I hate summer.
Have a nice day!
No, that’s not the end of it–it’s just the start.
I hate summer, and I hate it even more every year. That’s because of climate change, obviously. It’s getting hotter and more brutal every year.
My comfort zone is under 60F. 60-70 is ok, and anything over 70 makes me unhappy. Over 80 and I get very grumpy. If we hit 90, I am going to be actively angry. Especially if there is humidity as well. But, don’t tell me “at least it’s a dry heat” if we’re over 90 because it’s still fucking hot.
That’s what people would tell me about Las Vegas when it got up to 110 and above. “But it’s a dry heat.” That’s still nearly twice the temp that is comfortable for me. I do undrestand that at a certain point, it’s just fucking hot. It’s the same with when it gets really cold. -10 and -20 don’t feel that much different, really.
The thing is, 90 and 100 may not feel that different, but they both suck. This last week, we had ‘feels like’ 110 or so. It was hotter here than in Taiwan, which is astounding. I went to Menards the other day (first time driving on the freeway in almost a year! It was better than the last time, but I still have periphery issues), and it was like wading through a sludgy swamp.
I have a mini-rant on trying to replace my kitchen sink faucet handle, but I’ll save it for another day.
One reason I will not move somewhere else is because we have winter for six months of the year. That’s a slight exaggeration, but not much. We start having winter-like weather in late October, and it can go through April. Sometimes, even May. It’s usually March, but that’s still six months.
Today, it’s only 74 degrees. It’s still too hot for me, but it’s a relief after the 90+ we’ve had in the past few days. I’ve been blasting my air at 75 degrees. That feels luxurious to me, but apparently, I am in the minority. In a recent Ask A Manager thread, there were people who were adamant that setting the AC at 74 was torturous. (Too high). That really surprised me because even though I don’t like it that hot, I don’t like AC at that temp, either. Fake cold air all day long is not good.
But.
When I’m doing my Taiji routine in the morning, I have it at 75. When I go to bed at night, the same. Otherwise, I have it at 78. I think that’s reasonable.
My father used to argue with me when he was here–or rather, made my mother argue with me about the AC settingsr. Remember, I have it at 78. She said that in Taiwan, that’s the lowest they were absolutely allowed to set their AC because of environmental concerns. I reminded her that it was over a hundred nearly every day in a Taiwanese summer. They would have to limit how much AC they use. Here, it’s much less often.
In addition, when they came in the winter, they would complain about where I set the heat. Even though I turned it up to 65 fgor them. I have it at 62 during the day and 60 at night. If they want me to crank the heat on the one hand, then they have to understand if I crank the AC on the other. And I didn’t even crank it!
I realized taht even though it was my mother who brought up the AC with me, she was probably doing it on the behest of my father. He has an unreasonable prejudice against AC and wild ideas about what it does to the environment. I mean, it’s not good for the environment, but my mother started spouting some nonsense about how you have to open the window so that the carbon monoxide in the AC unit won’t kill you. Or something of that sort. Which is both bizarre and untrue.
That’s my father, though. He has all these ideas of what is and isn’t based on nothing but his own thoughts. Which might or might not be based in reality. And he likes to pontificate at length about said inane ideas that sprout out of nowhere.
For example. The last time they were here, we used to go on a walk in the morning. As I’ve established, I don’t get cold. I would bring gloves, a baclava, and a scarf when we went walking in case I needed them, but I rarely did. My mom started giving me shit about, “Oh, you must be cold.” Which was befuddling to me because she knew I did noot get cold.
Later on, my father started ruminating about how he wasn’t a doctor, but–I wanted to stop him right there and say, yep. You are not a doctor so don’t go offering doctoring advice. Here’s the other thing about when he goes off on one of his wild tangents. He takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r to come to the point, but does not appreciate it if you hurry him along.
He starcted painfully and slowly talking about how he was not a doctor (as I mentioned above), but it seemed to him (nope. Nope. NOPE. I didn’t need to hear another word to realize that he was about to say something completely wrong and poorly thought out) that cold (temperature) made it easier for germs to enter your pores because it made said pores bigger.
First of all, what??
Secondly, what??
This is laughably wrong. Cold makes your pores smaller. Heat opens your pores. That’s why steam is recommended when you’re all stuffed up and clogged.
Secondly, that’s not how germs work. They don’t usually go through pores–they go through rips in your skin. So size of pore doesn’t really matter and–my brain is about to break. This is how I feel when I talk to my father about things like this. It’s all so ridiculous, it’s hard to know how to bat it down. He doesn’t care about science–at all.
And, I finally realized why he was talking about it in the first place–because he was unhappy about me not wearing a coat when we went out walking. Which was also why my mother probably brought it up again and again–because he pushed her to do so. My parents are very Byzantine in their thinking. At least, my father is. My mother just basically does whatever my father wants her to do because he is so unpleasant if she doesn’t.
It’s frustrating as fuck, but I should be resigned to it by now. They are not going to change at this late date. They just aren’t.