Heat Wave

Yes, yes, I know, the weather in places I used to live is much worse than we're currently getting.

Brooklyn right now? Or Sacramento? Or fucking Austin? Yeah, those places are like blast furnaces or even-the-shade-sucks muggy, or both.

But our little slice of paradise has been suffering from---get this---a low '90s heat wave!

Well, that's just us in Long Beach. In the upper reaches of the valley or the desert on the other side of the mountains it's been well into the triple digits, like the sort my mom in Phoenix has been suffering through.

When everyday is the same and really nice, when it gets above 85 your body starts to yell at you and bitch and moan about how "hot" it is. When I get outside, it's pretty nice, but there is a nice (see: shitty) level of humidity that we normally don't get here in the Southland. So when I get to my destination, I'm extra super sweaty. Then when I make it back to our apartment, the passive heating and cooling it uses makes it so the apartment doesn't need an air-conditioner---except for when it's extra hot, which happens about ten days a year.

Our apartment is nice and cool in the morning, as it has let off all of the previous day's heat throughout the night. By noon, you know it's gonna be a warm one, and by three in the afternoon, it's probably fifteen to twenty degrees hotter inside than it is outside. In fact, after ten in the morning it'll be hotter inside. The peak of the heat outside is between 1:30 and 3, but the apartment is between 3:30 and 5.

After doing dishes, beside being even more winded than normal (try doing dishes on one leg and you'll get the idea), I find my face, arms, legs, hands, and feet are all covered in sweat. It's really quite gross, actually, to be literally drenched in sweat. I eventually sit to do my later-day stretches and exercises, and I'm flush, sweat beading and dripping from my nose like I'm jogging in Round Rock in late July.

I've been to Bangkok with the white sky of a 97 degree day with humidity so bad my balls chafed in seconds. I remember days in Brooklyn when you step out of the shower, having "dried off", you find yourself still too wet to put on clothes. Then there was the warehouse job in Austin (actually it was Round Rock) that was so hot you went outside to cool down.

This wave has been different, most likely because I have limited ability to get out and defeat the hottest part of the day by just being away.

Just tough sometimes...