This is the third summer that I didn't plan to spend in the desert. When we put the house my mother-in-law lives in on the market a couple of winters ago, we were sure it would sell quickly, we'd be able to find a new place and get moved before summer. It didn't sell for 10 months. Okay, we told ourselves, we can get through this summer since it will surely be our last.
Last summer was tough because, although we'd finally sold the house, we had not found a new place for ourselves and were stuck suffering through another season of hot temperatures here. The evaporative cooler, undersized for this house, works well enough in the dry heat but is far less effective once the humidity rises during the summer monsoon season. For several months, it just makes the house muggy and barely keeps the indoor temperature under 85 degrees. That's okay, we said through gritted teeth, this is definitely the last summer we'll ever spend in the desert.
Except it wasn't. We're still here after the aborted move to the Midwest (or whatever you want to call Missouri). The temperatures have been over 100 degrees for a while now and the humidity is high enough that the evaporative cooler isn't doing much. The ceiling fans in the kitchen and living room don't work. The heat is sapping my energy and will to get anything done. When I sit and read, I'm hot and sticky. When I get up to do any work, I almost immediately start sweating. Even my brain seems to slow down by afternoon with the rising temperatures.
Cook in the house? You've got to be nuts! If it can't be cooked in the solar oven, or very quickly on the stovetop, I'm not interested yet this time of year finds more clouds obscuring the sun. I roasted tomatillos over the weekend and raised the temperature of the house by almost five degrees. The cooler could not counteract that extra heat and the day was miserable inside. Even the shadecloth structure for the garden gets up to 110 and higher by midday.
My productivity is way down, my motivation for catching up on housework and projects is low, and my interest in doing anything extra - you know, like thinking about upcoming prickly pear canning - is almost non-existent. I swear I will not spend another summer in the hot desert.* I mean it this time, I really do!
*Okay, maybe I will but, dammit, I want air conditioning!
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19 comments:
When I lived in Maryland for 5 years, in February I felt this inertia and kind of depression, longing desperately for sun and spring there.
This is how I feel in Phoennix this time of year except that I long for the sun to switch off part of the day and long desperately for the coolness of our fall weather.
{{{{{{{{{Breezes for Chile}}}}}}}}}
On a more positive note, my right arm is now strong enough to helpe get my solar oven outside and I got some cooking done in it a couple of days this week.
Chile, i also have a couple of questions on how you handle your solar ovens. Do you leave them outside most of the time or do you take them inside or out of the direct sun after you're finished cooking with them?
I hate to think of leaving mine outside in full sun all the time so I bring it inside when i'm done with it. I hate to think of all htat heat just blasting heat on it all day day after day.
More Breezes for All,
Shamba
Shamba, I am just hating the heat this year. I think it's because I really wasn't mentally prepared to be here this summer.
On the solar ovens, if I think there's any chance I'll be cooking in them, I put them out as soon as the sun comes out. I put them away when I'm done, which on some days is not until the sun is down. (Yesterday, I cooked a number of dishes in succession.)
The rest of the time, I store them folded up, outside, under the eaves to protect them from rain. I think ultimately the rain would be more damaging than the sun, which is why people advise treating the wood trim with food-grade mineral oil.
Ugh! I can't handle heat. I'm quite sympathetic to how you must be feeling now. Anything over 80 and I just can't move. Then again, when it's under 45 in the house (happens more than I care to mention) I also can't move. I'm sending you cool thoughts.
Ha! We swear every year that we'll move. We're swearing the same thing but that doesn't mean that I'm not also planning next year's garden. Stay cool.
I hate muggy heat. We don't get that here much - too far South. We do get cold but there again not too much mostly. I prefer the dry of our inner areas (where I grew up) but this place has all our family, community etc so I wouldn't ever move back now. Wish I could send you some of our frosts.
viv in nz
54F this AM so the whole house fan is cooling the house off nicely before I close it up for a 90 something day. Come to CO where you don't need AC! There are occasinal housing bargains out this way. A house in the old part of town recently sold for $122,000. Granted it was a small 90 year old bungalow but I'm guessing, like me, you're not a Miss Fancy Pants! ;)
Tameson - I seem to be getting less heat-tolerant every year. Is this what happens with age?
Green Bean - yeah, planning to move and actually doing it are two very different things!
Knutty Knitter - we don't have near the humidity as found in the Midwest or East coast, but they also don't try to cool with evaporative cooling.
DC - no Miss Fancy Pants here! We talked about Colorado just this morning but don't ya'll have drought problems? Plus $122,000 is still out of our price range. (Think poor church mice...LOL)
Chile, I went through menopause in Phoenix and it like to have done me in . . . I grew to hate the heat worse than my childhood winters in the midwest. I will say that, like you, I didn't really like where I was living and this made everything harder. If I had been surrounded by people I cared about, doing what I wanted to be doing, feeling healthy, strong and in a home I had designed, arranged - I might have retained a sense of humor and joy about the desert. I didn't have most things on the list so I was depressed and miserable. ((chile))
I hate the heat too, and I have never experienced 100 degree days. My energy is just gone with the heat. I hated Philly for the horrid summers because I couldn't do more than one thing a day (ride a bike or cook for the week - pick one).
You may have already mentioned this, but is not having A/C because you want to not be connected to the grid as much?
---
GB...I didn't know you were thinking of moving. Come down to San Diego :)
Hey, Chile -
I'm right there with ya - literally and figuratively. If it can't be done outside before 7 am, it ain't happenin'...
Am putting some wild rice in the solar cooker as we speak, for din-din tonite and munching straight from the fridge tomorrow. :^)
Am on the look-out for canning jars at the thrifts as I picked the first 'pricklies' and am dealing with them today. I'm planning to harvest maybe 2 more times and am keeping my eyes on two locations for source fruit. Wanna stay ahead of the birds and the beetles...
Take care -
Lady Banksia
PS: katecontinued - Menopause in Phoenix??? I am speechless at the very thought!
Kate - I can't imagine! I wasn't crazy about Phoenix either, but we did have A/C there and an extremely well-insulated house. (It was earth-bermed.)
Beany - we're in a rental house so we're not willing to invest thousands in an A/C system we couldn't keep. The owner, well, she hasn't even bothered to deal with the aging roof, so A/C is way out of the question.
LB - prickly pear fruit already? I'm so not ready for it...
>Is this what happens with age?
Yes.
We need to get ya outta there ...
Ms. Kingsolver got away, but her method won't work for you -- you're already taken! [weak attempt at friendly humor] But, seriously -- everything around here is now priced eight to ten times as much as when we moved here in '93. The prices will drop, but not as much as they need to, for people like us, not in time. It's heartbreaking.
Find me on Facebook if ya wanna talk strategy.
Risa - We've noticed the prices up there are not coming down much. It's quite discouraging, as is the rampant unemployment! I don't do Facebook (or MySpace or Twitter) but you can drop me a line.
Don't like the heat in the desert don't move to Oklahoma haha.
My family is from the high desert in Cali and it always amazed me how cool 100 feels in the desert. We have 78% humidity right now and we have been having 100 and above for awhile now.
With our a/c our house gets to around 82 during the hot part of the day. And the saddest thing we don't cool that much at night like the desert.
Wow, that heat sounds terrible! Well I'm sure you've thought of this already, but you could get a cheapo window AC unit. We got one at Wal-mart for $88 (Cdn) last month. It's only good enough to cool one room, but it's nice! I run it for about an hour in the late afternoon to psych myself up for cooking dinner and then we run it for an hour before bedtime.
I don't get what going on with the real estate market either. Prices actually went up here recently. Makes no sense! We're in the same boat as you guys, needing the prices to drop a bunch before we can afford to buy, and haven't decided where we want to settle but probably not here... and yet here we are... :-/
Anyway, sending you some cool breezy thoughts.
take care,
Elli :-)
We've the opposite here in Dunedin.
I got up to get a drink at about 5 am this morning, opened the fridge - and kept it open (naughty, yes), because it was warmer in the fridge than in the rest of the house!
Couldn't wait to get back to my cosy, double-quilted bed.
The ice on the car took a while to get off, that's for sure! But now the sun is out, it's a lovely day, and we have the windows and doors open! It's about 12C I reckon.
So sending you frosty (but friendly) greetings from Middle-earth! :-)
Even with air conditioning, 100+ isn't fun. Unless you get up incredibly early, walking to do errands or working in the garden is pretty miserable. This time of year I really kick myself for my bad habit of sleeping in.
Perhaps it's time to institute an afternoon siesta to sleep through the worst of it.
[Wrote ya, CC.]
When it gets that hot and I have things to do I have been known to sleep through the afternoon (at home when I'm there, not at work, heh) and put on a headlamp and do chores in the night.
Here, we have cool nights even with hot days. I have seen temperature swings of up to 50F. (!!)
Lisa - I've been in humid heat and it's pretty awful, too. Our nights have not been cooling off lately. Well, I don't consider 80 cooling off much...
Elli - I just looked at some room a/c units yesterday. The reviews of them were pretty awful with cheap plastic breaking parts and/or ineffectual cooling. Most complaints seemed to be about the window part breaking. Is the one you have durable?
I really think working ceiling fans in each room would go a long ways towards more tolerance but we don't want to replace them in a rental.
Daharja - yes, please send frost!
mollyjade - the early morning hours definitely are the time to be up and active. For later, unfortunately, I am unable to nap unless very sick...so a siesta is not an option.
Risa - thanks, got it. Will respond this weekend. No naps for me, although my sweetie is a napaholic. The headlamp would just attract more mosquitos anyway. (Yeah, whine, whine, whine...)
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