It's my Friday

Summer classes are challenging because of the sheer speed at which they move, but the consolation is getting Friday off.

Tomorrow morning, the A/C guy comes to install the new whole-house unit. I think this summer was definitely time for it to be changed, I can clearly tell it's having a hard time keeping up with the heat of the day - I can't get it cooler than about 80 in the house midday and I'm sorry Jimmy Carter but that's unacceptable to me. Especially with the humidity levels where they are.

It's supposed to have heat-stress indexes of close to 100 here this weekend so I am hoping the installation goes smoothly and easily (NO CODE UPDATES! NO CODE UPDATES!*)

(*Years and years ago, there was a television game show - Press Your Luck, I think was the name? Where contestants hit a button as part of the game, and if they were unlucky, they got a "Whammy," a red gremlin-like creature that took their accumulated winnings. The show animated (rather crudely in the style of animation-over-live-action of the 70s and 80s) Whammy figures. They sometimes did little pop cultural things: there was a Michael Jackson Whammy, and if I remember correctly, a Boy George Whammy. My brother and I used to watch that show when we were home during the summer. The big attraction for as was the whammies....Anyway, the common chant of the people on the show was "Big money! No Whammies!" and that made me think of that)

I am relying on my window-unit air conditioner in my bedroom to keep it cooler at night. I feel slightly guilty about all the power I am using but I sleep SO MUCH BETTER in a cooler room. When it's really hot and I have no relief, I wake up feeling like I didn't sleep, and I have bad dreams when I do. (I wonder how people managed before air conditioning, especially in the South. Did stuff just shut down in the summer and the expectation was you got little useful work out of people?)

I suppose I'll find out, I just started reading a book "Cool: how Air Conditioning Changed Everything" and one of the things the author notes is how miserable going to the theater was....how it was just expected that women fainted in their corsets and heavy petticoats, and that "ladies' lounges" were often populated by several women who had gone there to throw up because they were overheated. (And yeah. I can remember times I got so hot I felt nauseated, so I can see "throwing up" as being a side effect of being in a way-too-hot place for a long period of time). And people slept on tenement roofs in the hope of catching a breeze, but some fell off in the night to their deaths.

One of the older women that I knew from my mom's quilting group was a kid in 1936 - an infamously hot summer in central Illinois - and she said her family went out to the cornfield to sleep because it was too hot in the house.

I also remember an unfortunate trip to the UP of Michigan during one of their rare summer heat waves, and staying in a motel that only had a ceiling fan, and lying on the bed at night in the 85-degree or so (at least it felt like that) room and just lying there perspiring on top of the sheet, and not sleeping.

(One weird little psychological thing about me: I have to have at least a sheet over me to really be able to sleep. I suspect somehow it's a "you're safe" trigger somewhere deep in my mind, and sleeping uncovered feels exposed, so I can't relax....I am a bad sleeper and pretty much always have been. One reason I don't camp is that I can't sleep in a sleeping bag on the ground. I don't even sleep very well in most unfamiliar beds.)

And yeah, I know there are the haters of AC. If someone doesn't like it, fine, they don't have to have it in their house - but it annoys me, in the "This person is assuming their experience is everyone's experience" way, when someone talks about how air conditioning should be done away with.


And yes, it uses resources. But the thing is: I drive far, far less than many people. I haven't had a kid. I own relatively few other electronic gadgets. I don't even mow the lawn with a gas-powered mower! So I tend to feel like I should be permitted the one comfort of airconditioning.

I get kind of dysphoric in the hot summers and being able to be cool at night when I am trying to sleep is about the only thing, I think, that keeps me from full blown problems. I'd probably waver between constantly weepy and constantly angry if I couldn't sleep comfortably, or if I felt I couldn't get away from the heat. And I'd definitely NOT be living here, or at least, I'd try to work it so I was stationed in Alaska or something for the summers.

****

I need to figure out some other kind of food. I did beans and rice earlier this week, and did creamed salmon this week....I run out of ideas when it's hot because cooking is less appealing and I have less of an appetite.

I did try wilted spinach and while I didn't LOVE it I also did not HATE it.....I'm going to try again with more of a ratio of vinegar to fat than I used (I think vinegar is the one thing that saves the flavor of it) and maybe different seasonings. It does permit a person to eat MORE spinach at a serving because the spinach wilts down and you're not grazing your way leaf by leaf through a giant salad.

I also - and I know I said above I don't drive much, but I don't, really, this is a once every two or three week thing - think I'll go down to Sherman on Saturday. There's no New Pony (well, not 'til next week) and unless they are doing something like a marathon of my favorite episodes or one of the weird old earlier-gen things I haven't seen yet (Yeah, I find I watch the earlier-gen cartoons and movies when they put them on, mainly so I can learn about where the whole phenomenon came from) I will go early in the day before it gets so hot.

Maybe to get Discord yarn. At least to go to the Natural Foods store as it's been a while since I've been there. Maybe to go antiquing first - it's been a long time and I feel like I need some of that kind of quiet fun. If I had greater volition (and the stupid construction was gone), I'd consider going to McKinney but meh, in the past year or so my tolerance for bad stressful driving and traveling very long distances before I do anything has gone down a lot.