June is hot....
(Doesn't the header make this sound like a soft porn site?) This week has been the hottest of the summer, so far. I do expect worse ones before we find the relief of October cooling. However, let me tell you how the week went for me.
Tuesday:
As I am driving him to the airport, Hunky Husband mentions that the air conditioner (well, it's a heat pump, but it works as an air conditioner in the summer) sounded funny to him that morning. (The compressor/radiator sits just outside his walk-in closet, several feet from the window of his bathroom.) I forget about it until I note, a few hours later, how hot it feels and find that the thermometer says 84˚ Fahrenheit (it is in the mid-90s and climbing, outside)
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday - in the basement - high temperatures are forecast to be 99-101 each day:
Little time is spent in the main floor of the house. It is hot and humid. The carpeting buckles in several places in each room as the heat and humidity cause the carpeting to expand. I live in the basement, sleeping on a couch, reading (fortunately, I had stopped by the library on my way home from dropping HH off at the airport), sewing, sorting through Mom's old photographs, and generally keeping myself busy. (The basement includes a refrigerator and microwave, so it is entirely habitable!)
Actually, I am rather proud of myself for making the third of the three curtain panels that cover my window-on-the-world, my little bay window in the kitchen. The first panel had been completed several years ago and had been put into immediate use with the second panel having followed in another couple of years. Now, all three panels are in place. Their function in life is to keep direct sunlight off of the refrigerator. Depending upon the time of the year, there are a few hours of the day (morning or evening, rarely - in the dead of winter - both) during which the direct sunlight is a problem through one or another (or two) of the three glass panes.
In addition, I get started on sorting through my mother's plethora of photographs that she left behind when she died 15 years ago. Starting with the parking lot on our way into the funeral home for Mom's funeral, one of my cousins (I'll dub her "Clueless") had bugged me to let her come go through the photos. I had told Clueless that, first, my brothers and I and our children would go through them. After a few years, she stopped mentioning it. (Clueless lives in another state and I've only seen her at family funerals since she came to Mom's house a few days after the funeral and, with my permission, loaded up a china cabinet, dishes, and household goods into her pickup truck and drove off. She was admonished that she should share her bounty with her brother and sister, which I've no doubt she did.)
There is now one large envelope of photographs with Clueless's name on it, one large envelope with another cousin's name on it (she is not a sister to Clueless), and a medium-sized box of photographs and whole (small) photo albums for my younger brother and his family. (Elder Brother has no kids and has gone through many of Mom's photos. I see EB more than any other of my non-progeny relatives.)
Thursday:
The service technician shows up at 5:00 PM, and is out of here by 6:00 PM. The unit just needs its normal spring servicing - cleaning and Freon recharging. I renew our annual contract with the company which had, inexplicably, expired in 2006. It is understandable that the unit needs servicing! Hunky Husband is normally "on top" of that sort of thing, in this house (I took care of maintenance in our last house); but, he had mentioned the lapse of our contract a few weeks ago, without acting on it. (He did get our July taxes paid before he left town.)
Friday:
By 4:00 AM, this morning, the air conditioner has pumped the inside temperature down to 79˚ Fahrenheit, to which I had set the thermostat last night (it had been 88 or 89 when it started). Normally, we keep it at 78˚ Fahrenheit in the summer. I set the thermostat to "hold" at 79˚ Fahrenheit. With the humidity (inside) now being at a reasonable level, my being at the Red Cross all day (and HH's being gone), and with the over-100˚ Fahrenheit outside temperature that is forecast, this seems a reasonable temperature at which to hold. As I leave for the airport at 9:15 PM, I return the thermostat to our normal summertime temperature scheduling.
Saturday:
Most of the buckles in the carpeting have worked themselves out at the cooler temps/lower humidity. We really must have them all re-stretched, though. They are not taut.
I am back to normal scheduling. We go to see a performance of Camelot, this evening. I'll be coming around to check you out soon!
P.S. Thanks to the friends who noted my comment on Facebook and became concerned about my physical well-being in the excessive heat and humidity. It was not pleasant; but, as I emailed one friend, "As long as I have a basement, my health is unendangered. Instead of getting some of the things done, upstairs, I found things that needed doing downstairs ....The biggest issue was my not getting much sleep due to sleeping on a couch downstairs.. Fortunately, the couch is the most comfortable of any on which I've ever slept, but it is not my bed!"
I got a good six hours of sleep (in my own bed) Thursday night and seven hours, last night. I'm good to go.
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