Monday, July 3, 2017

Hot and cold

How about a journal in list form today? You can make it short and sweet, with a few simple bullet points, or elaborate as much as you want. List all the times you've been really, really hot and/or the times you've been really, really cold.

Here are some of the hottest days I remember:

-When I was about 9, my family spent the day at Wet N Wild, a water park in Dallas. My toes got raw from running around barefoot all day and left little blood prints on the hot concrete.
-My wedding day: outdoors, late June in the Chicago suburbs, me wearing a many-layered dress, going inside occasionally to stand over the air conditioner vent that was on the floor
-My college graduation: sitting in the sun for a couple hours, wearing a back polyester cap and gown. So humid.
-The time Matt and Jill and I drove to Summerfest (2003) in Milwaukee to watch a Wilco concert. So many sweaty people stuck to each other.
We got really familiar with that yellow shirted guy and his armpits

-That other time we sweated our butts off at a Wilco show, in 2004 at Stubbs. September is still full summertime HOT in Austin, and the concert space at Stubbs is situated so that not a single breeze can blow. On top of that, they were selling bottled water for like $17 each (okay, maybe $5, but still), and I refused to buy it on principle (that principle being cheapness). Our friends J&A came too, and A got so dehydrated by the end of the show that she passed out. We had to pick her up a couple times and sort of drag her along to avoid her being stepped on by the herd of people moving toward the exit. I remember thinking at the time, "They probably all think that our friend is super drunk."

On the other hand, here are some of the coldest days:

-My freshman year at BYU, for extra credit in my political science class, I did exit polling during the fall 1994 election. A team of three or four of us drove out to the small town of Magna, Utah and asked people to fill out paper surveys as they exited the polling station in a school. We took turns warming up in the vestibule, and every so often, we had to go to a pay phone and call in the data we had gathered.
-When I said goodbye to my parents as Matt and I moved from Illinois to Texas; it was about five degrees outside at 6am, and my tears froze on my cheeks.
-When we rented a room from an old lady in Vernazza, Italy. We asked her how to turn on the heat, and she was like, "Yeah, there's no heat. You'll be fine." But in Italian and an improvised sort of sign language, so maybe there actually was heat and we missed the message. Even though it was April, it was really cold, especially after I took a bath in that tiny tub where I couldn't even extend my legs, and Matt had to pour a bowl of cold water over my head to rinse my hair. Then I got under the covers and shivered.

4 comments:

  1. Hottest day-
    -August of 2007, 8 months pregnant with my fourth baby, driving around Idaho and Wyoming with my hubby chasing the PRCA rodeos in a pick-up with three other people and no a/c
    -coldest:I was trying to fix a horse waterer in 0 degree weather and hauling hot water from the house to melt the outlet enough to get water flowing again.

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    1. Any story that includes the words "August" and "8 months pregnant" pretty much tops the list. Oy.

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  2. While I was reading your blog, the first thought that came to mind for the hot was when I was 9 months pregnant in August. Hahaha! It was with my 2nd and we lived in a small cape in Massachusetts with no AC. Records were broken that year for the hottest, longest stretch of over 100 degree weather. It was brutal. For coldest, it was during my college Freshman year in Utah. I had lived in Latin America and not dealt with winter weather. My sister took me camping in the Unitas with her family in December. I was along for the ride and had not helped in the planning or prepping--never again! We had no sleeping bags, just some random blankets. I did not have heavy winter gear either. We sat huddled together with the blanket over our heads and prayed for daylight. During that long night, I planned out how I would winter camp again--there would be fire, wool socks, and winter gear dammit!! ;)

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    1. Florence, those both sound absolutely miserable. I'm impressed/surprised that you guys didn't just pack up and admit defeat with the winter camping. I did that once with summer camping here in Texas. I told Matt, "You know what? This is not fun at all and we need to go home. I don't want to sleep here another night." My kids still occasionally mention how I ruined that trip.

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