Okay, I haven't posted for a long time. Like all summer.
We've reached various milestones this summer. Alan graduated from high school. We just attended his university registration/orientation.
The "twins" were six years old together for a few months. Lillie just turned seven. While they were both six, we finally had their joint birthday party at the gymnastics place, the party I've been promising them ever since April, when Francie turned six.
Amelia and her best friend are setting themselves a new sleepover record. They alternate nights, one night at her house and one night at ours. They're up to something like 22 sleepovers in a row. In other words, they live together 24/7. I don't know how they stand it.
Tillie is a camp counselor/kitchen worker/etc. for a second year. I don't see much of her, but Fred was in charge of one week of church camp there, and Amelia attended that week, and Alan went along and videotaped camp stuff for church, so they got to hang out.
We took a two-day vacation. We went to the Muny and Grant's Farm, and even spent one night in a hotel. I think this may be our first night in a hotel since we brought Francie home from Haiti, four years ago. The hotel room, the free breakfast, and the hotel pool were the highlights of the trip. I went on Hotwire and got a nicer room than we normally would have gotten. Tourist attractions are nothing compared to a brand-new hotel room. The little girls loved it all--the drapes with pull cords, the ice machine, the soap in little paper wrappers, the icy air-conditioning. If you never stay in hotels, a nice one is kind of like paradise.
Which brings me to the real reason for this post. Air conditioning.
Ours broke two days ago.
We live in Missouri. From late July through early September, the temperatures are usually in the seventies or eighties at night, nineties during the day. Sometimes in August we get up to 100. The past couple of weeks, it's been above 95 all afternoon, every day.
The real killer, though, is the humidity. If you ever thought that "it's not the heat, it's the humidity" was a stupid saying, well, it's actually not. I am not good with humidity percentages. I don't know what percentage we are. All I know is that if you step outside around noon, it feels like a bathroom right after somebody took a hot shower without the fan running. If you're outside five minutes, your shirt starts to stick to you. Ten, and sweat starts running into your eyes. And without air conditioning, whatever the outdoors is like is what the indoors is like. When ours broke, I found myself utterly helpless in the afternoons, oddly unable to do anything except lie on the bed, panting and thinking, My God, it's hot.
I went to a Joan Baez concert here in town, once. She was from California, I think--somewhere cooler and less humid, anyway--and at the beginning of the concert, she talked about walking from her hotel to our local YMCA, to exercise. After exercising, though, she had to get someone from the YMCA to arrange for a ride back to the hotel, or give her a ride, or something, because she didn't think she could manage the walk back. She looked like a thin and fit person, too. It wasn't the heat, it was the humidity. I think she said something along the lines of, "I don't know how you guys stand it."
Me, our first day without air conditioning: "Air conditioning isn't a necessity. We already owe for those two new tires on the car after the flat last week, and we have to get the van fixed, and the dryer needs to be replaced. We can't afford to have someone come out and look at the air conditioner. It's only six more weeks until cooler weather starts. We can open the windows and run fans, and we'll be fine. Maybe we can afford to fix it next spring."
Me, a day later: "Fix it. Call someone. I don't care what it costs. We'll sell the car. We'll sell a kid. Just call somebody."
The guy came today, and bless his little heart, he replaced a fuse and added some freon and we're down to a blissful 81 degrees in the house right now; 81-degree air that has had the moisture miraculously sucked from it by our functioning air conditioner, so it actually feels cooler than 81.
It's like paradise. Honestly. Two days ago, I would have thought that I could get along fine without air conditioning, that NEEDING air conditioning is spoiled, yuppie, a failing resulting from living a stereotypical American strip-mall lifestyle, out of touch with reality.
So, I'm a little ashamed of myself. But, dang, it feels good in here. I walk in from outside, and my skin starts to tingle as the sweat begins to evaporate. The dogs that were constantly panting, blowing huge quantities of wet dog-breath into our already moisture-laden air, have stopped panting. The air feels CLEAN.
I don't know why we aren't all getting up every morning shouting praises to the heavens in sheer joy that we live in a century that has air conditioning. Really. And for those of you who don't have it, gosh I'm sorry.
