It’s hot. The floor is the coolest place in the house. This is where Biscuit is spending most of his time these days.
My meat thermometer says that it is 87 degrees in the house this evening. Apparently, one of the most useful things about having a handy magnetic meat thermometer that hangs on the refrigerator is being able to check the temperature: not of meat but of the inside. In the winter, I could say, “Aack! It’s 40 degrees in the kitchen!” and complain about it here. Sure wish we could bottle some of that chilliness and save it for days like today.
It’s nearly the time of day when the outside temperature starts to possibly feel slightly cooler than the inside. Which means that it is time to open the windows. At least the ones at the front of the house. Our house faces directly east (perhaps not the best planning), which means that in the summer, we get full morning sun and then, a little later, full afternoon sun. This ensures that everything is thoroughly toasted by the time the sun finally disappears.
We don’t have air conditioning.
It surprises everyone when I tell them this. It’s not that unusual for our mountain climate, though. Lots of houses up here didn’t come with air conditioning, because when they were built, it was not this hot. And when it was hot for a few days in the summer, you could always count on it cooling down at night. So you would spend the day at the community pool, and in the evening you just had to open the windows, let in the cool Delta breeze, and all would be right with the world again. I’m used to not having air conditioning; the house where I grew up didn’t have it either. It was a two story house, so the upstairs would get warm, but every evening my Mom would tell me to “go upstairs and open the windows,” and I would, and the breeze would start up, and life would be good.
The problem lately has been that the nighttime lows here are not that low anymore. They’ve been in the 70s the last few nights. “Normal” is 60. That’s a huge difference. We don’t seem to be getting “normal” low temperatures anymore, at least not in the summer.
