the summer doldrums

As I've abundantly whined about discussed here, I do not like heat and humidity. It's been the hottest summer yet since I lived here (They tell me 1980 was worse; I was in Northeast Ohio at the time and I was also 11, and I think pre-pubescent girls, by and large, are more tolerant of heat than mature women are. Or at least, I was more tolerant of the heat. That's probably PARTLY because I was in what would have been a "normal to possibly just barely underweight" BMI category as a pre-teen, and I'm, well, in a considerably-more-alarming category now)

But anyway. There are a couple of things that I have to admit just feel like insult added to injury:

- In the wintertime, I wash my hair every second or third day. That's all it needs and any more than that and it starts to get brittle. But in the summer, if I don't wash it DAILY, it gets limp and rank-looking (even though it still smells of the fruity shampoo I use).

- Of course, while I'm in the shower waiting for the conditioner to do its work, I have time to shave my legs. Which I have to do every day in the summer. It's a combination of going bare-legged under my dresses, and having VERY fair (think a trout's belly and you're not too far off) skin and dark hair means I get stubble. (I also think hair grows faster in the summer; I know I need to get my bangs trimmed more often). And yeah, yeah, I know some of my sisters would say I'm giving in to the patriarchy by shaving my legs, but here's the thing: I prefer the way they look and feel shaved. And while I know some women who choose not to shave at all, and most women I know do depilate in one way or another, midway between the two (stubble) just looks untidy and careless to me - you're not making a statement nor are you being mainstream. (And yes, I know, there are other methods of removing hair, but I burned myself experimenting with hot wax, I'm too cheap to go to a salon every few weeks, and I don't like the way depilatories smell).

(I wonder what women did back when my grandmother was young, before safety razors. Did they just not worry about it? Or did they have some other method of removal? I know one of my aunts - of whom I am very jealous - has never had to shave her legs because she has very fine, very blonde hair - and the hair on her legs DOES NOT SHOW. But surely there were enough fair skin + dark hair women back in the day that hair on the legs would have been an issue. Or did they just always wear thick stockings and so many layers of undergarments that it didn't matter? What did the flappers do? I don't think the safety razor existed in the 1920s...)

- The biggest thing that gets me down, though? The pipes that carry the water in this town are fairly shallowly buried. And the soil here has heated up to, I don't know, 90 degrees or somewhere near (heat + drought - dry soil heats faster than wet soil because there's no water - with its high specific heat - to absorb the energy. Heh, soils class in action). And the water coming out of the COLD tap is lukewarm. Which I just find disgusting. I normally don't put ice in water when I drink it, but I have to in the summer. (And yes, I know, that's very much a first-world problem. And yes, I'm grateful to have clean safe water coming out of my tap. And yes, I'm grateful I'm not in Ada where they had several water main breaks the other day. But still...it would be nice to get cold water out of the tap.)

I'll be really, really glad when it finally cools down. The first day I can draw a glass of water from the tap and have it be cool is always a big day in the fall. (I don't know why that bugs me so much but it does. I think that's probably because all through my growing-up years I was spoiled - my grandmother had a deep well with cold water and even in the warm summers, the water at my parents' house - which was city water but which came from wells - was cold out of the tap).