Like The Fires Of Hell Almost

We drove in from Utah, to Kansas City. In June. The very middle of June.

The AC in the Uhaul Truck kept the reality at bay until we pulled into the parking lot where we arranged to meet our son, Sean. We opened the doors of the cab, and the heat crawled in. It was late in the evening, and still about 85 degrees, and the humidity was high enough to cause instant sweat on every surface, mostly on us.

We stayed with Sean for several months, while Kevin got a new job (actually just three days after we arrived), and while we worked out our own housing arrangements.

The heat stayed high. But Sean had air conditioning, and believed in using it, so we survived (no, he is not wealthy, and we paid our way). Kevin’s job was brutal, and still is, since the AC in the shop he works in just can’t keep up with the heat.

The second summer here we installed window AC units in our house, put in ceiling fans in all the rooms, bought numerous fans and one portable swamp cooler. We survived, midst much complaining, and some days that were pretty miserable.

My hair stays in a ponytail all summer long. No way I can stand hair on my neck, it just adds to the misery. I don sandals and capris and light weight shirts sometime in March, and don’t go back to shoes and regular pants until November. It is just that warm. I never wear a coat in the winter, not even in February. The wimpy winters here can’t match the fury of Wyoming, or even the lackadaisical mountain chill of Utah.

This year the electricity cost went up. Quite a lot. We wait until late in the day to turn on the AC, only the room we are in. That little bit pushes the electric bill from $100 to over $200 if we do it every day, even just a couple of hours. We can keep it below $200 (just) if we don’t use it in the bedroom, and that requires fans everywhere just to be able to sleep.

We bought two more portable swamp coolers this year, one for the livingroom and one for our bedroom (the other lives in the kitchen). We are surviving, but oh, some days are filled with soggy red faced discomfort.

I feel like we get wet in March, and don’t dry out until November.

Sometime around 1:00 in the afternoon I begin to feel like chocolate that has been left on the dashboard of a car in the sun. Melted. Bones not quite as sturdy as they are supposed to be, and a good deal too much liquid oozing about. Or maybe like the Snowman…

I don’t cook much in the summer. I use a frypan on the stove, cook some things in an air fryer oven (creates less heat and takes half the time of the big oven), and I do a few things in my instant pressure cooker. Most of it is heat in the microwave food though. It is just too miserable to even THINK about adding to the heat. I can’t bear the thought of heating a pot of steamy water to boil pasta, not even a pound at a time with leftovers to freeze.

Lemonade becomes a necessity. And Ice Pops. Kevin relies on Ice Cream. We need about 20 quart bags of ice to get through the week, and we use a water cooler to dispense water from a refillable bottle. No edema though, I’ve healed enough that I just don’t swell in the heat like I once did.

Sometimes it gets so unbearable in the afternoons that Kevin and I decide to go somewhere. The truck has delicious AC that kicks on within 15 seconds, I kid you not. Way to go Nissan! We drive somewhere and then use THEIR AC. WalMart has this amazing cold spot just inside the door. Kevin sometimes invites me on a date to the produce cooler inside Sam’s Club, and my wilder side is always up for a cheap romantic date.

More heat than cold here. You don’t exactly forget about the hell of summer during the winter, you mostly just dread.

The worst days are those where the nights don’t really cool off. You wake up in the morning sweating, and it just gets worse from there.

You know about clouds, don’t you? They are supposed to block the sun and cool things off. They don’t. The sun shines all day, and then sometime about 5-6:00 in the evening the clouds creep in, and seal all that heat in with a nice blanket of insulation to keep it smouldering hot all night long. Cools maybe 3 degrees by morning. (I’m probably exaggerating. It only FEELS like that.)

And there is humidity. The Weather site helpfully tells us that it is 92 degrees, but FEELS LIKE 108 because the humidity is somewhere between 45 and 80 percent.  You sweat a lot. Not more than you would in a dry climate at the same temperature, really, but in a dry climate it helpfully evaporates off, whereas in a humid one it soaks your clothing and runs down the inside of your elbows and knees. I’ve never heard of anyone actually literally drowning in sweat, but it feels like a real looming threat there some days.

That whole cook an egg on the sidewalk thing? It can happen. In Texas we gathered duck eggs that were already partially cooked. Here, somewhere about 4:00 in the afternoon you start to feel like you are just about fully cooked. Maybe lightly poached.

I don’t know if there is any better solution than what we have. I sure wish there was a way to cool off without it costing so much that it makes us cry.

For now, I have no jokes about the South Side of Hell. Kansas City is just a little too close to that for it to be funny.