Some Like It Hot

I think it’s finally over. Yes, the summer of excessive heat that’s plagued so much of the US seems to finally be passing away. Here in the Twin Cities, we experienced a solid month of temperatures above 90 degrees, sometimes inches away from the dreaded three digit numbers, and even dipping into them a couple times. In short, it was pretty damn brutal.

As a side effect, my grass started dying at the end of June, begging for water in vain. I eventually broke down and turned on the sprinklers. I don’t usually like wasting water in this sort of manner so I usually only turn the sprinklers on if it’s absolutely necessary. In any event, the grass still seems irritated at me for my delay and is in slow recovery mode.

The times I had to do any work in the yard nearly killed me. On one particular occasion, I unexpectedly started up a conversation with a neighbor after being outside for well over an hour. It wasn’t until I went back inside that I noticed what I looked like: beet red in the face, sweat showing visibly all over my shirt and hat, etc. I can only imagine what I must have smelled like. No wonder she didn’t want to talk much.

You would think that after living in Phoenix, AZ, for 21 years that I could handle a little bit of hot weather in the Midwest. Instead, I think I deal with it even worse today than back then, and no, it has nothing to do with the humidity and all that. For me, humidity doesn’t really affect me much; I sweat either way, you see, so there’s little difference. If the weather is above 80 degrees and I’m outside in the sun for more than 10 minutes, I’m sweating, and there doesn’t seem to be much I can do about it. And it ain’t pretty either, if I must say so myself.

The real frustrating part is that someone I know can be right beside me in the same exact temperature and feel a bit “cold”. Meanwhile, I’m sweating. It seems almost absurd that two people’s body temperatures can be so varied in this sort of manner, doesn’t it? And yet, it does seem to be the truth. We all seem to have an internal thermostat and, like body weight scales that are slightly off from one another, very few of us seem to hold the same temperature as “perfect”. Most people like the 80’s; I prefer right around 68. Unfortunately, I don’t do that much better on the flipside of things, like when it’s -20 degrees. I freeze just like everyone else at that point, or, even worse, start sweating a cold sweat.

I wish I could call an A/C or heating specialist to fix my internal thermostat. Ah, if only it was that easy. Or better yet, wouldn’t it be great if it was manually adjustable? I could program it to change automatically every day while I’m at work in order to deal with their harsh air conditioning, but then it could mellow when I get home so my house unit doesn’t have to work as hard. If only it was that easy.

And so, I bid farewell to one of my least favorite summers since living in AZ. As the song says, “Some like it hot…but some sweat when the heat is on.” I guess they had me in mind when writing that lyric.