HIDING OUT

The dog and I are hiding out today.  We’ve been at it a lot this past week or so.  It’s just plain too hot to go outside.  When I say this aloud poor Turbo just rolls his eyes at me.  Apparently he feels that I don’t know the half of it – I’m not wearing a permanent, fluffy fur coat designed to withstand an Arctic climate.  He needs to understand that my genetics have evolved to keep me from dying of starvation and/or hyperthermia in the Scottish highlands.  We are both out of our element.  The 2019 version of June on the Canadian prairies is going to be the undoing of both of us.

The house maintains its cool, thank goodness.  We open the windows at night and close them when we get up.  Years ago we installed a very large area of ceramic tile flooring.  At the time everyone kept saying “Oh, I’ve heard they are so cold to walk on.  You’re going to be sorry with your choice.”  I can’t claim that I knew what I was doing, I just liked the tile and wanted something that could stand up to the wear and tear a family of six can dish out, but I have since learned that the miracle of heat conductivity in ceramics is my friend, not my enemy.

Those tiles take on whatever temperature they are surrounded with.  In the winter when the furnace is running they stay at a pretty constant and acceptable temperature.  If you’re cold and want some extra warmth you go over to where the furnace venting runs under the floor and stand there for a while.  Much more beneficial though, is how in the summer it takes on the night cool and keeps the house an oasis of cool the whole next day.  We don’t have an air conditioner but people don’t believe me when I tell them that.  It’s 28 degrees outside today, and only 22 inside without so much as a nickel being spent to keep it that way.

It’s not like I haven’t been outside.  Every day I go out and survey what this nasty heat and lack of rain is doing to all my plants.  Some are just withering in the sun.  Some are cooking against the black soil.  The poor things that survived 4 degrees of frost a couple weeks ago are now sun scorched and giving up in the intense heat.  I water them and apologise profusely every day that I can’t make it rain. 

I’ve tried ... washing my car, hanging clothes on the line ... nothing seems to work.

So, me and the dog are just hanging out in the house.  He is laid out flat on the cool floor, only to open an eye when I enter the kitchen – he wouldn’t want to miss out on a treat if there is one to be had.  Other than that his only movement is to get up and find a new cool spot when his body heat has cancelled out the cool where he was at.

As for myself, I tend to wander from window to window, looking out at the jobs that need doing.  Jobs that I would even enjoy doing – if only the sun wouldn’t melt my brain while I was doing it.  There are dandelions to cut, and weeds to pull, and trees to water, not to mention dead trees to clear out of the shelterbelt and branches to put through the wood chipper.  I could be busy for days.  But also I might die.

I have also gone back to my weather app habit that got me through the winter.  What is Environment Canada predicting for my future?  Is it ever going to rain again?  How long are the brain-melting temperatures going to last?  Can I go outside tomorrow? 

You do all realize that summer isn’t even here yet, don’t you? 

If you happen to drop by and find me laid out on my ceramic floor next to the dog, don’t worry.  It’s no accident – just us coping with eons of evolution in an era we weren’t designed for.