Disclaimer: This is not necessarily entirely the actual viewpoint of Clay or the author.
Usually, when people ask what I like about California, I reply that the only commendable thing about it is the weather. However, it was no surprise that we were stuck in a nasty heat wave fairly recently. Well, nasty for us, at least. I’m sure that TPSers living in the eternally heated corners of the world wouldn’t mind. So without further ado, here is a very logical and detailed guide to surviving California heat waves.
The first step, as any normal person knows, is to ensure that you are living in a house where you either don’t have or can’t use the air conditioning. Air conditioning is one of the evils of the modern world – it prevents you from building resistance to hot weather. Building character is what they call it. If your house is in a location that generally gets a lot of sun, that’s even better! I didn’t have the privilege of such a sunny location, which was rather unfortunate. Regardless, at one point it was so hot that I was sweating bullets just by sitting in a chair. That was rather inconvenient and uncomfortable, but at the same time I had leverage to pretend that I now worked out. After all, sweating equals exercise does it not?
The kitchen actually heated up quite nicely, almost like a natural oven in the house. If it had been somewhat hotter, perhaps we wouldn’t have needed the stove to cook dinner. The countertop would have sufficed. In actuality though, we just gave up on home cooking the evening meal at all. It was actually a great excuse to more or less consume take out and other prepared foods. I was also able to escape from seriously completing some of my usual homework and chores, which made the heat a little more bearable. For the record, I am not a workaholic nerd and most likely those who are citizens of the Procrasti Nation would wholeheartedly agree that any valid excuses for laziness are welcome.
Although we lacked artificial cooling, we were able to just leave the doors and windows open. We actually brought chairs over and just sat there for a while. However, the walkway from door to rest of the house is narrow and as a result, door cooling became crowded fast. Consequently, some members of my household chose more, shall I say, eccentric areas of the house for cooling down. At any rate, we were all extremely antsy and even more short tempered than usual because of the heat, but in the end we were able to build some character together despite a few waves of fighting.
Clearly, this is a very rational and practical guide on dealing with heat waves. By following the steps as closely as possible, you can be guaranteed the most action you’ll see until the next heat wave comes. You’ll even get to pretend that you are that rare class of homeschooler who actually exercises! Please let me know in the comments below how this guide worked and send in requests for more.
Photo Credit: Photos From California’s Historic Heat Wave – The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/07/us/photos-california-heat-wave.html