Heat

There’s an old saying about summer in New Hampshire; it goes, “Holy fuck.”

It’s pretty close to unbearable outside these days. The temperature hovers in the low to mid 80’s, which isn’t bad, but the humidity is registering daily at approximately 1,000. This is helpful for when I’m looking to work up a quick full-body sweat on my walk from the parking garage to the office, or when I decide to skip a sandwich or a slice of pizza at lunch and grab myself a delightful little helping of heat stroke. I need to either bolt a battery-powered personal fan on my shoulder or just roll out a slip n’ slide on the fucking sidewalk.

I know there are places where it’s hotter, like in cities, or the inside of an active volcano or something, but the difference when it comes to New Hampshire is the sheer unpredictability of unpleasant weather. Around here, it’s 50 and overcast for a week, and then without warning we’re seriously eyeing 90 degrees the very next day. I don’t necessarily always hate it when it’s hot, but I do always hate it when there’s a one-day, 40-degree swing on the thermostat that catapults us screaming from winter directly into summer. Call me a stick-in-the-mud, but I’d prefer to “wade in,” as they say. Give me a few minutes to retire my fucking parka and whaling harpoon, at least.

My biggest problem is the heat’s tendency to follow me even when I go indoors. In winter I can turn the heat up or grab a blanket or slaughter a Tauntaun, but since it’s been hot, it’s been hot everywhere. It’s hot when I wake up, it’s hot in the car, it’s hot at work because the air conditioning in my office breaks down because for the first time in history the massive basement generators fail and the maintenance company has to order replacements from out of the fucking country – it’s insane.

Even in my room, my one sanctuary from most things that bother me, I find myself miserable and perspiring like I’m in the goddamn French Foreign Legion. I’m sweating so bad even now that I won’t even have to walk to the bathroom in a few minutes; I can just fall out of my chair and use my body sweat to slide across the ground.

I have a big fan just above my bed. It came with the apartment, but I’ve avoided turning it on until now because I’m vaguely freaked out by the idea of it being on while I’m asleep. I know nothing’s going to happen, really, but it makes little creaky old-sounding noises, and part of me can’t help but think that the fan blades are going to burst into flame somehow (they’re rusty…friction? Centripetal forces? Dark matter?) and I’ll wake up just in time to see it snap off and drop down onto my fucking head. Come to think of it, I can’t think of a better way to go during a heat wave then being burned alive. I’d be dead and all, and that sucks, but at least my friends would be able to appreciate a little last bit of irony at my expense, right?

I’ll leave the fan on tonight.