It's Hot! D@mn Hot!

　
Several years ago, I heard the comedienne Steven Wright pose the following question: "If you saw a heat wave, would you wave back?" My answer to Mr. Wright would be "NO way! I would NOT wave for fear that it would want to stop and visit for awhile, but I WOULD wave it on in the direction of hell, [as far due south as space permits] where the air is suppose to feel like the inside of a furnace, and your feet are suppose to blister when you walk barefoot outside!"
So, in case you’ve been living under a rock or in Alaska where I don’t think they EVER have problems with this particular type of weather, it seems that parts of the west, mid-west and east coast have been experiencing a tropical heat wave [though it feels like weeks that we’ve been enduring this misery...]. My friends always marvel when I tell them that my husband and I prefer winter to summer. I present before you, exhibit A, the above-mentioned heat-wave as evidence of why we feel the way we do. You see, in the winter, you can layer on more clothes, add a blanket or two and sit in front of the fireplace where you’ll ultimately feel the toasty warmth envelop you like a welcomed kiss. In the summer, not so much! You can strip completely down to your birthday suit, have your AC cranked down to "extreme cool" as well as having both ceiling and standing fans oscillating on high and still be burning up, as if you have a wretched, wretched fever! [Yes, it deserves the double adjective!]
You know it’s hot when you’re puppy walks around carrying his water dish with him wherever he goes! You know it’s hot when it’s 98 degrees in the shade and still that same temperature at 11 pm, and you swear you can hear the drooping Oak tree’s leaves grumpily calling, "Hey, Pal! Can you hose us down, please?!" It could just be the delusion that comes after you walk outside in the ungodly hotness at 9 am, no less, and your brain feels like it’s been turned into a fried egg! I think that’s the point when you swear you fell into Alice’s rabbit-hole and everything becomes anthropomorphic, i.e. trees talking to you!
I was talking to my friend, Dee, the other day who lives in Texas, and she complained, in true lamenting fashion, that she and her daughter got into her pool for some cool relief from the excessive heat, only to have to jump out immediately.
"Felt more like a hot tub, huh?" I asked.
"That’s an understatement!" she told me. "It was miserable!"
And, that, my friends is the general consensus from California to Las Vegas, Texas up to Chicago, New York down to Washington, on into Virginia and on and on and on, to all the states that are burning up and miserable. [And, I’m not talking about because of the circus that’s taking place in Washington!]
Honestly, once you hit 100 degrees of unbearably, humid, sticky heat, does it really matter how much hotter the temperature reads? I mean, when you walk outside and your mouth drops open with a shocked, "Oh my Gaw....." and you can’t get anymore out because the heat has scorched the inside of your mouth, your nostrils and your chest gets tight because the oppressive heat makes you unable to catch said breath, then I ask you: does it truly matter whether it’s 100, 105 or 120 degrees outside?
Hold on as I plug my ears from the deafening yells I can hear from my friends in Arizona and Las Vegas, as they vehemently differentiate: "Hell, yeah! It matters! It can get up to 118 degrees in these parts and that doesn’t take into account the **heat index! A 100 degrees is like springtime, ya Baby! Quit your b*tch*n'!!!"
Yeah. Yeah. I hear you, and, not to take anything away from the extreme heat that is experienced in certain areas of our country, [I grew up in Florida, I get it!] but I tend to subscribe to the sentiment of Adrian Cronauer from Good Morning, Vietnam, when he proclaims simply: "It’s HOT! Damn hot!"
Exactly. 100; 105, 120, it’s all the same to me, and that is – no matter how you slice it, the temperature of the last few days have been hellacious! My poor plants, that I spent so much time potting a month ago, are screaming at me [we are in an anthropomorphic state right now, don’t forget...] as they droop over for dear life: "Help me!"
I had a chuckle the other day when Jim Romanovich tweeted that the temperature in Los Angeles was two degrees cooler than hell. I shook my head and shivered, thinking, "sorry, Jim, but better you guys than us cuz I just can’t deal with that kind of heat...I just CAN’T deal!" I tend to want to take to my bed like a put upon Scarlett O’Hara, vigorously fanning myself as I wish for another day with one caveat – it does NOT include this heat!
I don’t know if it will make Jim feel any better to know that we, on the east coast, are having to deal now. I think I’ll tell him to go ahead and have a chuckle because it’s now two degrees cooler than hell, here...turn about IS fair play!
In any event, I feel like raising my arms forcefully as Hecuba did in Bewitched years ago, as my brow furrows and I say with an unconstrained displeasure, "We are NOT amused!"
But to all my friends out there who feel, as I do, as if we’ve been tossed into the fiery furnace like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego [for different reasons] as outlined in the book of Daniel, let me just say, I feel your pain!
For those of you in various states that are about to step into this insanity, let me welcome you to our world!  Misery LOVES company!
I think I’ll go take an ice bath now then take to my bed and pray for "another day" WITHOUT this grueling heat!
I wish us all cooler days ahead...

Written by Jhill Perran
July 23, 2011

**Shout out to Mr. George Winterling, the weatherman I grew up watching in Jacksonville, Florida. He worked for WJXT as its Meteorologist, and he created the "humiture" calculation in 1978, which the National Weather Service adopted as the national "heat index". His daughter, Wendy, was in a couple of my elementary school classes, and I will never forget the day he came to school one day to talk to our class about weather. [A story for another day...]