It was 111 degrees in my front yard yesterday. The temperature is heading higher and hotter today.
My cat will not get off the air conditioner vent. I think she’s glued to it. Me? I’m with her. I am officially in love with the air conditioner. My husband may soon be able to sue the thing for alienation of affection.
The green grass is turning yellow. Trees are dropping leaves. Vegetable gardens have stopped bearing. You can take a boat to the lake in search of relief, but you’ll end up swimming and water-skiing in what feels like warm bath water. If it’s possible to swim and sweat at the same time, we’re doing it here in Okie-land.
Last summer wasn’t exactly a comfortable experience, either, and I’m beginning to wonder: Is this the new normal?
OG&E has kept the cool on so far. In fact, I am somewhat in awe of how effective the air conditioners in my house and car really are. But Oklahoma’s power grid wasn’t built for Phoenix temperatures. And frankly, neither was I.
If this is the new normal, we’re all going to have to take a look at how we do things. I, for one, will need to re-calibrate my budget if the electric bills I’ve been paying are forevermore. That means giving up other things I enjoy like eating out with friends and buying my lunch at work. Those aren’t big things, especially the lunches. I might be a lot healthier if I did that. Those are do-able changes. Easy stuff. The low-hanging fruit.
But what if air conditioning becomes too expensive? What if the power grid fails to keep up with the demand? I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not ready to live through heat like this the way my grandparents did.
I’m too soft. I’m too spoiled. I don’t wanna.
Hopefully, this post is just the rambling of a woman who spent too long out in the sun today. I won’t go into the details, but I got stuck with my 87 year old mother in a car without air conditioning; not for a long, long time, but long enough. I was scared to death Mama would crater. I could just see her falling over in a heat-withered heap of a little old lady. I had horror fantasies of rushing her to the emergency room. I was panicked and guilt-ridden about getting her into this predicament in the first place.
You know what happened? I ended up with a headache. I crawled home feeling like a whipped dog. Mama came through it fresh as a daisy. It didn’t bother her a bit.
Whatever pioneer genes I may have inherited have evidently gone dormant. If this is the new normal, we need to breed another, hardier generation of Okies to take my place.
Me? I’m thinking a summer shack someplace high in the Rockies sounds good. I believe we can pay for it with the money my family won’t be spending on electric bills.
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