to work in an air conditioned environment...

[skylarker.livejournal.com]

Cloth steering-wheel covers are worth it.

[sylvia-rachel.livejournal.com]

When I was pregnant, we didn't have A/C (we now have a window unit in the dining room). I worked until a week before my due date (beginning of August), and to those who told me I was crazy not to start my leave earlier I simply said "We don't have A/C."

It's hot here, too. 36 Celsius (not sure what that is in Fahrenheit, but I'm guessing somewhere in the high 90s).

Fortunately, our building has a pool. Love the pool.