one small blessing

They apparently either fixed the AC in the faculty part of the building, or threw a switch to channel the cooler air over here from the classrooms (now that exams are over). So it's actually comfortable in my office today. (Well, also: I am wearing a thin loose cotton dress instead of the jeans and t-shirt I wore yesterday. And more and more, I think for hot climates a loose dress-like garment is the best: look at the tunics worn by Bedouins, look at the Kaftans of Morocco....)

I like loose-fitting clothing and I do prefer dresses, except for "messy" work (And even then, for cleaning stuff, if I had an old smock-type dress, I might wear that). I do think I need to replace some of the older ones I have. Folkwear has some lovely patterns but in my limited experience they often run a bit small and tight in places like the armscye and if you're a sort-of-beefy woman who works out (like me) where you have muscles, you have to do a lot of altering of even the bigger sizes. (Also, I suppose for some of those, people might raise concerns of "cultural appropriation" but I do have a French Cheesemaker's Smock and NO ONE is allowed to tell me I can't wear it, because I have French antecedents. Except I made it of a too-tightly-woven fabric and it's really too warm to wear.

Shoot, for all I know, given my weird mutt family on my mom's side, I might have some Croatian heritage* - I kind of like that Croatian smock-dress)

(*I am pretty sure I have Hungarian heritage on her side, remembering from a family tree I saw. It's a very small amount and it's one of the things that makes me go "how the heck did that person intermarry into the family?" given that her mom's side is almost entirely British Isles and her dad's side, as far as we can determine, is French and later French-Canadian)

I also find the worst for me - worse than it being merely warm and humid, is the air being still. I think the feeling of "no moving air," especially in a warm room, maybe plays a bit on my claustrophobic tendencies. It makes me feel as if I cannot breathe, like the oxygen is going out of the air.

Then again: I don't sleep well at all in a warm room, moving air or no moving air, and that's one of my eternal issues with summer. I also don't sleep well without at least a sheet over me at night, so on extra hot nights, the choices are:

a. sleep badly because I feel 'exposed'
b. turn down the air conditioner and spend more money and use more power
c. be hot, and not sleep well.

I dunno. I think another of my frustrations with summer is that it's always pushed as such a "fun exciting time" - you go to the beach, you go to parties, you have a romance, you play sports, you go camping - and I do NONE of those things.

(Well, I did have the closest thing I've ever had to a real relationship one summer, but....yeah)

And again, it's one of those things I find hard, where I feel like I'm on the outside looking in: I live my life differently from the "model" we are presented, and it's hard to know what to do and how to do it....In the past, part of the reason I taught in the summer was that it seemed working dealt with any of those "what are you doing with your life?" concerns, but now that (a) it's not financially pleasant to teach summers and (b) I find I need the downtime of summers to revamp teaching and just recover....well, I don't know.

But at least my office isn't stifling any more.