All heat waves are emotionally devastating as well as physically uncomfortable, especially in Northern California, where there is no central air conditioning (“No central air conditioning? Surely some public establish –” NO CENTRAL AIR CONDITIONING). I can handle the winter, or what we have in the way of it here. I can turn on the heat, or drag my cat onto my lap, or double up on socks. But a heat wave! Friends and lovers, heat waves are spiritually ruinous. There is nothing more debilitating to my sense of personal consistency than discovering it only takes a few days in a row over 95° for me to experience a complete and total loss of ego integrity.
“How hot is it, Mallory?” Here is a partial list of things I have done over the last three days to distract myself from the heat:
- Put a loaf of frozen bread on my lap
- Picked a fight with someone blameless over text and then cried in the shadow of my cabinet
- Drank four club sodas in a row and then placed the still-cool cans in my bra
- Put two loaves of frozen bread on my thighs
- Explained to a friend over gchat that I couldn’t take a lukewarm bath per her suggestion because my cat had jumped in the tub right after I finished showering and it was covered in cat prints
- Stopped doing my dishes entirely
- Sprayed a bunch of spiderwebs on my porch with Windex instead of actually cleaning them up, then crying about dead spiders
- I didn’t actually see any spiders but I assume the Windex killed them, or at least did something bad to my porch environment
- Slept with all my doors and windows wide open but not before reading the Wikipedia page for all three of the killers termed “The Night Stalker,” for safety
- Help me, I’m frail and soft and I just want it to be 72 degrees out all the time
Tags: uuugh
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“Ma’am? Ma’am, please… I’m sorry, but this is against Safeway policy…”
I only got three hours of sleep last night because San Diego is a hell hole of no air conditioning. CALIFORNIA IS NOT BUILT FOR ~WEATHER~
Yes, and everyone (by which I mean my family) refuses to acquire any sort on heating/cooling devices for the house, because that would be ~admitting defeat~.
My theory after reading about horrendous blizzards, grass fires, forest fires, swarms of locusts, and relentless snow happening elsewhere in the country is that everyone who moved to California cities in the late 1800s basically went “OKAY! There’s no goddamn money left over after paying for exorbitantly priced basic goods to buy insulation for our houses. Screw it, we’ll wear layers in winter and sweat in the summer, it’s not like the weather can kill us like it did back home.” Then after 20 years it just became our state culture.
You just have your body’s internal set point temperature too high; lower it by three or four degrees and you should experience a vast improvement.
I love this comment so much. If this comment section were gathered in a room, we would all take turns stabbing you.
😀
This is obviously the Southern Gothic genre taking its revenge. Tomorrow morning the trees will be draped with Spanish moss and kudzu. Somehow your house will have acquired a veranda. You will rock on the porch, too enervated from the oppressive humidity to move, contemplating family secrets. The scream of the peacocks seems like an accusation.
Our juices will become sweet tea, our kale salads will wilt to greens, our tacos will become grits.
A+ would totally eat grits tacos.
It’s late, and I read veranda as vendetta. It still works.
Oh god this is so true. We have a window a/c unit in the bedroom, but all the computer and tv and cooking apparatus are downstairs where it is too hot for words, for thought, for joy, for the future.
The worst part, though, is that my lovely spouse, who is in most other ways charming and lovable and a delight to the senses, loves this weather and thinks that my sweaty tank top and short shorts are sexy and wants to grope me while I’m trying not to sweat and cry into whatever I’m trying to cook for dinner.
SAME WHAT IS IT WITH MEN AND SWEATY TANK TOPS UGH UGH UGH
I got sick recently and weirdly felt too hot all the time (I mean, it was 95 degrees out, but fever usually means chills??). I genuinely considered dragging my TV into my bedroom because it was the only place in my apartment that actually cooled down (I have an AC unit in my living room as well, but the space is too large and it takes like 5 hours to become sufficiently cold). Surely I could have lived without leaving my chilly bedroom, just for a few days.
The minute I have to tuck the extra fabric of my shirt under my boobs to stop the sweat from dripping down my tum-tum is the minute all sexytimes activities are VERBOTEN.
Correct, and any attempt to breach this obvious yet unspoken rule will end in me snapping, “DON’T TOUCH ME!”
Why would anyone even THINK it is appropriate to touch someone in this state. It boggles the mind.
Oh god, gpoy, right down to the sweating and the crying. My bf is otherwise lovely and sane, but there does not seem to be any level of heat-induced grotesquery that fazes him.
If you can afford it you might want to shell out ~$100 for a window A/C unit. Pop it in your bedroom window and shut the door and switch it on and you’ll cool down nicely. If that’s too expensive get two box fans and point one out of one window and one pointing in to help air circulate and cool things down. You can put a cold washcloth over one of the box fans.
CROSSBREEZE OPTIMIZATION – Never turn your air conditioner on again!
Fans with wet cloth are a great idea– as long as it isn’t too humid where you are. The water evaporating helps cool the air. For best results, use a long enough cloth that you can leave one end in a bucket of water.
I live in New England, and we’ve had some beastly hot days, but there are lots of trees where I live, which helps a lot. We do have a portable AC unit with an exhaust air hose that can be inserted into any window. We use it on very hot nights for a bit to help cool things down. It’s much easier to set up for short usages than a window unit, but does take up floor or closet space when not in use.
Sorry, I know I’m supposed to just be sympathetic about the terrible heat, but I’m an engineer-type at heart, and my first impulse is to try to actually fix the problem. 😉
I did this for a bunch of years, except I didn’t even have a gd fan – we had ceiling fans though I guess. But I hung wet towels over the screen doors front and back, and also in the bathroom, over the shower curtain rail, with the exhaust fan on. It turned my whole house into an airconditioner! It actually worked, it took the temp down like maybe 5 degrees? (celcius) but it was of limited use because that was the summer where we had weeks and weeks and weeks of 40 + degree days, and my house faced full north and west, with only concrete opposite it, and basically everything heated up so even after the heatwave broke my house was radiating heat and everything was terrible.
I did have the portable air thingy, which I used, but it would only work for maybe two hours before accumulating too much water and stopping, which was NO HELP in those stupidly long nights. Also because I lived near a factory, and the choice was 1) close windows, be stinking hot but not as loud 2) open windows, be too loud to sleep but slightly less hot.
Also I definitely clicked that link actually excited to read about cross breezes. Am I a Dad???
* Slept with the ceiling fan on while draped in a wet shroud
* Gone to see a movie just to sit in the cool dark
* Done an extra lap at the air conditioned grocery store, reading all the fine print labels
*Longed for the dry heat of the desert
* Piteously requested sleepover privileges at partner’s air conditioned apartment
*Sailed out into the lake until it felt cool
I would pick the longest movie on $5 Tuesday. Also:
* Took my dog to PetSmart and loitered.
I have seen some terrible movies for the air conditioning in Yuma, Arizona, when over 115 degrees every summer.
That’s the only reason I saw Revenge of the Sith.
* Wrapped two ice packs in dish towels, put one under my neck and the other across my lap
* Took brief, cold shower (esp. bad as there’s a drought) about once every 90 minutes to cool off
* Naked and I don’t care who sees (when in own home)
* Eaten meals in restaurants when neither budget nor appetite approves, just to get out of the house
* Given up hope and driven to my mom’s house with central air to sleep there
*Sat in the basement leaning against the metal appliances
Weather is the reason I went to the only Woody Allen movie I’ve seen in the last decade.
During the previous two years’ heat waves, I swam for at least half an hour a day in an unheated pool, but said pool is now closed due to drought. (Not complaining; it was the right thing to do.)
Adding:
* tagged along to partner’s workplace and wrote all day in the cafeteria, to the dulcet tones of ping-pong-playing engineers. California doesn’t believe in air conditioning, but if computers overheat, the state doesn’t run.
* lay on the bricks in front of the fireplace, marginally the coolest part of the apartment, though poky
* applied mentholated pain-killing gel to my limbs, to trick them into feeling cooler
* delayed getting much-needed haircut, so I could put my head under cold water tap and then pin my wet hair up, where it would slowly drip down my back for a while.
* hung out in the laundry room, which has a window and gets shade all day, maybe occasionally cooling my forehead against a washer.
* whimpered; cooled from the evaporation of my own tears.
* Shaved all of my hair off
When I was a kid — four? five? — we did not have central air conditioning for the first summer in our new house. We only had one window-unit air conditioner in my parents’ room, where we also had a television, a VCR, and one copy of The Running Man starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Sitting on my parents’ bed watching The Running Man in the air conditioning is pretty much all I did that summer.
We did that for a few years before we got central air. My sister and I slept in sleeping bags on my parents’ floor and during the day we’d watch Disney movies.
SLEEPING BAG SUMMERS. Yes. My brother and I did that too…except it was basically straight through college until we left for college. Ah. The joys of a childhood home where the only air conditioner was located in my parents’ bedroom.
Except, of course, we weren’t allowed in their room during the day. My dad was pretty much nocturnal and roused in the late afternoon.
Sometimes I’m really grateful that DC is a disgusting swamp town. The only time I have to go without AC is when the power goes out. God bless air conditioning.
I was JUST about to say this. The summer here (and this only my first and I understand it’s been fairly mild and I will admit to thinking it was going to be worse) fills me with such loathing and hatred that I’m surprised I haven’t burst into damp flames. That being said, Cobb Salad bless the air conditioners that fill this town.
Oh yeah, the past few summers have been surprisingly livable. And we had that one really pleasant week that we NEVER get normally. I assume this means we will be punished come winter.
Although last winter wasn’t bad, and I heard that the summer preceding it wasn’t too dreadful. I’m also a New Englander and a knitter, so I like a good, brisk winter.
However, DC’s inability to manage snow would make that rather unpleasant. Bless the DC equivalent of a Highway Department — snow is just not their forte.
DAMP. FLAMES.
I went from working from home on the second floor of a terribly insulated, non-central-AC-having apartment to working in a downtown office. I do not regret the change, even though our office AC is cranked so high that everyone fights over wearing the couch blankets in meetings.
just don’t forget to put on your space suit before you step out the airlock though, christ
ooooof, DC-area swamp-ass is second to none. There was many a childhood summer when I would be mowing the lawn and cursing the idiots that decided to make this awful bog into a city.
It was great though- I didn’t worry about frizzy hair when I went out because my hair just never dried.
But yeah- sweating before 6am while walking a half a mile or so is not okay.
Yeah but we also had that awesome drizzly summer rain. And thunderstorms. Hot dry summers seem so WEIRD to me now.
The temperature extremes are so much though! The office I sometimes work at (I’m split between multiple ones) is in a very air conditioned basement, so I will pack stockings and a sweater, along with my lunch because it is so cold! Does DC only hire popsicle people? Then I have to disrobe before getting back on the metro to get home again because who knows if the all the subway cars will have AC? Even if they don’t, my walk from/to the metro stop will certainly involve some hilarious/tragic belly sweat patterns.
Disgusting swamp town is such an accurate description. My home and my workplace are air conditioned, but I have to rely on metro to get to work and it’s been stifling lately. All is coolness and rain today and I am DELIGHTED.
As someone who grew up in Arizona, you would think that I would be inured to insane heat, but honestly I think its just made me more of a baby. For one thing, living in Arizona means you spend 99% of your life in climate controlled environments because I think its illegal not to have AC or something in venues of public accommodation (and since everything is new, most buildings were designed to have central AC) so my ideal temperature range is something rarely reproduced in nature. Also, you just straight up don’t go outside for more than 5 minutes at a time during the summer so you never get too oppressed and you pretty much have to drive everywhere anyways(and there is the added bonus of feeling like you have just jumped into a hot tub when you leave an air conditioned environment. Last, people always make fun of the “but its a dry heat” and yes it doesn’t matter how dry things are when the outside is 115 degrees and you feel like you are in an oven, BUT the dryness means that sweating actually works and it cools you down as it evaporates and you don’t come home feeling like a disgusting swap beast.
I live in NYC now, and I would gladly trade their summers for AZ summers in a hot (pun intended) second.
Same in Houston–when people ask how I’m handling the heat I say, I dunno, I leave my air-conditioned house, drive to work in my air-conditioned car, work all day in an (over) air-conditioned office, get back into my car that’s been parked in a garage all day, and drive back to my air-conditioned house. I’m outside maybe 30 seconds, just long enough to think, “wow, didn’t take long for my glasses to fog up today.”
But on weekends, when my car is parked in the driveway all day and to run errands means risking spontaneous combustion just from opening the car door, I invent reasons not to run errands and refuse to cook on the basis that it would heat up the house too much. We’ve been eating a LOT of sandwiches this summer . . .
I lived in a 3rd floor apartment in Pittsburgh that had central air, but the unit was on the ground and it wasn’t strong enough to blow the cold air up. My last month in that apartment (August), it was 94 degrees in the apartment at 8 PM. I was taking about 3 showers a day and sleeping with ice packs. I feel your pain.
I am annoyingly compelled to point out that the vast majority of Northern California IS a heat wave from May-October, annually – it’s just that temperate strip on the coast that isn’t basically forged in the pits of hell. Like, where I grew up? Sometimes it’s literally the hottest place on earth. HOTTER THAN THE SAHARA. Air conditioning is more prevalent there but by no means guaranteed. On the plus side: swimming holes. I know this was an annoying comment!
My main method of dealing was to try not to move from about 3:00pm-8:00pm during the summer, no small feat if you are a marginally employed young person who rides their bike most places.
The plants in my apartment died of the heat. First I cried for them, then I started worrying about myself: when succulents are offing themselves in desperation, your days of sanity are numbered.
Once I came home, and all of our candles had melted.
One time I came in from outside and thought ‘oh wow, it’s almost cool in here!’ and then I noticed that I had left the butter out and it was a puddle.
I pulled a cold La Croix out of my fridge last night and slept with it under my neck. I replaced it twice over the course of the night with a new cold can. I’m pretty sure my husband and I are going to kill each other over lack of sleep.
What you need to get you is a nice, deep hole in the ground or a lovely, cool cave to creep into, far away from the relentless gaze of the hateful Yellow Face.
That durn day star!!!!!!! [shakes fist]
As a Bostonian, I could not agree more. The problem with the suggestions to get a window unit is that it goes against every fiber of my being to fork over the money, the time/effort of installing, and the sacrifice of one of my open windows for something that’s only really necessary for like 14 days a year, when the rest of the time I’d be much happier with open windows and a fan.
So instead I’m insufferable about not having AC and whining about it on those 14 days a year when it gets above 90.
…how do you live in Boston without an A/C? I grew up near Boston and lived in Boston for two years and one of those summers I lacked an A/C and I’m pretty sure I melted into a puddle from whence I shall never recover.
I guess I just don’t find it that bad most of the time, except on the days it gets into the 90s? Which aren’t really that frequent, most summers.
Also all the extra wind from my complaining about the heat on those days really helps with the cross-ventilation.
Our complaining also keeps us warm during New England winters.
It is the definition of a renewable resource.
Samesies. Anyway, in approximately 15 days it will start snowing again and we’ll have some different weather to piss and moan about.
lolsob
How many times do you think the T will strand us this winter? I’m going to go with 10.
This summer has been way more humid than usual. I moved here in 2008 and this summer reminds me much more of an Ohio summer than the breezy Boston summer I was used to.
Mallory it’s because you live on the Peninsula. Move out to the East Bay into the Tri-Valley area and you bet your butt we install central air conditioning. Come enjoy a Livermore summer and then never speak again about heat. You know how bad a Livermore summer is, I went to Las Vegas in June for my brother’s birthday and thought this isn’t too bad.
I don’t live on the Peninsula. I live in the East Bay.
My apologies for some reason I thought you were peninsula. On the other hand if you live on the other side of the hills before entering the tri-valley than yes everyone is nuts for lack of air conditioning. From Fremont on up the lack of air conditioning is absurd.
In Berkeley, I discovered a few years ago that the unique place with AC was Starbucks. Of course, then you’re at Starbucks.
I live in the eeeeeeast East Bay and it was 110 here a couple weeks ago. And it was “only” 106 on Friday and I attempted to go to a brewpub for lunch and they had no AC. Just shoot me. Living here is like all the bad parts of California and none of the good parts…
I live in Outer Sunset in SF and it is _so cool_ here. Luckily, I gather most people are put off by the promise of frequent clouds and fog, or rents would be worse than they are now.
I actually think it’s kind of funny that so many people seem to think that a woman who writes on the interwebs and lives in 2015 hasn’t heard of window a/c units or fans.
to be fair, I’m not sure that “not having heard of window units” is necessarily any less weird than “tried to cool myself off by piling frozen bread in my lap”.
I actually don’t think that’s that weird tbh :-/
yeah but the important thing is what I think O_o
Seriously. My windows can’t take an AC unit and I can’t sleep with a fan on anyway. Sometimes there are ~circumstances~
Even if my old-ass windows could handle a window unit, I think said a/c would probably blow one or more fuses in my flat’s old-ass electrical system. Also – in an area where a/c is generally not necessary, it’s not always easy to FIND these things! What few fans/a/c units there are sell out hella quick. Yes, there are places that are hotter, for longer. Yes, there are things one could do to make the heat more bearable. But when we say this heat is unusual for this area [though I guess we’ve had so many “freak” heatwaves in the last couple of years that maybe they’re not unusual anymore 🙁 ], and that generally speaking, we’re really not equipped to deal with it: it means the weather is not normal and most of us don’t have good tools to deal with it!
To be fair, I moved from Central California (where it is HOT AS SATAN’S BALLS) to Boston, and I had no notion of window units at all. I mean, all but the immediately-coastal parts of California I knew were all central A/C. When I did move to Boston, it boggled my mind that nobody I knew in SF apparently used these amazing window and free-standing units. I mean, has the city collectively decided to forgo A/C just so it can be smug about the weather to us non-coastal plebes?
That’s part of it, but mostly it’s that we – in “normal” weather years – truly don’t need them. When I first moved to SF, we’d get a week, maybe two weeks, worth of actual Hot Days in a year and it’s silly to buy an a/c unit for that little time.
San Franciscans brag about their “natural air conditioning” ie “fog”.
I was in high school (mid-90’s) before I knew about window units.
But most of my young years were spent in SE Virginia, where even crappy military housing had central a/c.
Window units are just really…not a thing in CA, at least not in my experience. Personal residences have ceiling fans if you’re lucky, central air if you’re rich and live in a newer building. Never saw a window unit (or in fact lived in or visited a home with A/C) until I moved to MD, haven’t seen a window unit since I moved back west 11 years ago.
This reminds me of when I lived in the Israel where every year it gets cold and rainy and miserable for a solid three months but then the entire region collectively forgets it ever happened. So there is zero central heat, zero carpeting, virtually no insulation of any kind and you just get wet and cold down to the bones from December-February and are somehow expected to adult while covered in blankets.
Would rather be hot, just sayin’. At least you can get more naked and cuddle with frozen bread.
Also like when the DC area forgets that it snows pretty much every year and is mystified as to how to make the roads and such passable. So many snow days, so little actual snow…
I moved from the greater DC area to New England a few years ago and spent the entirety of my first winter here just ENTRANCED by the fact that when it snows… the roads get cleared?
My first winter in the UK was a snowy one, and I had a forty minute commute home from work and kind of despaired of my coworkers saying “But you’re from America! You must get this kind of snow all the time!”
To which, yeah, upstate NY, we do – but we take it off the road so I never have to drive in it!
you can put on a sweater and burn old papers for warmth but when you live in somewhere that gets all of the seasons it’s generally still considered uncouth to take off your clothes and then start peeling off skin because IT’S STILL GODDAMN 95 AND STEAMY
Yes, the entire concept of layering is logical to me, but I’d rather take clothes off than put tons on.
I lived in an uninsulated Mao-era apartment block in southwest China, where apparently “no central heating south of the Yangtze” is a thing, as is “who needs hot water lolololol” and spent the last two months of my stay boiling water on the stove for sponge baths and crying myself to sleep while wearing every article of clothing I owned.
I love you, America.
Oh MAN me toooo. Except it was a brand-spanking-new apartment block, but still in a city that wasn’t ‘designated cold’. The day I flew out to come home it was -4 and snowing, but NOPE NO HEATING OR INSULATION FOR YOU. The only time I was ever close to warm was in the shower. And then my hot water heater broke (guess how getting that fixed went….). Then I melted my thermal blanket by getting too close to the radiator while wrapped in said blanket.
My current city in Australia also gets reasonably cold – not like -4 mostly but close. And damp. But we are not prepared for it so it’s MISERABLE. We are just coming out of winter and I’m so relieved – we get the heatwaves in summer and they’ve been brutal lately but not emotionally scarring like winter is here (at least for me). Also, we bought our new house and insulated it so I am hopeful that it won’t be as shite as all the other crappy, uninsulated houses I have lived in. Also we put on solar panels, essentially so I won’t feel guilty running the air con (we have a wall one and it’s not great but WHO CARES I LOVE IT SO MUCH)
I live on Australia’s butthole (far FAR too close to antarctica) and while in recent memory it hasn’t dropped below -3, every damn year it is miserable and awful and terrible. Wet and dark and windy. Consistantly. For 9 months. (If it isn’t exactly nine months, it FEELS like it)
You WOULD THINK that we would have nicely insulated houses and buildings, right? NOPE. It’s like no builder here has ever heard of insulation and they think a bit of goddamn shredded newspaper in the ceiling is enough.
As a result of my location I irrationally hate people who say ‘you can always put more clothes on!’. NO. NO I CANNOT. I PHYSICALLY CANNOT MOVE MY ARMS BECAUSE I HAVE NINE LAYERS AND I AM STILL COLD.
Bring on summer. I am more than happy to melt for a while.
Right??
No, I cannot. I am wearing three pairs of pants and five tops (an actual thing I did) and wrapped in a sleeping bag that’s supposed to be good for camping on freezing mountains. And I am 10 cm away from the heater. And I am BARELY WARM. In fact i still have goosebumps. And it’s been dark ALL WEEK at least as far as I can tell because it’s pitch black when I get to work and pitch black when I leave and I can’t do anything when I get home because it’s too cold to be alive.
We should all just hibernate. Or INSULATE THE GD HOUSES. We still have peaked roofs even though no snow, but no insulation?? It’s nutso.
Basically this time of year feels like that feeling where you have been in a shopping centre in summer and it’s like -4 in there because air con, but you’re wearing a singlet because summer. And then you walk about into the heat and you know it’s baking and you’re going to be sweating soon but WHO CARES MY BONES ARE FINALLY WARM.
What is WRONG with that country?!!?!
… I mean, lots of things. But specifically with winter.
Portland: a city not built around the idea that temperatures over 90 degrees Fahrenheit are a thing that happens with enough regularity to bother with central air. Seriously: few residential buildings (eg anything not built in the last 20 years) have central air, and few enough have effective central heat. My 3 year-old catometer was melted into a puddle most days this summer.
Isn’t that also true of Seattle this year.
Seattle as well! On the plus side, it usually cools down pretty well at night, so you can stick fans in the window as soon as the sun goes down.
My pre-airconditioning self favored the “go to the movies all day” approach, though admittedly this only works on weekends.
Now I have central a/c and it is glooooorious and expensive and I don’t care.
I’ve been suffering in Oakland, too. I was afraid my cats were melting so I’ve been rubbing them with damp washcloths much to their chagrin :-/
I’m not the only one!
…time for some lion cuts?
Just got my cat a lion cut, 10/10 would recommend.
Can you give lion cuts to cats with medium length fur? I’m afraid to get my fur baby shaved
My husband takes a big ice pack and puts a towel on top then puts the cat on top of that. Happy cat.
We used to rub our cats down with ice cubes. One of them in particular enjoyed icy armpit rubs.
I used to do that and my cat would be so mad and then be so mad that I stopped.
It was kinda great, ngl.
My window fan fell + broke while I was at work the other day and I nearly cried when I got home and saw it. It’s fine.
Oh thank goodness!
Solution = ice cream sandwiches. Ad infinitum.
Mallory is near the home of the It’s-It.
Y’all yesterday the AC in my building went out for the second time this summer. I live in KANSAS. It’s like…double hell.
The two most beautiful words in the English language: marine layer.
Are you saying you have DAVE”S SYNDROME?
Oh, honey. Try living in FL without a/c. My kitchen was 100+ for NINE MONTHS straight. I was finally able to replace the central a/c earlier this year, but the last 2 years have been rough (even w/bedroom a/c unit).
COMPLETELY my nightmare
just going the last two summers in my car without a/c was dreadful (i now have a/c again! and it only cost $1500!)
my sister was going to let me move into the garage apartment in the house she just bought but then was like NO WAIT there’s NO a/c only a window unit that is sad and barely manages to cool the one room to 80F and we agreed that is just not feasible, especially since the apartment has barely any windows for crossbreezes. i will continue to live in my parents’ house with a/c until brother-in-law installs central air thanks
i wouldn’t mind going without a/c IF the house is made to handle it properly – wide eaves/porches and shade trees and lots of tall skinny windows with shutters to open as needed to catch the breeze or block the rain. these modern cinderblock boxes are no good.
Back when I still lived in GA, my car’s a/c broke on the literal first day of summer and it was groooooosssss.
When I was young, my family moved from Ohio to San Antonio. The air conditioner broke within a week, and we had just moved and had no money so we couldn’t replace it. The kicker is . . . my mom was 6 months pregnant. The poor woman spent her summer in the one room with an overworked window AC unit and sitting on the steps of the pool.
When I moved to the Bay Area from New England, I was SHOCKED by the fact that not only did most private homes lack A/C, but fucking OFFICE BUILDINGS and BANKS. September in a cramped 10th floor office in downtown SF was not such a productive month for me.
Also! Some apartment buildings I lived in didn’t have HEAT. Northern California, I will tell you something about yourself. You are not always the perfect temperature. Embrace heating and cooling systems.
We have central heat, but terrrrrible insulation and very very old windows, so we may as well not have central heat, you know? (Not that it stops my roommate from cranking up the thermostat whenever it gets below 65f out, though all we ever get in return is a sky-high power bill.)
We can’t. No money left over after paying all this rent!
my work just moved to a new building in downtown san francisco. no a/c. 2nd floor, above not one but TWO pizza restaurants. also they painted over all the window frames so you can’t open them.
True fact: PG&E would not hook up our apartment’s heater, back when we lived in Berkeley, because it was an explosion hazard. So were the stove and hot water heaters. I have all the side-eye for landlords who assume that students have no standards and no knowledge of renter’s protections, but I did have classmates who had less fight in them, who had no working heat during the rainy season, despite that being a legal requirement for a rental unit.
Our landlord was so glad to see us go that he not only let us out of the lease, but refunded our deposit with interest (as is legally required, but I didn’t expect it); asking for a break on the first month’s rent because the apartment was not up to code when we moved in made it clear we were not going to be worth the trouble.
I live in a basement apartment, which is great for temperature regulation (it’s basically a cave!) but TERRIBLE for Night Stalker-esque fears.
Two words: Mint. Juleps.
Seriously, drinking cooling beverages and complaining about the heat are the only pleasures left to you, now.
If you’re just sitting around in a sweltering house, you can put your feet in a bucket of cool water and it helps to keep your whole body cooled down. And go swimming as often as possible. And, popsicles.
My ankles get so swole…
I am moving to the east bay in three weeks to a beautiful apartment… on the third floor with south facing windows. Two nights ago I slept (in San Francisco) with an ice pack in the small of my back.
Help.
You’ll get pretty used to sleeping with the windows open. I suggest investing in a fan if you can’t afford a wall unit, obvi. But yeah I work in SF and live in Oakland so I’m used to having to strip off all my clothes on the way home because there’s about a 10 degree difference.
My tale of woe:
Currently living in an apt with a single insufficient window unit, a long haired cat who is surely plotting my death, and a housemate whose presence requires at least some measure of clothing.
One office is freezing, the other has a/c that only works in theory and everyone on public transit smells.
Last, my Special Friend is finally back in town and it is actually too goddamned hot to have sex.
I am currently making a list of candidates to launch into the sun as a sacrifice to bring normal temperatures back. Won’t you join me?
Cats are comfortable at warmer temperatures than humans.
From the South Bay, I hear ya. Dilemma: lay in bed with all the doors and windows closed, but don’t sleep because it’s so hot, or open all the windows and doors, but then be unable to sleep because the airplanes from LAX don’t stop taking off until one in the mf’ing morning.
Long Beach here and SAME.
The worst summer (weather-wise) of my life was spent in Providence, RI in a 3rd floor apartment. Here is what I resorted to in order to sleep:
1) take a freezing cold shower
2) soak a t-shirt in the coldest water I could find
3) lay t-shirt on top of naked chest
4) put fan on full blast over body
Was it clammy and uncomfortable? Yes. Did it cool me off enough to sleep? Also yes!
Ice cubes tucked into the underwire! Works every time. You may swoon.
I also enjoy buying frozen vegetables and toting them home in my bra.
Living in Georgia I was amazed they even sell cars without air conditioning. Visiting California for wedding in July last year about did me in. I could not believe multiple people were expected at a home with no air conditioning. I kept turning up their fans. We are definitely better prepared for heat here.
it has been disgusting in the east bay. i turn into a cranky baby the second it’s hotter than 80, and it has been SO MUCH HOTTER THAN 80
There were exactly three reasons we bought the house we bought, in spite of the years’ deep cat pee problem that we had to cut into the joists to really eliminate: 1) built in 1910; 2) enormous yard in a tiny yard community; and 3) some glorious genius of a previous owner installed central air.
Being unemployed, I spent most of the summer hiding in my house, cursing the humid swamp land that is NJ. So I just wanted to say I’m sorry. I’m so so sorry.
Merciful heavens, that is some Biblical-plague-level cat pee, right there.
I’m in Long Beach and yeah, the power bill from constantly running fans plus the higher laundry costs are killing me along with the heat. Whoever the heck made up the idea that hotter temps make people more frisky needs to be smacked. Sweating all over someone else and worse, having them sweat all over me, is not my idea of fun.
According to the Kinsey Report, every average man you know, much prefers to play his favorite sport when the temperature is low. But when the thermometer goes way up, and the weather is sizzling hot, Mr. Adam, for his madam, is not.
I highly recommend freezing bottles of water and then placing them directly under your neck when you try to sleep at night. Only way I survived three years of living in NYC with no A/C.
Many years ago I had a baby on September 1, then had to spend 6 weeks in my broiling Oakland house, skin to skin with a sweating, howling, demanding little creature who I had no goddamned idea how to take care of. Plus the baby (ha!).
In Boston, me. A three-day heatwave has finally- PRAIZE YEEZUS – broken.
Over those three days I:
Slept snuggling an ice pack like it was a teddy bear
Burst into tears telling my boyfriend I felt more like a sweat-beast than a woman
Looked at myself in the mirror a la Chris Traeger with the flu and yelled at myself to STOP. SWEATING.
Contemplated sleeping in my office in the glorious glorious central air
Yes, I have also spent the last several nights cuddling an ice pack in order to sleep and having “it’s not you, it’s the GODDAMNED HEAT” conversations with my boyfriend. The only thing that stopped me from moving into my office was the fact that I couldn’t bring my poor hairy dog. The heatwave here in southern California is supposed to break tomorrow, when it will finally drop below 99 degrees to a balmy 92.
I’ll just be over here crying weakly until late October.
you will not know the true devastation of a heatwave until you are having hot flashes and night sweats
Be like JCVD:
I think maybe I’ll take my GIANT WRISTWATCH off first…
My current (soon to be no more praise the gods) work situation: 2nd floor, full west facing, no shade storage closets that were converted into one office with a louvered window, and one office with NO VENTILATION WHATSOEVER. The boss person started promising to get a/c during summer last year, but since she manages to absent herself during the hottest parts of the day, this has not happened yet.
We were pressing refrigerated soda cans about our persons all this week. The sweat was actually my entire body crying.
What seems to add insult to injury is the way my email inbox is flooded by everyone I have ever purchased clothing from online touting fall clothes. NO I DO NOT WANT TO EVEN THINK ABOUT SWEATERS.
OH MY GOD the other day I took a lunch break from work where there was no AC and went to a yarn store with no AC and an employee handed me a new adorable knitting magazine with all the hippest fall projects and I had to hand it back after two seconds because “Honestly, I can’t even think about sweaters right now.” She understood.
The problem is that I start thinking about sweaters and wood stoves and boots, and then it just makes it worse when I have to go outside.
Everyone has been noticeably (more) angry in Oakland. I mean it’s funny to complain about the weather from a place that has near-perfect weather year-round, BUT: it gets hot, windows open all the way up and then everyone on the street is yelling and honking their horns at each other. Just wait for El nino to dump a billion gallons of water on us just for it to cause mudslides and flooding and not turn into much needed drought slowing snow. I’m crabby.
haha can’t wait for el nino and then everyone will be crabby about the rain, too.
Oh my god I don’t know if you have been taking BART lately but the past two days they’ve cut down to 8 cars during rush hour from richmond to SF so everyone is hot, sweaty, crabby, angry, and also packed in like sardines. Also there have been all sorts of random happenings! Like someone running around on the tracks yesterday! EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE WHEN WILL IT STOP BEING SO HOT.
I was on an over-crowded, fume-y AC transit bus bull of crabby people a couple days ago; it felt blissful to get out and walk the rest of the way home in the same direct sun that had felt oppressive before I’d gotten on the bus.
It’s only been in the 80s here but yeah, no AC in this part of CA, and there’s no shade in this town. I live at the top of a big hill, so toting groceries 1 mile up to my house on foot has been awful.
You know how cities’ murder rates rise during heat waves? While trudging home yesterday with heavy grocery bags sliding off my shoulders and sunglasses sliding down my sweaty nose, I suddenly understood this at a cellular level.
* Put damp washcloths in freezer and then deployed them on the back of my neck and other strategic locations
* Sat in front of floor fan spraying water onto the fan so the little water droplets would be blown on me
* Seriously considered going to a yuppie bar and picking up someone (anyone) with air conditioning
ETA – these were all coping strategies I used one of my first summers in Chicago, when we had a record breaking heat wave and hundreds of people died of heat related causes. It was truly horrible.
Doing grad school comps so I’m spending all my time trying to find less-hot places to read approximately one million billion books. :(:(:(
On the upside, my husband stole the sheet again last night when we were sleeping and I didn’t care at all!
Here’s a helpful / hilarious related article – http://www.autostraddle.com/top-ten-ways-to-survi…
(Personally I like #10 – freeze a baseball cap)
“At this point, you are in your underwear with a rice bag wrapped around your neck, rubbing a Coke can all over your body while spinning in circles in front of a fan. And somewhere inside, a voice asks “Is there anything else? What more can be done? What if — what if I soaked a baseball cap in water, and then put it in my freezer for ten minutes, and then wore it? Would that help?” Yes, it will.”
YES
Yes, this. So very much. (Central air conditioning isn’t exactly common in the Pacific Northwest, either.)
I live on Australia's butthole (far FAR too close to antarctica) and while in recent memory it hasn't dropped below -3, every damn year it is miserable and awful and terrible. Wet and dark and windy. Consistantly. For 9 months. (If it isn't exactly nine months, it FEELS like it)
You WOULD THINK that we would have nicely insulated houses and buildings, right? NOPE. It's like no builder here has ever heard of insulation and they think a bit of goddamn shredded newspaper in the ceiling is enough.
As a result of my location I irrationally hate people who say 'you can always put more clothes on!'. NO. NO I CANNOT. I PHYSICALLY CANNOT MOVE MY ARMS BECAUSE I HAVE NINE LAYERS AND I AM STILL COLD.
Bring on summer. I am more than happy to melt for a while.
For four straight days in a row, my apartment was 90 at 11:00 p.m. The person I was dating cheated on me, I got sick, completely lost my voice, spent nights coughing (because I don’t do doctors or cold meds). I didn’t skeep more than four hours a night for like ten days, cancelled tons of classes, got behind on my writing.
Basically, I lay on my floor day and night with my iPad on my chest drinking green tea.
Trader Joe’s Green Tea in the (green) bottle. It is so damn addicting!