It’s been a weird year.  First we had the longest, coldest winter I can ever recall enduring.  Temperatures down to 10 degrees for several days straight, so much snow you could almost imagine seeing penguins lugeing down the street past the mailboxes and frozen-shut cars.  We bundled up and hibernated through the cold as best we could, but spring was a long time coming and it didn’t truly start warming up until May.

Well.  Color me daft for pleading for sunshine because now we’ve got it.  Buckets of it.  Steaming, stinking buckets of sunshine pervading our lives and liquefying the rubber right off our cars.  Heat wave?  This isn’t a heat wave.  This is a heat deluge.  An infestation, an occupation, an effing hostile takeover.  Washington should never get this hot.  We’re simply not equipped.  Very few houses are air conditioned, and the local stores never remember to stock up on enough fans which means that two days into a hot weather streak there is no comfort to be found anywhere.

Our house was 89 degrees yesterday (it was almost 100 degrees outside), and this was after all the windows had been shut all day and the drapes were drawn over every window.  Do you have any idea what it’s like to try to fall asleep when it’s that hot in your house?  No?  Allow me to paint you a picture…

You trudge upstairs, cursing your tank top-and-shorts ensemble for being too warm.  The window is open but the only way you can tell is because more hot air is flooding in.  You step into your room and let out an involuntary gasp because it’s literally like standing in a sauna.  The heat is oppressive, and as you lay back on top of the sheets of your bed you can feel waves of heat rising from your mattress.  You imagine yourself as a pizza, cooking slowly on a hot slab of stone.  You drift into a fitful, twitchy sleep only to awake when a drip of your own sweat pools in your eye and startles you awake.  You blearily gaze at the clock, with it’s stupid red numbers, and you despair at having to spend another six hours and thirteen minutes roasting alive.  You close your eyes again and try to fall back asleep, but all you can do is recoil in horror at the sensation of feeling your skin emitting more sweat.  The night passes slowly, and you awake in the morning feeling pummeled and sore, like instead of sleeping you were rolling around in the clothes dryer all night.

It’s distinctly possible that moving the throw pillows off our bed last night prompted me to burst into tears over the prospect of yet another sleepless night.  It’s also distinctly possible that watching penguins on Planet Earth as well as Wes telling me he loves me also made me cry, so maybe don’t put too much weight on that particular statement.  However!  It’s hot!  And I’m not sleeping!  Which means one thing: miserable pregnant woman.

Rar.

I think we might have found a way to cope with the dreaded heat, though.  I crash on the floor of our basement, where it’s slightly cooler, until about midnight when the upstairs is a little more manageable.  Wes wakes me and we trudge up to bed together, sleeping with the windows and curtains open and three different fans going.  It’s noisy and bright, but infinitely better than the alternative (sleeping in the hot, oppressive, quiet dark).

Does anyone have any tips or tricks for dealing with a heat wave?  Suggestions welcome!

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