I hate the summer.
The end.
Kidding. But not really.
Summer is everything I hate in the world, writ large. Let’s start with heat. To me, anything over 60 is too hot. But, I find it wild that people set their AC at 72 or lower! There was a thread on Ask A Manager in which the AC was set at 74 and people were saying they would be melting at that temperature.
I was gobsmacked because I keep mine at 78. I will bump it down to 75/76 foer my morning Taiji and to go to sleep at night, but otherwise, it sits at 78. i have a fan that I have going at all times.
Part of the reason I don’t like to have AC on all the time is because fake cold air is not as pleasant as naturally cool. But I much prefer it to 80 degrees and me profusely sweating.
There have been Canadian wildfires that make the air bad as well. Because of my immunity system being shitty, I have to keep out of it as much as possible. I like to do my Taiji lesson outside, but I can’t for the winter, obviously. And I haven’t been able to yet this summer because of the air quality and the high pollen.
Which brings me to yet another reason I hate summer. Pollen. Allergies. Everything wanting to kill me. That’s my biggest reason for hating the outdoors–I am allergic to everything. When I was a kid, I got allergy shots every week. I had no idea why, but my arm would swell, and I would be hot, miserable, and itchy for the next few hours. My mother never explained it to me, so of course in my brain, I was like, “this shot makes me sick.”
I did not know that they inject you with the actual allergens as a way to get you used to them. My brother had to stop getting allergy shots because he reacted too badly to them. I didn’t know that, either, so I was envious that he got to stop getting the shots.
When I was in my twenties, I had to get retested for allergies. You’re supposed to do it every so often. They poked my thigh with twenty or so allergens, and my entire thigh swelled up. The whole thing was hot and miserable.
The conclusion: I am allergic to everything under the sun–including the sun. I’m allergic to every flower, probably the grass, and mosquito bites. Whenever I get bites, they swell to the size of a tennis ball. One time, I spent the summer in Taiwan, and my legs were covered with huge mosquito bites. I was so miserable. And, as I mentioned recently, I stopped wearing my contacts after living in the Bay Area for a year beacuse my eyes just could not handle the local pollen.
On Ask A Manager, there’s a phrase, “Not everyone can eat sandwiches”, which is used to mean that people are straying too far into a very small minority territory. Which I get, but I’m in that very small minority. I’m allergic to almost everything. All scents, flowers, perfumes, lotions, etc. I also have food sensitivities that make me an absolute joy to be around. The thing is, though, I keep it to myself unless I have to tell someone. There’s no reason to birng it up in general, and I just deal with it.
I don’t like spring, either, but it’s not nearly as bad as summer. Except that spring has gotten shorter and shorter, It starts around April and ends in May now. Then summer until September. I love autumn. It’s my second-favorite season. I love the coolness and the crisp air. I love the vivid colors of the leaves as they fall to the ground. I just love that my favorite season is around the corner.
Winter! I love winter so much, and I live in a great place for it. We have winter here, and we have it hard. It starts around October and ends in March. Yes, it’s roughly half the year now. It’s not brutal all the time, but we have plenty of sub-zero temps.
Even here, though, people don’t like winter. I hear so much complaining about it, even from lifetime Minnesotans. I just nod my head and simle sympathetically because I do not want to get into it with people.
K and I like to joke about it because she’s from Florida and loves the heat. She hates the cold, so we are the polar opposites. When we used to go out in the winter, she would be shivering and pulling her coat around her. She would demand of me, “Doesn’t the cold make you want to scrunch up your neck?”
“No!” I would retort. “It makes me feel alive!”
Then, when we went out in the summer, I would be the one who was lethargic and unhappy. she would be upbeat and happy, and I just wanted to curl up and take a nap.
I try to keep it to myself because I know how it sounds. I may say that I actually like snow and cold, but most of the time, I don’t bother. I am already enough of a freak that I don’t want yet another reason for people to look at me in dismay/disdain.
I suffer through summer and can’t wait for it to be over. It’s the Fourth of July (which is an issue in and of itself), and I cannot wait for summer to be over. It has barely begun! We had thirty degree temps in May! Which is odd in and of itself.
I’m hoping it won’t get too hot for the rest of the summer or that the bugs will stay outside where they belong. Then, we can get back to autumn and winter, and all will be well within my world. Today is sunny and seventy-four degrees. That is just at my upper cusp of being bearable.
I would much rather it be twenty below than over seventy. The former is much more my happy place.