Beat the Heat!

When it's a hundred outside, how does this northern girl - a self-professed shade loving mammal - beat the heat?

(Of course we have air conditioning...which I keep at 80 degrees during the summer.   If I'm outside in über hot weather, going inside to 80 degrees feels wonderful.  Today I went wild and turned the a/c down to 79, but that's mostly for emotional reasons.) 

Usually one of the following tricks cools me down enough for me to be comfortable:

First, I get a bandanna wet and then wear it around my neck.  This serves a dual purpose.  It cools me, sure, and that's important. But I'm also in my sixties so any legitimate reason to cover my scary neck is a plus.

Next, I make myself a big glass of ice water, adding thinly sliced cucumbers and mint from the garden.  The floating mint and cukes don't make the water any colder, but the glass sure looks classy.  Presentation is everything!

While I'm in the kitchen, a quick trip to the freezer scores me a handful of frozen grapes.  (I also like frozen mango chunks.  Frozen chocolate covered raspberries are my very favorite, but they disappear immediately after I dip them.  They rarely even make it to the freezer, they are that awesome.)  Of course, ice cream would work too, but that goes without saying, right?

I take these icy snacks down to my basement where it's naturally cooler because it's underground.  Then I set up a box fan to blow air on me.  This is the summer equivalent to a space heater in the winter.  I only care about my immediate environment, not the entire house.   I also have a lovely handheld black feathered fan I can use.  It may be 80 degree air, but air in motion feels cooler to me.  

Usually those couple ideas are enough to make me feel comfortable, but some days when it's really, really humid, I might need to take my game to the next level.  

When this happens, I will plunge my feet into a dishpan that's filled with cool water.   This immediately cools me off.  My friend Elaine, who taught me this trick, calls this a "redneck swimming pool" but I jazz it up a little. By adding Epsom salts to the water, I can pretend I'm at a spa.  

Hydrotherapy also works in the form of a quick cold shower.  Style points to those who keep their hair wet.  Blow drying your hair in summer seems so wrong to me.

If you are not absolutely frigid after trying these suggestions, you can employ my number one secret weapon for beating the heat.  This will work, guaranteed! Drop everything and drive to the library.  Reading a magazine in the cool, cool library is a perfect thing to do in the heat of a Carolina summer day.  

Remember to take a sweater.  Oh, and save a seat for me.

www.StillSwimmingUpstream.com

Things aren't always what they seem

I was vacuuming in our basement when out of the corner of my eye, I saw what appeared to be a four-inch-long string bean.  That seemed oddly out of place, especially since now there are but two people living in this house and one of them is me.  The other is Felix Unger, so there's no way that bean came from him.  I admit to being a mess-maker (I have to because it's obvious now that the children are grown and the place is still messy) but I generally do follow my own rule about dining at the table.  That is to say, I don't wander around the house eating off a dainty plate like I'm the only guest at a cocktail party.  Has this green bean been on the floor since the last neighborhood barbecue in early October?

Things aren't always what they seem.  As I bend down to pick it up I can see that it's not a green bean at all.   It's a slender leaf from an aloe plant which lives happily on a nearby window sill.  I'm still not sure how it got here, but it doesn't disturb me like the thought of a green bean on the floor.  My day has improved -  I'm not a bigger slob than I imagine myself to be and I am remembering another time I bent to pick up something that wasn't what I thought it was either. 

I was a wedding coordinator at the Romeo United Methodist Church in Michigan, a job that I relished - in part because it was tons of fun and I was good at it and in part because the church was a half a block away so I could walk there.  This historic church was not air conditioned and summers can be scorchers, even in Michigan.  To remedy this, I'd go over at night, open all the windows in the sanctuary and then return at dawn to close them again in an effort to keep the building as cool as possible.  It was never truly cool, but it also wasn't as hot as it might have been, at least that's what I told myself.

Now I'm not a morning person, but this was a small sacrifice and I was willing to make it.   Not having an attendant faint from the heat was the goal here, so I'd do my part by dragging myself out of bed, sleep-walking next door, closing the windows, returning home and crawling back into bed again.  The whole process was maybe 15 minutes from opening my eyes to closing them again.  It was a minor thing, no big deal.

This particular wedding was in August and in the middle of a brutal heat wave.  I opened all the windows that night, just like normal.  At the break of dawn I went over to close them. Since this was far from my first rodeo, I didn't even bother to turn the lights on.  The sanctuary was in semi-darkness but I was just closing the windows and I wanted to stay in that drowsy state so I could go back to sleep easily.  As I was turning to leave, I saw what appeared to be a black washcloth on the floor, directly in front of the altar.  I was thinking evil thoughts about who might have left it as I bent over to pick it up and realized that it wasn't a washcloth at all, but sleeping bat. 

Since removing rodents with wings wasn't in my job description, I called Reverend Gary and asked him to do it.  He said he would be over shortly and hung up.  He lived next door, so I expected him in a flash but when he didn't arrive quickly I sat down to wait.  I looked over and  saw a second bat snoozing in the pew beside me.  That creeped me out - and woke me up. 

Now fully awake, I assessed the situation and as I looked around the bat count grew.  Bats were lying on pews, on the carpet under pews, one was even on the organ bench. There were seven in all.  The heat must have driven them to search for somewhere cool and the sanctuary must have seemed like a refrigerator in comparison to the attic where they probably normally hung out.  

Time ticked by and still no Gary.  I toyed with the idea of turning on the lights, but discarded the notion because I felt sleeping bats would be easier to address than flying ones.  Finally I heard someone fumbling around in the dark downstairs and then coming slowly up the back staircase.  I knew it wasn't the minister (because he was used to coming up that way) but lots of other people had keys to the building.  Then one person I didn't expect -- my husband Jerry -- stepped into the room, carrying a pool skimmer.  He had been called for back-up but he is a man of action so he scooped up one bat at a time and took each and every one outside. 

Just as he was finishing up, in walks Gary - wearing long pants, a long-sleeved shirt, giant quilted kitchen mitts and, to top off his ensemble, he had on a pith helmet with netting over it.  Jerry and I both laughed out loud, which was the reaction he was going for.  Even though he'd given significant  thought to the question of what constituted proper bat-removal attire, I think he secretly was pleased that the bats, all seven of them, had already been removed by a man wearing nothing but pajama bottoms.  I know I sure was.

I've always wondered though, where do you get a netted pith helmet on such short notice?

Africa Hot: The Prequel

Fifteen years ago, our son moved out of his dorm room and into his first apartment.  For some reason, he expected us to help him move - and we did.  In honor of all the parents sending their children off to college, here's that story:


People who live in air conditioning are pansies.  Our son is a perfect example.  Josh lives in a fancy apartment in Indianapolis.  He is a student and I remember the weekend we helped him move from his dorm room into his new apartment.

"Wow!" my husband Jerry said.  "This is a nice complex.  How can he afford this place?"

I tried to allow a respectful moment of silence (after all, the man is my husband) but instead I burst out laughing.

"Oh," said Jerry.  "We're paying for it."

That night we stayed in the new apartment.  I slept in flannel pajamas in a goose down sleeping bag.  Still I dreamed of Arctic winds and woke up in the dead of the night freezing.  It was mid-August.

The next day we worked moving more furniture until noon when we decided to go out for lunch.  We found a quaint little pizza parlor with outdoor seating.  I noticed our son looking around.  "Isn't there anywhere inside to sit?"

"No."

He hesitated like he was going to say something else, then allowed the waiter to lead the way to our table.  August in Indiana is like August most everywhere else in this country:  hot.  This day was no different, but we were sitting on a covered patio and a pleasant, warm breeze was blowing.  You might have thought we were in the middle of the Sahara Desert with the sun beating relentlessly down upon us.

"Are you sure you want to stay here and eat?" Josh said.

Now Jerry is not a patient man and when he gets hungry he wants to eat and he wants to eat right now.  He'd been working hard doing heavy lifting all morning and he was hungry.  "This is fine."

The waiter came and asked us for our drink orders.

"Ice water," said Josh.

While we were waiting for the drinks to come, Josh fanned himself and remarked about how hot he was. When the waiter reappeared with the drinks, he served Josh first.  Before all of us at the table had even gotten our drinks, Josh was finished.  "Could I get some more water?"

"Sure.  Are you ready to order?"

We had an interesting lunch.  The pizza was excellent and before the meal was over, the waiter brought an entire pitcher of water over and set it in front of Josh.  Beads of sweat were trickling down his forehead and he had intensified his fanning efforts.  The entire conversation consisted of him grumbling about the heat.  Then he started chewing the ice cubes.  "When we're done here, want to go get ice cream?" he said.

We stopped at one of those designer ice cream saloons where a thimble full of the flavor-of-the-month costs slightly less than a house payment.  We were licking our cones on the way back to the car.  I glanced over at Josh.  Melting ice cream was running down the side of the cone, onto his arm and dripping off his elbow.  Only he was having this problem.  The rest of us had rock-solid ice cream.  I was beginning to wonder if his internal thermostat was out of whack.

When we got back to the apartment, it was like stepping into the freezer section of the grocery store.  "Thank God we're home!" said Josh.

I went to search for a sweater.