And If You Put Your Ear Up to It, You Can Hear the Ocean

I cannot stand the summer heat – I hate it. I get too warm and I feel all woobly and queasy, and I’m no fun to be around – for reals, I’m a serious crankypants when it gets warm. Summer’s approach usually throws me into a serious funk that doesn’t lift until right up against September, when I can smell autumn coming.

Until recently, this has been compounded by not having air conditioning (and living on the second floor – third if you count the basement as a floor). Our apartment has a fairly open floorplan, and it’s really tough to keep it cool by means of a/c. A few years ago we set up a pair of window units, but when nothing happened in the first hour except a spreading rank smell of mildewy garage (where the a/cs had been stored), and I started wheezing, we pulled them and gave up.

Last summer while commiserating with a guildie* about the heat, I mentioned  the open floorplan and the difficulty of cooling this place, and he suggested we construct walls of sheep.

At least that what it sounded like on vent – he’s a quiet talker. What he was actually suggesting was that we separate the rooms with sheets, so as to trap airconditioned bliss, room by room. I thought about that, and about how the heck we would actually do that, then promptly moved on with my life, bitching about how hot it was in my apartment.

The worst it’s ever gotten in here was about three summers ago (four? might be four) when it was so freaking hot, all we did in the afternoons was lay on the living room floor, eating ice cream and watching kung fu movies. We probably watched Shaolin Soccer, like, eight times that summer. And Crouching Tiger, Hidden Wires Dragon – we watched that a bunch too. The whole world opened up when Our Small Person became adept enough at reading to manage subtitles, swear to dog**.

But this year we’ve got it down, much to the delight of the electric company, and my discomfort with a spreading personal carbon footprint (not to mention a skinny wallet). We have three a/cs hooked up, and a convoluted plan of fans around the apartment to get dry air into the rooms without window units in them. You step from the hallway into what Daniel and I have dubbed Pretty Pretty Princessville – it’s an airconditioned heaven.***

And I’ve made peace with the environmental guilt and the electric bill for the two month span. The electric bill was easier to make peace with, as I had somehow managed to overpay cable, car insurance, and oil over the spring, to the point where we don’t have to pay them until mid-September. The only thing I can’t seem to adjust to is that the house is super noisy – seriously, it sounds like it might take off at any minute. Mind you, I’m not complaining – I am, in fact, enjoying my morning coffee hot instead of iced.

***

*He’s in construction. And by dint of that, I was sure he would have a good solution.
**Not just for kung fu movies – tho’  we love some kung fu movies around here. I credit subtitled kung fu movies with some of Our Small Person’s transition from resistant reader to bookworm. Kung fu movies, comic books, and a bribe that he could play Morrowind on his own when he could read the text.
***Notice, please, we had lamb stew the other night for dinner. It was 90+ degrees out. This would not have been possible outside of Pretty Pretty Princessville.