hot summer days

I did not, as most of you know, grow up in the South. I grew up in northeastern Ohio, during what was considered a historically cooler decade than some recent ones. We didn't have air conditioning in the house but most of the time it did not matter.

Living here, now, coping with the summer heat (and humidity, which is really worse for me than the heat), I find myself often thinking of what Scout Finch said about her little town in Alabama, in the summers in the 1930s when she was a child:

"Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer's day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three-o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum."

That's how it feels here right now. The air conditioning makes things better, but still - if you go out for any length of time you will perspire, anything of your clothing that was crisp will wilt. The birds are even panting right now.

And there's also the cabin fever feeling, of being trapped inside the cooler house. I haven't even opened the blinds these past couple days in the vain hope of keeping it a bit cooler. It's like living in a cave. A cooler-than-outside-but-still-slightly-sticky cave. Fall cannot come fast enough for me.

I did not sleep well last night; it was extremely humid and even with air conditioning (and a dehumidifier running in the kitchen) I still felt a bit as if a small, spiteful fist was squeezing my lungs.