Each winter, particularly in a perennially gray place like Oregon, one hears talk of seasonal effective disorders. I've begun to genuinely, and not just in the name of hyperbole, believe that I suffer from it too. Only I suffer in summer.
I've got light skin and strawberry blonde hair. I can get a sunburn after just minutes in direct outdoor light. But the fear of burning is just the start. Whereas 75 or 80 degrees might feel very manageable to most people, I'm uncomfortable. So when it's 85 or 90 or 95, I feel almost nauseous.
The last two days have seen high temperatures in the mid-90s. On days like this, sometimes it feels like I can never get away from the heat. We actually have two window-mounted air conditioners, one in the bedroom and one in the living room. Starting at about 11AM on these extra-hot days (the average July high in Portland is 79), I fire up both air conditioners. I feel guilty doing it, considering how the nasty refridgerants contribute to global warming.
What's more, all day I write about green buildings that efficiently use natural ventilation to cool down, flushing in the cool air through the building at night and using thermal mass (like a basement) to hold those cool temperatures through the day. But at home I'm blasting these brutal machines to refridgerate my apartment.
And yet by about 4 or 5PM the heat overcomes even these high-BTU chilling machines I've sold my soul for. At night, we've got the bedroom door closed and one of our AC units blasting the space. Yet often in July and August I find myself tossing and turning on top of the covers, sweaty. When your sleep is affected, that just feels like the last straw.
I know a lot of people reading this are likely to roll their eyes. This is the weather most Oregonians wait for during all those rainy weeks and months. But think of it this way: No matter how cold or rainy it gets in the winter, you can come inside and turn on the heater. Problem solved. But when it gets hot, we in Oregon by and large have to just endure it. Here almost no one has central air conditioning in their homes. (I certainly plan to have one when I own a house someday, but for now I'm stuck in an apartment where somebody else chose the heating and cooling systems or lack thereof.)
Of course there are alternatives to staying home. I could go to a movie or sit in a cafe. But I've got work to do, which means being in my office in the second bedroom of our apartment.
And even when I do find a satisfyingly cooled space, the depression doesn't go away with the heat. I've always joked about how I love air conditioning, and I do see it as a kind of life preserver. But when it's perennially too hot outside, when high temperatures are in the 90s for a string of days, the accumulated time inside without access to fresh air and sunlight breeds claustrophobia in me. It feels like there's some sort of bio-hazard outside that will contaminate me, and my house is a plastic bubble I can't leave.
(Incidentally, I have to say I find society's favoring of tanned skin to be absurd. Tanning is what you do to a hide to toughen it up. I like soft, milky skin that hasn't been aged in the sun. It's hilarious to me that our obsessions with youth and with tanned skin are at cross purposes. Lay out in the sun and you're asking for wrinkles, not to mention the increased chance of cancer.)
I know Oregonians like me have it relatively easy, that our summer temperatures are nowhere near as hot and humid as many other parts of the nation. But the fact that I'm merely less uncomfortable here during the Dog Days than I would be at points to the south and east doesn't mean that I'm actually comfortable. The consolation only goes so far.
Still, I try to keep things in perspective. I've got Sunday marked on my calendar because it's the last day of July. That means it's only about another month until Labor Day, which I count as at least the beginning of the end of summer. Before long I'll be able to put on a jacket and feel human again.
Comments