Last week was my Summer of Hell week. Every summer, there is that one week that you feel like you are about to wilt, then swell up, then die from the heat. I am giving eternal praise for the guy that invented the Air Conditioner. I grew up without AC in the house. My parents had a window unit in their bedroom, and we would camp out in there at night when it was unbearable. Besides being uncomfortable and sweaty, I feel just plain miserable in the humid heat. I would rather live inside a snowman in my underwear for the entire winter than go one day without the AC in the high humid hell hot weather in the summer.
The Hell week began on the Friday before last, then lasted through the weekend-which was fine because we have air- building up steam and humidity and getting hotter and hotter, and then Mon-Thursday was the equivalent of 105F all week. I was "working" at my Aunt's all week, just making sure my Uncle stays safe. He has no fat so he doesn't feel the heat like I do. I get super bitchy when I'm hot and their house was
not even COOL...in the room my Uncle stays in it was still 80-85 f'ing degrees. I had to retreat to the middle of the house, so I could get relief and not die in a melted fat puddle on their couch. That's the only thing I hate about my "job" is when it gets unbearably hot.
So then comes Friday! The day where we are supposed to get Relief! The day I have been looking forward to for 3 entire days, that seemed to be farther away every time I saw the latest weather forecast. On Friday, it was supposed to storm, then the temps would fall a few (more like 20) degrees (f). Every night before I went to sleep, I would close my eyes and say...ugh....2 more days....
So Friday is here now, and I'm in a great mood at the end of the day. The clouds are super dark, and there is that energy in the air that happens when a big fat storm is about to go off! I come home from "work", get settled in, plug in my laptop and finish subscribing to a bunch of sewing blogs I found where women my age make awesome vintage clothes to put in their wardrobe. So I'm excited to look through all the wondrous blogs and websites of the creations I found during the day. I pop open a fresh Coke, and I'm getting down to business. Dr. Phil comes on at 5, and distracts me while I'm checking tons of email. So it starts to storm super bad, and I'm grinning like the Cheshire cat, because I'm finally going to start cooling off!! The sky explodes and dumps tons of rainwater all at once. There are a few loud close booms of thunder. The wind is blowing super hard and I'm doing this stupid lame version of the happy dance by moving my neck and shoulders like Walk like an Egyptian to no music, and to express to nobody else just exactly how excited I am about a thunderstorm.
Then the worst possible thing happened. The power goes out, and does not flicker nor comes back on...until Saturday at 9 pm. That means
no internet,
no TV,
no lights,
no sewing machine, and
no phones. Our landline was switched to Comcast and now we don't have a phone during a power outage. Seriously, WTF. And that storm that was supposed to drop the temperatures super low? Hasn't really happened until Monday evening. Saturday was a solid 85F starting at 10am and lasting all day long. I got a lot of sleep this past weekend because there was literally almost nothing to do without sweating.
Did I mention that the air doesn't work in my car? Well, it doesn't and my car smelled like burning plastic on the way home from work last week until I was able to park it in the garage. Luckily my iphone was fully charged when the power went out, and (lucky again) I had already asked for a bunch of lives from people, so that kept me busy on Friday night. Saturday morning, I got the idea to charge my phone in the car. I borrowed my Mom's charger because I couldn't charge it in her car unless it was running. Wth....I love new technology, but let's not get rid of common sense. Just because it's cool to push a button to start the car, then make a double click so the power runs without the engine on. duh.
So since I have a car from the last millenium (ok, it's a '99) of course it will charge in my car without running the engine and causing the family to die in the garage from carbon monoxide poisoning. So being nice, I charge my mother's phone first. Then I charge mine up until 29%. Then I run the battery dead. *I'm still parked in the double car garage with a pool table between the cars and not possible to jump start from that position. So now I have
no TV,
no phones at all,
no internet and
no sewing machines,
no Air or adequate lighting. This makes me sad and frustrated and mad as hell, because I had big plans to be living it up in the AC all weekend after the Week of Hell. I'm so disappointed that I start to read in bed, in a dark room to keep out the heat, with a flashlight, and I picked one of those old cheap novels that have tiny type print. Trying to read in the half-dark/too-bright LED crappy flashlight is starting to really strain my eyes. And the air is still humid and I'm laying still so I don't expend any energy so I don't accidently burn a calorie and start to overheat. I end up falling asleep at 2 pm and stay like that for most of the day.
Then the power came on at 9pm on Saturday, and I was alone on the house, and I cranked the AC to super-freezing for a few hours, turned on Bio and watched Celebrity Ghost Stories, and it made the day a lot better. For some reason, not having power took a lot out of me and I fell back to sleep for the night around midnight. LAME weekend. And then I received almost 385 emails that I had to wade through and read (some are still book marked) and it took until today to get through.
How was YOUR weekend?! I bet it was 300x better than mine!
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This is Jacqueline. "She" is named after Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. "She" has lived with us since last fall. About a month ago, my daughter realized that she was really a HE. So meet Jack! He has gotten super big over the last few months.
