In which I sit in the Atlantic
It was brutally hot today. It was over 90 by 9 AM. After that I stopped paying attention, but I've heard it hit 100 here on our little island in the north Atlantic. That's beyond bizarre. I've never been on the island on a day this hot. We started the day by installing an air conditioner in the Octogenarian bedroom. I brought a table in and they stayed in there the rest of the day: I brought them food and drinks from time to time.
But I went to the beach. I brought a cooler full of drinks, the dog's water dish, and a picnic lunch and went and sat in the frigid Atlantic. It was too cold to actually dunk my head under and swim - it would have to get hotter out than 100 before I did that - but I sat on the edge of the shore and waves washed over me - making me gasp from the cold - and it was cool.
I'm very glad that I had the air conditioner. My old people are very very old and are shockingly fragile in ways that I don't anticipate very well. They cannot get down to the beach to cool off! They couldn't even get to the air conditioned public rooms downtown because there was no place for them to park: the handicapped spaces had been taken (by non-handicapped people, I might add.) It turns out that a great deal of the world is not handicap accessible. I think having that air conditioner today may have been a matter of life and death.
This shocks me beyond words.
But I went to the beach. I brought a cooler full of drinks, the dog's water dish, and a picnic lunch and went and sat in the frigid Atlantic. It was too cold to actually dunk my head under and swim - it would have to get hotter out than 100 before I did that - but I sat on the edge of the shore and waves washed over me - making me gasp from the cold - and it was cool.
I'm very glad that I had the air conditioner. My old people are very very old and are shockingly fragile in ways that I don't anticipate very well. They cannot get down to the beach to cool off! They couldn't even get to the air conditioned public rooms downtown because there was no place for them to park: the handicapped spaces had been taken (by non-handicapped people, I might add.) It turns out that a great deal of the world is not handicap accessible. I think having that air conditioner today may have been a matter of life and death.
This shocks me beyond words.