How did they do it?

I want to know how people survived before central air. I'm dead serious.

This weekend we took down five of our kitchen windows, stripped them down to bare wood, and managed to get a primer coat on. Then we put the windows back on because it is supposed to rain tonight.

In the meanwhile, our air conditioner kept flipping the circuit breaker off and we decided not to run it until having it serviced -- hopefully tomorrow. And it would have been stupid to run it anyway with the windows off.

Of course, as my luck has been running, it was in the 90s here this weekend. Humidity was well above 60.

I am beat. I have a problem with my right ankle and in the heat it swells. I cannot get a shoe on tonight it is so swollen. I am drenched. The house is hotter than outside, even though I went out and bought two fans. Every time I move I sweat like a pig.

Last night to cool off and relax, I sat in front of a fan doing Sudokus. I started feeling cool and so I moved the fan. It was tolerable. Then I checked the thermometer: 92 degrees. In the house.

I am a wimp. I keep the thermometer at 70-72 year round. WHINE!

When we watched the parade this morning, I was so wet from heat/sun that I thought I might pass out. I don't know how much water I drank, but it was quite a bit. I did notice that all the people around me were also sweating, so that made me feel a little less -- well, whiney.

I feel very childish complaining about the heat. I mean, there is are a lot worse things in life to endure. I guess I can fall back on the medical condition: heat-induced edema, I believe the doctor called it. I was told to stay out of the heat. I keep thinking of my mother, at my age, who had to turn her oven on and bake every day in the hot summer heat. I think of my grandparents and ancestors who had to wear more clothes than we do today. Ugh.

Then my thoughts turn back toward my windows. It's supposed to be dry here tomorrow through Friday. So DH will take them back off, we'll finish the frames and put a couple coats of paint on the windows themselves and then have eight more to worry about. I'm hoping for 70ish weather this week so we can get it done. It was so hot we seemed to be working in slow motion this weekend.

On a less whiney note, I wanted to share this. I haven't blogged a lot because I didn't have a lot to talk about in the homeschool realm. I have always tried to keep this pretty much on the topic of homeschooling. Well, that's going to be impossible this summer. So I'm going to blog about life in general, hopefully throwing something homeschool related in here and there through the summer. In fall I'll be back to mostly homeschool stuff again.

My hat is off to whomever invented central air conditioning. Hopefully ours will be up and running tomorrow which in turn will help my ankle/leg get back to its normal size which in turn will make it easier for me to actually walk and get things done in a more timely and less hobbled manner.