Keeping My Cool

"What is cool changes;

that there is such a thing as cool is immutable."

-- Lionel Shriver, We Need To Talk About Kevin

Melting purple popsicle 9-5-14

"Get cool, boy!

Got a rocket in your pocket,

Keep coolly cool, boy!"

-- "Cool," West Side Story

As much as I love hot, humid weather and wide open windows, I have to admit that there are days when I feel pretty damned lucky to live in a house with air conditioning.

I grew up in one without it.

It was brutal.

My parents finally got  a little window unit -- in their bedroom. My little sisters would sneak in during the night and sleep on the floor. 

Not me. Never once.

I sucked it up and sweated it out in muggy, over-heated misery. 

Growing up in a sweat-box taught me that even when it seemed like I didn't have a choice, I really did. Several, actually. I could totally flip my shit, or I could:

1. Eat a popsicle.
2. Drink iced tea.
3. Take a cool bath.
4. Turn on a fan.
5. Spray myself with the hose.
6. Take something off.

The list still works.

Yeah, sometimes the "something" is a whole lot more complicated than hot weather, but usually the solutions are still pretty simple.

When life turns up the heat, I can't change the weather -- climatically or emotionally speaking.

But I can get through it it without it wrecking my day, or my week, or my sleep, or my waistline, or my whatever.

It's that old thing about perspective, I guess.

I can bitch and complain, which only makes it worse and intensifies the misery.

Or I can choose to do something else. Something cooler.

And for pretty much all situations, the old solutions still work:

1. Eat a popsicle.
2. Drink iced tea.
3. Take a cool bath.
4. Turn on a fan.
5. Spray myself with the hose.
6. Take something off.

Oh, I almost forgot.

My parents had central air installed the minute we all moved out of the house.

Not cool, guys. Not cool.

Letting The Outside In

"Set wide the window. Let me drink the day."

-- Edith Wharton, 

Artemis to Actaeon and Other Verses

Toy window 8-14-14

"How does light enter a house? If the windows are open.

How does light enter a human? If the door of love is open."

-- Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

Every summer a war rages in my house.

The guys like it cool.

I like it hot.

As soon as the furnace is turned off in spring, they turn the AC on.

On any given summer day, it's not unusual to hear one of them complaining, shirtless, about how "stinkin' hot it is in here," while I'm shivering in a sweater and jeans under a fuzzy blanket.

If it was up to me, I'd have the windows and doors open all summer long, except maybe during the most heinous heat waves. 

But the guys like to batten down the hatches, lock everything up and seal us in tight day after day after day after day -- like lizards in a terrarium. 

Maybe it's my claustrophobia, but I can't stand being shut in like that.  It's stifling. I can't breathe.

I like to let the outside in so I can feel the breeze, smell the air, hear the rain and the birds and the children and the lawn mowers.

Don't tell the guys, but sometimes, when I'm home alone, I leave the AC on and open the windows anyway. (In the winter, I do the reverse -- open the windows and jack up the heat. I do the same thing in my car.)

But then there are days -- days when the natural atmosphere outside matches the climate-controlled atmosphere inside -- when the temperature settles in at a perfect 70-something and a lazy breeze chases away the dampness and humidity -- when I can throw up the sashes and let the air out there mingle with the air in here.

We're in a stretch of days like that, and I have the place wide open.

These are the days when there's no need to battle and we can call a truce in the window war. 

Plus, I'm home alone and there's nobody here to tell me that I can't.