Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Cold Showers

I have only had one other summer in my life without AC. That summer I was working at Olive Branch Mission, living on the third floor, with no air. I remember seeing it as an adventure – I spent a lot of time on the air conditioned trains reading, or sitting in front of a fan watching TV. I managed to not have a lot of bad memories about that time, in fact I really had to think hard about what I did for the summer to get by.
This summer hasn’t been bad until last week. We again do not have AC, one of the things we gave up when we moved to our apartment in October. We have a total of 4 fans plus 2 fans that are installed. During the morning, our apartment is fine and even during the afternoon as long as you have at least one fan on you. However, if you attempt to move away from the fans – it is unbearable. Ok, not unbearable. I mean, I don’t live in Miami with no AC. I have places to go that are air conditioned, I could go sleep in my office – which is air conditioned. In fact, I have little to complain about – rather I now look forward to air conditioning. I knew that the hotel that we stayed in last week would be air conditioned and I looked forward to it all week – sleeping with covers, oh the simple pleasures.
Both Jim and I have started taking cold showers right before we go to bed. It really works as a cooling measure. However, last night it didn’t work for Jim because after his shower he got up and realized our kitchen was flooded and worked to get it unflooded, so he was sweaty and gross when he laid back down to go to bed.
That was the second time we had tried to dry our kitchen last night. We are getting pretty good at it actually. Jim even went outside a few weeks ago and dug a drainage hole so it wouldn’t do it – but with the flash flood rains last night – it wasn’t enough. Our land lady is sending someone today hopefully.

1 comment:

Alyzarin said...

Our air was out for one day last week, and that was more than enough for us! My family didn't have it when I grew up, though, so I handled it better than C did.