Hotter Than a Plumber's Crack in Arizona in August

It's tough when you're not the only person you have to think about. Take for instance the temperature that you keep your house. Mark seems to like it a little warmer than I do. That's because Mark is just a bit over one hundred pounds, and when he walks past the air conditioner he has to hold on to something so that he isn't blown over. At just over two hundred pounds, I am the reason the air conditioner is blowing full blast. When I was a kid I don't even remember seeing a thermostat in our house. That was my dad's domain and we never thought of messing with the temperature in the house. I'm sure that if I knew where the thermostat was, I would have found it crazy glued to 68 degrees. That was the heat, we had no air conditioning. Dad waited until I moved out before he popped for that expense.

I went out to visit Mom yesterday. It was in the mid to upper eighties temperature wise and as usual Mom did not have the air conditioning turned on. The last time I was there and turned on the air, Mom made it clear that it was now too cold. It was seventy eight degrees. Even at eighty degrees inside the house, Mom is cold. When you visit in the dead of winter you have to dress light. She turns that heat up to near ninety degrees. So yesterday I was sitting there at her kitchen table, and I was sweating like Chris Christie on a New Jersey beach. I was dripping wet. "Why don't you turn on the ceiling fans?" Mom suggested. So I did. She was right, it did make a difference. Not for the good though, it made it more like one of those convection ovens. The worst part of all this, is that Mark did not go out there with me. Mark was sick. Mark overdid it on the Fourth of July and was home in bed. So I had the burden of maintaining conversation while the only thing I could think of was how fucking hot I was.

The Accuweather web page says that next Wednesday is going to be just as hot. So I will dress as light as I can again, bring along some tissues to mop my face, and maybe suggest to Mom that we go to an ice cream parlor. It would be air conditioned, and she loves ice cream. The only drawback is that I do not need ice cream. I'm really not looking to break that two hundred and ten pound barrier.