…Eighty degrees feels kind of, um, not so hot. You don’t voluntarily go, “Ew!” the second you step out of any even partially air conditioned space into the ambient broasting (as in broasting chicken) available outside. Yes, we all uttered the short but unmistakably recognizable and totally audible version of longer ‘ewwwww,’ the ‘ew’ shortened because of the sudden shortness of breath.

Anyway, I wrote about the heat for my monthly dealie, “Erwin’s Ramblings,” available to a select group (I didn’t make the selections) on line in the Quilcene Community Center newsletter. When Trish read it, online, though I always offer her the opportunity to read it beforehand, she said, “It sounded incomplete, like you said, ‘hey, that’s all you’re getting out of me this month.’ I was looking for more.”

She was right. I could have written more. Oh, now I have. So, after a shot I got googling “Lake Crescent images,” the actual piece, as submitted. I did google “Sweaty people in the country images.” Beefcake; mostly guys in cowboy hats. There was one of an older couple in hip waders hugging, and… no.

                                                Inappropriately Sweating Buckets

There’s nothing, of course, wrong with sweating… sorry, perspiring… unless you just happen to be out in public somewhere, say, in line to get a smoothie or a cold coffee or a frozen daiquiri or a frozen banana, somewhere where wearing a, say, saturated tie dye (tye dye is an acceptable alternative spelling- though not accepted by Microsoft Word- yet) t-shirt, the colors of which are intensifying, combining, and drifting down; creating all-new and non-psychedelic patterns on your formerly khaki-colored cargo shorts; uneven bands of purple and yellow, along with the season-appropriate red and blue; those colors diluted by the moisture on your exposed knees, but forming, along with the drips from the end of your nose, ever-expanding dots on the no-see socks no one would see except that you’re wearing them with sandals; that kind of perfuse perspiring is just plain unacceptable.

And it’s yet another reason not to wear tye dye.   

Okay, that sentence/paragraph was exhausting. Yes, I’m five feet away from an indoor fan/air conditioner, the kind with a big tube that goes through a window and sucks in and attempts to cool whatever hellishly hot air our recent dome of historically significant heat has given us. Yes, it’s early in the morning and yes, I am sitting in the dark because it just (even with LED bulbs) feels cooler. And yes, of course, all exits are blocked to maintain a cooling station in the living room while the rest of the house is on its own, several fans pretty much losing the battle against…

Oh, you’re aware. Oh, you’ve already checked all the local home weather station reports, watched Seattle newspeople lose their cool, saw that our local weather made national news. “Even in the cool Pacific Northwest where people discount the need for air conditioning and…”

Yeah, we do and, not mentioned, we either ignore the reports of heat and quakes and tornados and hurricanes elsewhere, and many of us Olympic Peninsulars (note how insular is part of the word Microsoft Word tells me is incorrect?) might just take a sort of delight in being one of the coolest spots in the United States of America.   

Okay then, since I know you’re dying to tell me; how hot did it get at your house?

That hot? Okay, you win.

I started writing this a few days ago, I’m trying to finish it up and get it out before the weekend. The weather people who delight in adding as much drama as possible are predicting a return of the heat for the Fourth of July. Yea!

I did want to say something about how heat might be tougher on women, since socially, and this is perhaps not fair, they are not allowed to perspire. Glisten, glow, these are acceptable alternatives.

But then, what do I know; I bring an extra shirt just to go to the grocery store, and another for the Post Office.