When it’s 105 degrees the asphalt streets and parking lots begin to flow slowly, like lava. The human body, at only 98.6, no longer radiates heat, it becomes a well into which even greater heat from the surrounding air pours like a waterfall.
Miz Squirrel, covered in dense, half-inch hair from head to tail, lays pasted to the rim of the evaporatively cooling concrete birdbath with her left legs in the water and dreams squirrelly dreams of laser hair removal.
I had most of my work done by two today. I was sweating like a fat lady facing a weigh in.
Everyone tells me the same thing, take it easy in the heat. Imagine that, how is the work going to get done I have to ask? Stuff has to get done, fact of life.
Back in my forties I still had the same transmission I came with. When it got hot and things would get tough I’d shift down a gear and keep on moving forward.
Now that I’m sixty one of the cold hard facts of life is the lower gears are gone. So instead of grabbing a lower gear I try to use momentum and straightening out the curves you might say.
I’ve had so many heat incidents that I can feel them coming most of the time. More than once though I’ve been blindsided by one and it’s ruined a day. The sad thing is when it hits the tools aren’t in the truck ready to go home. So the job site has to be ready for leaving before you can do the leaving. There’s been some times when it’s taken me literally hours to do ten minutes of normal work, well, because, just moving is so tough.
What’s interesting about this is days like this weekend in Dallas, heat index 110 or better, aren’t when I’ve been ambushed by the lady in bright white. Most of the time it’s spring and one of the early hot days that she waylays me bigtime.
This morning at eight a.m. I was on site delimbing logs with my trusty Stihl. That isn’t hard. It’s picking up all those limbs and stacking them neatly that gets your clothes wet from the inside out. By ten I was still moving good but I had gulped down three bottles of water and was on my second Powerade. I was soaked down to my knees. I sweat easy which I believe gives me the edge over the wannabe Harveys.
About six I’ll head back to the shop and start debarking all the logs, over thirty of them. I use a power washer, 3600 psi with a swirl head, and the bark jumps off. We’ll pick the garden and be home sometime around eight.
Tomorrow morning I’ll finish the debarking and make sure everything is ready for Monday when we start building a one of a kind pergola our of small eastern red cedar logs harvested, cleaned, and cut to fit by yours truly.
Nothing but a thing.
I was informed that I can put off until tomorrow what I was going to do today.
So I’m chillin’ in the evening, wives can be wonderful.
105, nothing. A couple of days after we were in Saudi Arabia (we landed August 12, just a few weeks after it all started), we got a chance to take a swim in a hotel pool as invited guests. Swimming when it is about 120 with no humidity is awesome. Two days later we were putting up our hospital in the same heat. Not awesome. I cannot imagine that heat plus the body armor. Filling sandbags was fun too. We saw almost no heat casualties after the first month.
Steve
I often wonder how the animals, those that are covered with fur, feel in this kind of heat.
Friday, my family and I went to the zoo. I was burning up while we were out there. I thought about the poor animals that had to stand in that heat as we walked by looking at them. I thought about if my hair was making me hot, and I had to pull it up in a pony tail to keep my neck cool, how awful they (the animals) must have felt with fur all over their bodies.
I then thought about my African ancestors who had to work in this blistering heat for 12 16 hour days, picking tabacco, cotton, and cutting sugar cane, for no pay. Well, they were paid. Paid with disrespect, dehumanization, and even murder… And they still had to get out there and work…
I’m so glad that I’m a human that lives in a country that air conditioned homes is the norm. And I’m also glad that I’m a black woman that lives in 2008 rather than 1808.
I find sweet relief as I sit here, typing on my computer for leisure sake, feeling the cool air blowing down from the vent in my study.
Oh how times have changed… And how my heart goes out to those who are less fortunate than I am.
ALB