Posted tagged ‘air-conditioning’

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“The sun burnt every day. It burnt time.”

July 18, 2013

Yesterday I went on the deck to fill feeders and water plants. That was my only visit to the outside world. Today it may reach 90˚ here on the cape for the first time all summer. The rest of the state is in an official heat wave, 90˚ weather three days or more. Today is day four. I have to go out, a no choice errand. I’m already dreading the trip.

I have become intolerant of too much heat and too much cold. Maybe it is because I am so much older than I was. My mother used to keep her heat so high in the winter the rest of us wore t-shirts. When I lived in a hot country, I abided the heat. I had no choice. Now I leave the air-condition running. I think today is day three. My feet get cold so I put on slippers. I think having cold feet in the middle of a heat wave is a wonderful thing.

None of my windows have shades. I have never liked them. I might have gone with blinds, but I didn’t think of them, and I probably would have put them only in the two bathrooms. The windows in the den here and the ones in the dining room have nothing, not even curtains. The window in here facing east is my favorite view of all the windows. From it I can see the trees in the backyard, the bird feeders and the now opened red umbrella on the deck. If I were a painter, I would use water colors to paint my view. The living room lace curtains came from Ireland. I bought them in a store in Dublin. The rest of the rooms have a variety of curtains: valances, full curtains and half curtains with valances. The ones in my bedroom came from India. I bought them on-line. The ones in the guest room came from Bradlees, a store no longer in existence. Soon the upstairs bathroom will have curtains made of cloth from Ghana which matches some of the cloth in my new shower curtain. Grace said she saw the cloth in Accra at a market and will buy it for me. That’s kinda neat when you think about it: there’s the Ghana connection still so strong and the market and cloth and my former student who is 60 or 61 and happy to shop for me but won’t call me by my first name. I am Madam or Miss Ryan.

When I was young, I lived in a cave, not a real cave but a darkened house which resembled a cave. My mother put the shades down in every room to keep out the heat. I remember walking outside and not being able to see because of all that sun. We had morphed into moles.

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Greetings From Ghana

August 29, 2012

I made!! Right now I am sitting in an air-conditioned internet cafe in Bolgatanga. Arriving here was wonderful. Everything felt familiar. I could smell the charcoal fires and food cooking. As I sat and ate lunch outside, complaining sheep walked by in a line baaing for all they were worth. Chickens wander. Small girls go by with trays of food on their heads. I have been greeted and greeted and told welcome!

Last night was the best of all greetings. I was lying in bed reading when the room lit up and the thunder started. Both were tremendous. The lights soon went out and so did the fan. I decided this was too great a storm to miss so I went onto the porch. The watchman was there, and we both watched the lightning brighten the houses, and he said the rain was a blessing as it hadn’t rained in a week. When the rain came, it came in heavy drops which pounded the tin roof of the compound near my house. That is one of my favorite sounds.

I am staying in the house of one of my students in a small village called Kantia, very near to Bolga. The house is large and comfortable. The only problem is the air-conditioning which does not work. The electrician will come today.  I had a fan overhead that was working but the storm ended that. It was a warm night!

I am meeting my students for lunch at 2.

With only a single year between visits, it feels as if I were here just yesterday!

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The secret of a good old age is simply an honorable pact with solitude.”

July 15, 2012

Here I am a sort of shut-in behind closed doors in the comfort of air conditioning. When I went to get the papers much earlier, I walked outside and gasped from the heat and, even worse, the humidity so I scurried back inside the house. Given the weather, I don’t see much going out today except to the dump later. The larder is full and the animals have food; that’s all we need.

The Hallmark Channel is playing Christmas movies this weekend. I even watched a couple. I find Hallmark movies comforting in a way. There is no violence and you know all of them will end happily. I especially like seeing the snow, the lights and the fireplaces glowing. In the heat of the summer, the idea of winter is appealing; of course, in the winter I long for the heat of summer.

Last night the deck was the best spot to be. The breeze blew, the insects were elsewhere and dinner was delicious. It got me to thinking about when I was a kid. Back then there were no decks, only patios always made of brick. We didn’t have one, but the white house on the corner did. Their patio furniture was ornate and made of black metal. The table and chairs sat under the grape arbor. They grew big purple grapes.

Most of the houses in my neighborhood have back decks. One exception is my neighbors across the street. They have a patio, a brick patio, and they have metal furniture, ornate white metal furniture. They are much older than the rest of us, and they are a bit of a throwback to my parents’ time. She works in the yard and wears a wide- brimmed hat. When they go out with friends, the men sit in the front and the women in the back. They live behind locked doors. The only time I see their front door open to the screen is when they are expecting company. If I go over, I ring the bell, she looks out the window to see who it is and then opens all the locks when I pass muster. I joke with them all the time. They are good-natured about it, but as she says,”They are who they are.”

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What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance.”

July 6, 2012

The air is already thick with humidity. Nothing is moving. The leaves just sit there on the branches. Even the birds are quiet. This room, at the back of the house, is still cool and dark, but it won’t be by mid-afternoon. Today the house with the AC will be my refuge.

We are spoiled. Our expectations have changed. The house is too hot? Put in central air. It’s a pain to move the hoses around the yard and garden. Time for an irrigation system. You want dinner ASAP. Put it in the microwave. Don’t want to wait for the charcoal for the barbecue. Buy a gas grill. Go from the air-conditioned house to the air-conditioned car to the air-conditioned store.

I remember summers when I was young. They were filled with wanderings and woods and the swamp. Being sweaty and even a bit dirty were signs of a good time, of a day well spent. I was always so exhausted I fell asleep in the sweltering heat of my bedroom. Even my father hunting and killing mosquitoes with his rolled-up magazine woke me for no more than a minute or two even though he sometimes stood on my bed to reach the ceiling. That ceiling and all the others in the house had blots which represented another kill. My father was possessed.

I lived in Bolga. It was the hottest part of the country with the least amount of rain. I didn’t even have a fan. I went to bed still wet from my shower and slept through the hot night. Later, just before the rains when the humidity came, I moved outside and slept on my mattress in the back of the house. I saw a sky filled with a million stars. I always had no trouble falling asleep.

My bedroom on the third floor with the heat from the afternoon sun was so hot I couldn’t fall asleep so for most of the summer I slept downstairs on the couch with the back door opened. Later I splurged and bought a fan. One year I finally broke down and got a window air-conditioner for my bedroom. I tolerated the hot-house downstairs but luxuriated in the coolness of the bedroom where I easily fell asleep. Then I decided it made no sense to be hot and uncomfortable or to have to sit upstairs all afternoon so I went with central air.

It seems the older I get the more spoiled I become. I have to admit, though, I’m loving it.

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“The three great elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of outer ocean on a beach”

July 1, 2012

The line outside my Sunday breakfast spot was long. I even had to put my name on a list. The air conditioning has been on since early yesterday afternoon. Gracie pants every time she goes outside. Barely a leaf moves, just the few every now and then at the tips of the branches. This is a summer weekend!

I remember weekends at the beach when I was a kid. Nothing tasted better after swimming and playing in the sand than a cold cup of Zarex and a sandwich with a gritty crunch. The Oreos my mother always packed tasted best with an ocean view. We always went shell hunting and came home every time with a pile of them. Our house should have been filled with them, but after a while they disappeared, finally tossed by my mother when she cleaned. After a day in the sun, I don’t think I ever stayed awake on the ride home. I remember going to bed with my head on the pillow and having hot water trickle from my ears, water the result of diving in the ocean, mostly at the sandbar where the water, when the tide was out, was warm enough to enjoy.

I remember an Easter Sunday at the beach in Ghana. I don’t remember which beach, but it had clean water, a place which sold food and few people. We walked a long way on the sand and played ball with a palm tree branch bat and a coconut ball. I got the worst sunburn.

In Togo, the beach sand was so hot your feet could barely stand the walk on it. We always hurried to the small thatched cabanas here and there on the sand. They were usually empty. Very few people went to the beach. The water there was wonderful though I remember one time when I was swimming and a dead pig floated by me. I wasn’t all that grossed out-I had been in Arica over a year and was just about beyond being grossed out by anything. There was a hotel with a restaurant across from the beach, and we often stopped there to eat after an afternoon swimming and lounging under the cabana. We usually ordered bifteck and pomme frites with a coke. The restaurant wasn’t fancy, but I can still see it in my mind’s eye. It was white with a blue trim, had outside tables and a view of the beach.

Beaches fill so many of my memory drawers it is no wonder I live on the Cape.

 

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“Spring makes everything young again except man.”

April 17, 2012

I’m sorry about yesterday, but I worked the Boston Marathon and the standing and the heat got to me. My job is volunteer lunch distribution at Copley Square where the marathon ends. We put bags of chips and stuff together, pass them and sandwiches out and feed around 1000 people. The tent was quite warm in the 85° heat. Luckily it was going to become an auxiliary medical tent so they started air-conditioning at eleven, and that felt great. We had to be finished our jobs by noon, and we did. I then walked to the T at Arlington, rode to Quincy, got my car and drove home. When I got home at 2:30, having left at 6:40, I weighed writing Coffee against taking a nap. You know what won!

The city was filled with people. All the outdoor cafes had no empty tables, and people were just meandering or heading to the Sox game or going to watch part of the marathon. The Public Garden had people sitting on benches enjoying the coolness of the shade from trees overhead. I sighed as I sat down in the air-conditioned T car. It was just too darn hot for mid-April.

The Cape reached the low 70’s yesterday and is 73° right now. The sun is hot. No rain is in the forecast, and everything is really dry. A red flag alert has been posted which means we have critical fire weather conditions. My lawn water system was turned on today as my grass is already brown in spots where there is no shade. I remember complaining a few weeks back about three days in a row of rain, and I guess Mother Nature took it to heart.

When I was working, I used to go Europe every April vacation. I went a few times with my sister and several times with my parents. We seldom had a set route or destination. We’d mostly stay in one country the whole week and stop when we were tired. My favorite country was Portugal, but my favorite trip was the one with my parents and my sister when we traveled to Belgium and the Netherlands. We laughed a lot especially after we got stopped at a border station by a very angry guard. It seems we had driven back and forth through the border three times trying to find our road. We explained, but he was not amused. We looked solemn enough while he reprimanded us, but once on our way we had to laugh at the whole adventure. There he was sitting in his guard-house watching us fly by him not once but three times. Good thing we were just stupid tourists!

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“Activity conquers cold, but stillness conquers heat”

September 9, 2010

The other day I read an article where a woman of 65 was described as old. I was taken aback because I remember wanting to be old. I remember wanting to be sixteen. It seemed the perfect age. You could drive at sixteen, go to the movies at night and even sit in the balcony. Streetlights no longer set a curfew. I could go to bed when I wanted, and I wasn’t forced to eat vegetables. Life was getting more and more interesting. It’s funny how age becomes relative over time.

Air conditioning is being installed today. Most summers have been tolerable, but this summer was so humid that even reading a book caused me to sweat, and I refuse to go through that again. I wanted the air installed earlier, but it seems a huge number of people had also reached their boiling points, and I had to wait my turn.

When our choices are limited, we seem to be far more tolerant. I didn’t even have a fan in Ghana, in Bolga, and it got so hot a candle melted without ever being lit. I’d stand up from my living room chair and the imprint of my body would be left  in sweat on the upholstery. I went to bed still dripping from my shower so the air and water would cool my body enough so I could fall asleep. I never complained. That was life in Bolga.

I have been back here far too long. I am now spoiled. My expectations are grand. I don’t need to be hot. I don’t need to be cold. Every discomfort has a solution.

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The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.

June 28, 2010

Oppressively humid is about the best description I can give for today. Even Gracie, the whirlwind, is lying in the cool darkness of this room. The two cats are stretched out as far as they can be, both near windows. I actually slept until 10, unusual for me. I think it was the air conditioning and my body’s reluctance to get up and leave the cold. Then again, it might be the traveling. It does take a toll whether I realize it or not. My coffee maker didn’t work this morning, a tragedy. I think it has gone to appliance heaven. I, uncombed and unkempt,  jumped into the car and drove to buy a cup.  No morning can start without coffee. Later this afternoon, despite the heat and humidity, I’m shopping to buy another.

Nothing was air-conditioned when I was a kid. We had fans which my father carried from room to room, and I can remember pushing and shoving my siblings so I could be the one in front of the cool air. The worst, though, was any car trip. The six of us were crammed together. The seats were upholstered, and they were hot. Even opening all the windows barely sent a breeze our way. I used to put my arm out my window and use it like a propeller to push a bit of air my way. My father would seldom stop. He was a get there right away sort of driver, but sometimes, with four kids, he was forced into a bathroom stop. I remember the backs of my shirt and shorts were always soaked from sweat when I got out of the car. I have to think we were miserable and cranky. It’s no wonder we seldom did long rides.

I love my cold room at night for sleeping and the chill of the car as I drive. Just about everything is air-conditioned now. We’re spoiled, and there’s no going back.

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