My Heat-Wave To-Do List

Things to do today, August 17, 2016

1. Make "shave" decision

2. Iron thinnest shirt in closet...curse the fact that nobody makes business shorts.

3. Liberally apply baby powder all over despite the fact that I hate baby powder.

4. To guard against dehydration, drink copious amounts of water.

5. Try to break yesterday's record of 16 trips to the bathroom.

6. Encourage ladies in the office to bring blankets if they don't like the thermostat set at 69.

7. Spend an hour staring at my weather widget showing the 75 and sunny forecast for Camden.

8. Shame myself for my weakness by looking at pictures of Teddy Roosevelt wearing a wool suit, signing a treaty in an unairconditioned train car in Panama....in freaking August!!!

9. Suffer raging bouts of guilt when Lucy comes up to me, frisbee in her mouth, begging me to go outside.

Heat...I had almost forgotten

This morning, for the first time in quite a while, I dressed for work...white dress shirt, dress pants, dress shoes and a tie. I left my house and walked to my car in the garage, started it, turned on the air conditioner and drove to my office. It was 8:00 am when I arrived. The short walk from the car to the office door wasn't too bad, a little muggy, but not so bad. At noon, I walked outside of my air conditioned office towards my car and was welcomed back to Short Pump properly. The air was heavy and damp. The power of the wall of heat that faced me on my short walk was staggering. But, I reminded myself that having been gone the entire month of July, I had missed the worst of it. Today was what passes for a cool spell to my beleaguered Short Pumpians, the high temperature only expected to reach 90.

But then...I reached my car.

My Cadillac CDS had spent the past four hours sitting in the sun, soaking it all in on a spongy blacktop. When I opened the door and got inside it was like...it was as if...I need to give this some thought. How to describe the heat coming at you from the inside of a car in Short Pump...in August?

Picture a Malaysian whore house... in the midst of a power outage... at 4 o'clock in the afternoon...in the middle of monsoon season.

How about the prospect of hopping an empty cattle car and laying on the metal floor with the doors closed as you inch your way down the tracks outside of Bangalor, India in April.

Imagine you're unlucky enough to be a woman in Saudi Arabia and are forced onto a chain gang laying asphalt dressed in a full body hijab.

Ok...maybe not as bad as that, but after being in Maine for a month, it was pretty awful.