Today I woke up early, mainly because Jeffrey shut himself into my walk-in robe and was trying to get out. It was almost like he knew how hot the day was going to get and he was searching for the ice and snow of Narnia. There were weird noises and Scout was sniffing under the door at him. When my feet hit the floor at
As my 4 long-term readers know, this year I’m experimenting with a chart to try and develop productive habits that I want to continue. One of the columns on the chart is to walk the dogs. If I was going to be able to do this, I had to get going pretty quickly, before the footpaths got so hot that they’d burn the pads on the dogs’ feet.
After I downed a 16 cent coffee and the dogs had their chicken necks for breakfast, we set off. Little Scout gets hot really quickly, so it was only a 5-minute walk around the smallest block. The day was already worrying. The wind was howling and the air was gearing up to be like it felt like an hour later – exactly like stepping into a fan-forced oven. It’s bush-fire weather.
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Then I had a 2-hour nanna nap. This heat is exhausting. I’m just glad that today is still in the summer holidays. If it was next week, I’d be trapped in classrooms after lunchtime with 28 sweaty teenagers.
Or almost worse… 28 teenagers who believe in ‘The Lynx Effect’ and are awash with synthetic fumes.
Now THAT’S a reason to focus on FI/RE, if ever I’ve heard one!
We’ve just had our third heatwave of the summer up here in the Snowy Mountains. The second one was record breaking. We’ve only lived here for 5 years now, but the previous summers have had only about 5 properly hot days each, so we don’t have air conditioning in the house. This summer has made us reconsider. My husband is finding it particularly difficult. I think it is harder for him because his work is air conditioned. It seems easier for us who are home all the time to acclimatise. I don’t like the financial and environmental costs of air conditioning, but if the weather keeps up like this we might have to bite the bullet – we are just too unproductive on those really hot days.
I’ve just completed another semester at uni (pending results…) and am now going to start work on the long to-do list I compiled while trying to write my assignments. On there is to prepare for bushfires. In the past 14 months we’ve been here we’ve cleared a lot of scrub from around the house, but we are still in a bushfire-prone area. And it has been on my mind even more these past two days as our town has been ringed by fires (all about an hour away), and the smoke has drifted our way. I nearly had to close up the house this morning to keep the smoke out but, luckily, a little bit of rain has come through. I’m grateful for the refreshed air and the cool after this last lot of heat!
I had evaporative cooling put into the old house and it was good. It kept the house roughly 10 degrees cooler than outside. But on those really hot days… yuck.
This new house has refrigerative aircon. I LOVE IT. I’m too frugal to ever have installed it myself, but OMG it’s fabulous.
I also have a fan in my bedroom, which I never thought I’d like, but it moves the air when the nights are hot. FANtastic.
Get the air con. It’s worth it in our climate.