I am a wuss.
As a child, I slept through HOT New York summers with no air conditioning in out 10th floor project apartment. My mom hung the summer curtains -- sheer nylon or acrylic things -- from the flimsy metal rods so the slightest breeze would toss the things aside so that we could get the blast of air nice and direct on our hot skin.
During the day we watched TV on the plastic covered couches. We had to peel ourselves off after a while -- the heat having glued us to the couch. When it started to get really hot, we'd toss old bedsheets over the plastic and sat comfortably, no peeling. At night, we slept in our underwear on the beds with no top sheet. And we lived and I hardly remember being terribly uncomfortable.
So, I tried to summon that resilience when I had to decide whether to BUY an air conditioner for my apartment (it's one of them old buildings with no central air) AND pay an extra $70 a month to cover the electricity costs.
Last weekend, when the temperature cracked 90 degrees, my apartment on the back side, the dark side of the building hardly got warm. With the ceiling fan turning, it was utterly pleasant. But it was also dry.
For those of you who don't know, D.C. gets hot, humid and nasty long before the summer solstice. I had thought about it way back when I signed the lease. They explained up front that I was on my own for A/C and it would cost extra. I was like, "Yeah yeah, I did my budget math."
But now I'm like "I could do a lot (ahem, SAVE a lot) with $70 a month." It comes out to about $280 for the summer, NOT including the cost of the A/C unit.
I'm going to get the A/C. I just can't be miserable and hot over the summer. But it makes me wonder, what happened to my ability to cope? When I was a kid, I just lived. Now I'm like, "It's too hot! I'm gonna die. I neeeeeeeed aaiiiirrrr."
I turned into a wuss. :-)
DH