Preparing for the Heat

Back at work Monday after a productive and enjoyable weekend, the last action of which was getting the house ready for the impending rise in heat up to 100F/40C tomorrow. Last night there was a cool breeze outside, so we opened up all of the windows about an hour before going to bed in order to cool the house down as much as possible, then went through shutting all of the curtains so that when it begins to heat up outside today, it won’t also heat up inside. This is what you do when you have no air conditioning. We have a couple of freestanding evaporative fans which will be coming upstairs tonight, but that’s the extent of our cooling capabilities.

Upon the conclusion of the movie we were watching, we closed the windows retired to bed and popped on the tele to find the cricket on, much to my joy (ahem, read the sarcasm there please). Aside from my idea that cricket is simply the slower, more boring and un-improved precursor to baseball, I haven’t much opinion on the game, or any knowledge of what is going on. Well lucky me got a short lesson in cricket from Steve, as he was keen to keep watching. I was told that it was ok, because this one was only a 20 (overs) and not a 5-day game. From what I’ve gained through my cricket lesson, it is a game based upon 2 batters, wearing mattresses strapped to their legs (Bill Bryson’s words, not mine) run back and forth between sticks while the pitcher (or bowler actually) runs at them, then hurls a ball in their direction. It’s a bit of a combination of hockey, lawn bowls and baseball, and while it still sounds boring overall, I might be inclined to go to a game sometime, as there are supposed to be lots of meal breaks;)

As I said, we’d closed the windows before bed, or so I thought. I was quite pleased when we got to bed at a reasonable time, because as I do not sleep well at all in the heat, I figured I’d at least get a good rest and begin to the week. I woke at about 2am to gale force winds and a breeze coming into the room and thought, crikey, there must be a proper storm coming! After waking up a couple more times throughout the night, I prompted fell asleep straight after hitting snooze this morning and felt exhausted. I mentioned to Steve about how windy it was and he said: “Oh, that’s because I left the guest room window open overnight.” Resisting my urge to strangle him, I mentioned that it has kept me up all night and also that as we have no fly screens (another household project) the curtains would have been blowing out the window all night…the new curtains, that is. One must wonder how men survive on their own.