Havin' a Heat Wave

Anyway you look at it, it's hot here this week!

I'm not sure how "Blazing" is less hot than "Hot" and it seems to me that "Scorching" would be the hottest of all, but someone at the newspaper was apparently having fun with this forecast graphic!  One thing is clear, I'm sticking close to home all weekend!

The thing I was most leery about when we moved from the relatively cool Bay Area up to the definitely hot Sacramento valley was how I would cope with the heat. I was remembering the long-ago day when Peach and I were walking home from the "little store" near her house in Citrus Heights (outside of Sacramento) in 113 degree weather, the pavement was soft because it was melting, and we were standing in the middle of the street, our sandals sinking into the asphalt, while she braided my hair.

There have been times when I have hated the heat and been wilting, but after nearly 41 years here, I don't really mind it all that much unless the electricity goes out.

The thing about heat is that when you live in a place where you know it's going to be hot in the summer, every place is equipped with air conditioning.   So you go from an air conditioned house to an air conditioned car to an air conditioned business and your actual time dealing with scorching sunshine is minimal, unless you choose to be out in the midday sun. We're very spoiled.

When you live in the San Francisco area, where fog is more likely to follow you in the summer than it is to be hot, an 80 degree day can be brutal because there is no air conditioning anywhere.

I remember a trip to Houston many years ago, in the middle of summer.   My friend Mike was hoping someone could come to "babysit" his partner, Bill, who had just come out of the hospital after a lengthy stay and Mike was nervous about going to work, for fear that he would come home and find Bill dead (both are dead now, sadly).  It was the most unusual experience I have had with regard to heat.   Yes there was the air conditioned "house-car-business" business and for the most part despite the heat and the humidity, it was not as uncomfortable as I expected because of the a/c.  But I had never been somewhere that did not cool down at night.   It would be 100+ in the daytime and, desperate for cool outside air, I remember going out into the yard in the middle of the night and finding that it was not that much cooler.  Probably high 90s.  It never cooled down.

The other problem I had in Houston was that I would drive to the store, getting into my air conditioned car in the air conditioned garage and drive to the air conditioned store, but first I had to park in the hot parking lot and walk to the store.  This would not have been bad except for the humidity.  It was so humid that when I stepped out of the car, two rows from the store, my glasses fogged up.   And I'm so blind that I can't see without my glasses, so just getting to the store and all its air conditioned bliss was a challenge.

But I've grown accustomed to the heat here and don't really think about it as much as I did when we first moved here.  It's an unpleasantness to be gotten through, but sooner or later autumn will be here, with cool breezes and beautifully colored leaves and after that will be winter and maybe the hope of rain.

Seasons pass too quickly these days.  It seems like we just had summer 2013 and here it is again, relentlessly returning for another go-round.