Sweat

In 1995, I moved to Vermont. A heat wave followed me. I was convinced I’d brought the DC temperatures and wondered exactly why I’d thought it would be cooler here. Eventually, it passed.

This summer has been hot. We get a mess of hot days every summer, but I don’t remember such a lengthy stretch. Particularly, I don’t remember this sustained, southernlike humidity.

When it’s not hot and humid, it’s hot and torrentially downpouring. It’s been this way for weeks.

As I am loath to turn on the AC in my office, there have been many a day that sweat has trickled down my back as I edited manuscripts on the computer. I can only imagine what it must be like for my outdoor-laboring brethren.

Here’s some stuff that’s weather related:

• I have already slept with the air conditioner on for more nights than I did all last summer. (“Slept” may not be all that accurate. The AC has been on overnight while I lie awake in the dark.)
• I have been wearing skirts and dresses almost exclusively. This is unusual.
• My hair is a horror.
• The river has been so high that a trip to the swimming hole has been too dangerous to consider. Therefore, my first summer dunk was last weekend, in a lake. It took two days for my swimsuit to dry.
• I have taken as many as three showers in a day. Usually it is two, and one of them is right before I go to bed to not-sleep in the AC.
• The mosquitoes are voracious, and they love me.
• The ants are so, so happy, and apparently they love living here with me, in my house.
• I have at least four rooms that are beginning to look rather cluttered because I can’t face the sweat that tidying will entail.

On that note, maybe I’ll do some of that tidying. I’ve turned the AC on in my office, and it’s lulling me into a false sense of believing I can accomplish something.

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