This is the tie-in to the garden journal entry today, but it doesn't really belong in the garden forum.

Do you hibernate? Refrigerate? Vegetate? What?

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

Answers

Stay indoors someplace massively air-conditioned. Keep the curtains drawn. Drink lots of iced drinks. Refuse to view the local news/weather. Pretend I'm in Vancouver.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

Living in Santa Cruz makes the heat a little easier to take. When it gets unbearably hot, I grab my wetsuit and throw myself into the ocean. Even at its warmest, the Pacific rarely clears 60 degrees. I stay in till my fingers and toes are numb.

Alternatively, coming home and taking a cool shower and then lying about in front of the fan in one's underwear also helps. And thinking of Alaska in the wintertime.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

The cool shower/lying in front of the fan is very effective. I do not have air-conditioning, I LOATHE it. I need the windows OPEN, no matter how hot it is.

Last summer NY had a wicked heat wave (it was around July 4th). I was sitting at my kitchen table, paying bills, and I broke a sweat. Believe it or not, I love extreme weather, I'm okay with heat, humidity, sweating. It is a good excuse to just stop moving, drink something cold and chat in front of the fan.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

Refrigerate at work, suffer at home. It is the only time of year that I like to spend evenings at the office.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

Brenda suffers in the heat, but I enjoy it.

I grew up in South Florida, before air-conditioning. People who could afford to went to the mountains of North Carolina for three months in the summer.

I like to sit in a room with no air-conditioning, sweating. Maybe a ceiling fan to sleep under.

I drink a lot of water and I sweat like Albert Brooks on Broadcast News.

My dream is to write in the pool house early in the morning, drinking Vichy water, then fish all day, like Hemingway did at the house in Key West, or at Finca Vigia, with 12 varieties of mango tree on the property.

Through meadowland toward a closing door, that wasn't there before, a door marked Nevermore, as Johnny Mercer says.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

In Louisiana, we don't hit our full summer heat until the beginning to middle of July.

Our temperatures have been in the 90s this week but our humidity has held around 70-80%. It's absolutely suffocating. I love hot weather but I will not miss the humidity of the South. It's terrible to take a shower, feel clean and fresh, and within 2 minutes of being outside to feel absolutely filthy. The humidity sits on you. It is harder to breathe, your limbs feel heavy and you are covered with a constant sheath of sweat.

We had the a/c in our room cranked up last night, not because of the heat but in an attempt to dispel some of the humidity. It didn't work.

It doesn't cool off much at night because the moisture holds all of the heat in--but about an hour or two after the sun goes down it's nice to sit on my porch in my swing and stuff it with pillows and sway in the wind. Lovely.

How do I cope with the heat? As few clothes as possible. Lots and lots of water. Lots of ice. On Saturdays, I usually take my dog down to the riverfront and after I get home it takes a long while to cool off. Before I get in the shower, I will get a tank top and shorts and stick 'em in the freezer. After shower, remove from freezer, clothe yourself and presto! It feels good. Just like clothes from the dryer during the winter feel cozy and warm, it's a nice little instant cool- off.

It does sound kind of wierd, though.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

One of the things I like about Seattle -- the lack of humidity in the summer. I grew up in Northern Virginia -- 90 percent humidity and temp above ninety for weeks on end. Here we have a nice summer that lasts from the beginning of July to mid october.

When we do have a few days that are extra hot, I fill the bathtub with tepid water and dip myself in it. I also spray myself with water and sit in front of the fan.

It's not unusual for homes to be unairconditioned around here. Many places don't even have screens on the windows! The Cascade mountains seem to keep the bugs away.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

Being a displaced Mainer, I find the heat very hard to take. I can't tell you just how much I hate the phrase "it's not the heat, it's the humidity." Actually, it's both, in combination, and I hate it.

I don't have AC (yet), so I've been running the ceiling and window fans nonstop. Over the weekend it was in the high 90's, and I used my tried-and-true method of a wet washcloth on the back of my neck. It works pretty well, and if you add a tall glass of iced tea or lemonade in the mix, it works even better.

I sleep with two oscillating fans going full blast, one on each side of the bed.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

A fan and a spray bottle of water is all I need. Dry So Cal-type heat doesn't bother me unless I have to be in business attire outdoors. If I can put on cool loose clothes and drink cool drinks and sit by a fan, I'm fine. I was raised in a very hot place (Riverside California) and so I have no trouble falling asleep on hot nights. If it is bad (85+) I'll just take a cold shower and go to bed wet.

Even in very high temperatures, the very effective spray bottle/fan combo can make me all goosebumpy and chilly, especially at night. Watching me pull a blanket over my legs to warm up makes my poor miserably sweating husband insane.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

Give me a big ol' fan, blowing right on me, and a new computer game, and heat means nothing. I usually don't mind the heat because wherever I work ends up being a little slice of arctic hell--I'm always directly under the air conditioning vents, so it's about 60 degrees wherever I sit. When I go outside, the warmth is a good thing. Yeah, yeah, everybody stuck back in California hates me now. I paid my dues, baby, 30 years in Orinda.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

I like the heat. I'm from Southern California and that kind of dry heat doesn't bother me.

We have fans in most rooms in our house and they work pretty well. We've also been sitting in our wading pool, then sitting around in the back yard. Lying in the hammock in a wet bathing suit is very refreshing.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

I wrote an entry about this -- how the dry heat here had me fooled. It just about hit 100 in Oakland yesterday and I was just like "Hey, it's kind of warm out today, I think I'll wear shorts."

I didn't even know how hot it was (air conditioned office) until I checked the forecast and noted the extremely high temperatures.

It blew me away, the _difference_ between 99 at 22% humidity and 99 with 95% humidity. Sure it was hot yesterday, but I could deal with it. Back home after work, when it cooled down by fractions as the sun went down, we even walked to the store and picked up some stuff for dinner.

I cooked, though it was sweaty work over the range. I bought a bottle of iced tea, which was most refreshing with our meal of easy-to-make omelettes.

After dinner I stripped down to my bra and shorts and sat around nursing a glass of cool water while watching TV.

Around bed time, it was a bit warm to sleep still. We'd cranked the fans up to move the hot air out and the cooler evening air in (we live on the second floor of an older home), but I didn't manage to drop off until about 2am, when the wind changed or something. It was quite a dramatic change ... all of a sudden instead of being warm and sweaty, all the sweat on my body chilled in the cold air that was coming in the window.

At any rate, drinking lots of cool refreshing drinks, wearing a wide brimmed hat and using a cool wash cloth seems to work in this kind of heat.

Hooray.

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

I grew up on the northeastern shore of Long Island Sound. After I was allowed to ride my bike to the beach (after 9th grade), I went there almost every day. After I got a car and didn't have to pedal uphill both ways to my lake, I went there every day instead, since there lakes have no jellyfish.

Then I got stupid and moved 40 miles inland, with an indoor pool (at school) and an outdoor pool (at my friend's apartment) and the Mt. Hope (a river behind another friend's house) and Bigelow Hollow (another lake).

Then I got stupider and moved to Denver. Heat's easier to take without humidity, but restricting myself to public pools' hours is hard. My goal this year is (in August) to swim in a little pond on Loveland Pass, over 11,000. If that doesn't cool me down, I'm done for.

Doesn't anybody else, say, *swim* when it's hot out?

-- Anonymous, June 15, 2000

Swimming is the answer. The summers I spent in Ithaca New York were some of my favorites ever. It would get pretty hot, and not a ton of places had air conditioning. It would be humid too. But Ithaca has 3 or 4 waterfalls with swimming holes plus a resevoir. I realized I hadn't really been living until I swam in fresh water under a roaring waterfall. especially at night when you skinny dip and the stars blanket the sky. We'd go nearly every day. I could never move to a place without access to water. I thought at first I'd have to live on the coasts but Chicago has a wonderful waterfront and though some people won't swim in the lake, I have no problem with it. Looks pretty clean to me! Oak street beach is one of the most remarkable places: you're sitting on sand watching the beach volleyball and rollerbladers and you turn around to face Michigan avenue. Now in New York city, I head to the movie theaters and drink a lot of icy drinks. Stay out of the subway!

I've never lived in a non-humid place, but I spent three weeks in Morocco in June one year in 96 degree dry heat in the shade. The only thing to do (there weren't even fans, really) was get up early, take a long nap, and come out again at dusk. Too bad we don't have that kind of society here. even without ice, if you just slow down and minimize your contact with the sun, you can really do ok.

-- Anonymous, June 16, 2000

Oh, how I hate the heat. And the humidity. Anything warmer than 70 degrees is really too warm for me. My favorite days are in early spring, when the humidity is low and the sky is blue and the mid-day high is maybe 70, with a chance of frost at night.

I keep my apartment at about 80 degrees in summer; in air-conditioning degrees, that seems cool enough that I can work out and sleep comfortably. I don't really like to have the AC on but I run it to reduce the humidity. In summer it seems to be humid here a lot. Not as bad as Illinois, though -- it's 85 degrees and 85% humidity instead of 98 degrees and 110% humidity (that's when you walk outside and buckets of water condense on you out of the supersaturated air).

I like winter. I like snow. There's nothing like a sunny 10-degree day with six inches of snow on the ground...

-- Anonymous, June 16, 2000

WAZ ^ ? MY NAME IS JENNIFER. WHEN I GET HOT I PUT ON MY BATHING SUIT AND GET MY DOG(SPARKY)... AND GO TO MY POOL AND WE BOTH JUMP IN. IT COOLS ME OFF VERY FAST!!!

BYE

-- Anonymous, June 16, 2000

I live in the south. I didn't think there were still people without a/c!!!!

I like to think I'm fairly educated and worldly, but it still shocks me that people live w/o a/c. How does that happen?

And don't get me started on the two elderly people who died in a nursing home that didn't have a/c!

-- Anonymous, June 16, 2000

My parents only got AC last year...I grew up in a hot house all summer long eating ice cubes constantly.

But the benefit of this now is, I have a high heat tolerance, and no longer care much when it's 110 out or so. The AC in this house only works in the living room, so I just blast fans all the time and get used to it.

-- Anonymous, June 16, 2000

I don't go swimming when it's hot because we're like 40 miles from the beach, and getting there & back is a big pain. And we don't have a pool or access to one, at least not easily.

We don't have A/C and don't plan to get it. There are only maybe 10 days a year when it's warm enough to want it. I like the house to be in the 70s, not cool. Those ten days, we just sleep with only a sheet. I think we're going to put in more insulation so our house will stay cooler in the summer (and warmer in the winter).

-- Anonymous, June 19, 2000