"Sweat" Emotions

Our central air conditioner unit kicked the bucket yesterday. The sucker was probably close to 30 years old, so it didn’t come as a surprise, but I wish it’d waited until it was a little cooler/less humid outside to take a dump.

We had a repairman come out and look at it, and he pretty much shook his head and said, “He’s dead, Jim”. So we’re looking at the joys of dropping $2,500 for a new one. Great.

So things are currently a little sweaty around the Gressel household, as its 95 degrees with a 90 percent humidity rate right now, and it’s supposed to be this way for at least the next 5 days. We’ve got all the windows cranked open and the fans on high, but you know it’s bad when you can’t roll over at night because you’re glued to the sheets.

Growing up in Western WA, I didn’t have to deal with much heat/humidity. Although Seattle is perpetually damp, it rarely gets above 80 degrees, and temps above 90 only happen on average of 3 days a year. But my first real taste of what tropical humidity was like came in 1989 when I went to Florida for the first time. It was late October, and being Seattle, it was raining a cold, slow, drippy rain when I left Sea-Tac. I got to Orlando 7 hours later, where it was 90/90, and I felt like I was in the alligator house at the zoo. I’d worn my leather jacket and heavy Levi’s, and I thought I was going to die. Who knew you could sweat from your eyelids? Ick.

Six years later I moved to Sewer City, and had to acclimate myself to all sorts of non-Seattle like weather: Lots of snow, wind chills, freezing drizzle, heat indexes, ooey-gooey humidity. For the first year I froze while others walked around in shirt sleeves, I pitted out my t-shirts while others were comfortable. But after a while my body decided it could tolerate the extremes, and I didn’t mind it so much. Family members from the West coast would show up though and bitch the whole time about how humid and/or hot it was, but I’d think “Really? ‘Cause this ain’t so bad.”

But now I’m trying to live in a non air conditioned house. I’ve done it before (almost nobody in Seattle has central air – why bother?), but it doesn’t make it any fun. So I’ll try to practice a little tolerance, a little patience, and not get myself all worked up about it. And with a little luck I’ll start saving now for the mega cost of a new HVAC installation next spring, before the family all shows up for Miss Katie’s graduation and spends the week whining at us about how curly their hair has become from the humidity.

And if that fails, I’ll just go find a nice Motel 6 and crank the hell out of their air conditioning. Make the $29.99 room rate look like a bargain compared to the amount of electricity I’ll use. Sure, my teeth may chatter from the insta-cold, but it’ll be worth it, baby. It’ll be worth it.