AC

More and more often these days, as heat and humidity gradually saturate the otherwise crisp Maine landscape, I hear someone say, "Yep...put my AC in this weekend...gotta sleep....thinkin' of putting one in the kitchen area too...yep...the little lady....she sweats quite a bit....nobody likes that." Or something along those lines. Actually, it doesn't take much to make us sweat way up here where humidity is usually white, fluffy, and measured in inches from late November to mid-April. Come July and August, come mosquitos, come sweat...all the talk at the dog park (and life can be pretty much measured and accurately assessed by talk at the dog park....more on that later) is about when this God awful heatwave....you're talking mid 80's by the way...will finally end...and about "throwin' that there AC into my bedroom winda!"

My dogs? They do what they can. They pant. They shed. They wallow in puddles. They have their tongues and maybe the pads of their little pop-corn smelling feet (more on that later) to keep cool. Me? I walk slowly. I think slowly. I drink Mike's Hard Limeade. Just keep still, I say...the fan will soon oscillate my direction. Here it comes. No wait...okay now. Here it comes....now! At my office, where as my clients relate stories of true suffering, I cowardly, mentally plot the removal of my socks...I fantasize about Italian ice... I sweat in silence. Ah...a sentence perhaps never before written....sweat in silence. Suffering is relative I think. And while I have, in fact, suffered many relatives...also in silence...this is my misery. Today anyway.

So last night I did it. I squeezed my big self up my uneven, dark attic steps, lifted that heavy little machine carefully (why does one side weigh so much more than the other? Wish I knew stuff like that) and thumped down those narrow steps and around into my bedroom. Huff. Puff. Down. Next step, actually lodging the sucker in my window...my "winda"...in such a way that the cool air stays inside and NOT A SINGLE F@#KING WAFT OF HOT AIR finds its sneaky-ass way inside. Sure...I stepped on the plug, cut my foot and hobbled...swearing...all the way to the window. I think I actually muttered out loud, I WIN!" Not sure what, but it felt like that. The unit faces the length and breadth of my bedroom and I wonder if it felt confident...felt the challenge...to ultimately feel the gratification of making dogs happy and me sound asleep.

Anyway, I was able to leave my cozy nocturnal campsite on the sunporch and spend a night in a real bed. Rusty, no longer breathing hard, resting next to my leg....snoring. Nora, no longer panting hard, sleeping next to me with her familiar kangaroo-on-crack kicks occasionally interrupting my sound sleep. I love them.

I'll have something to tell 'em at the dog park.