Yeah I learned I got some real, genuine PTSD around heat. I started freaking out last Tuesday, with some real feelings of existential dread. It does not help that my wife is an avid follower of a semi-pro meteorologist who called "110s" for Seattle well before anyone else.

When my wife asked where these feelings of dread were coming from I rattled off "well it could have been the multiple day-long hikes at 8000ft in the desert in July with 12 oz of water for the whole family of four and two dogs or it could have been a field trip six mile hike in Bandelier where it was so hot half the kids chose stinging nettles over direct sunlight or maybe it was that time they made us march through La Cienega in hundred degree heat and didn't let us drink anything until 1pm and the only thing I had was a warm ginger beer or it could have been that time I high centered off-road and had to overland sixteen miles through the Sonora Desert with no water and I didn't make it out until 2am but at least I was carrying the spinal column of a deer that wasn't as lucky as me or it might have been that time it was 122 at Universal and there were homeless people lying prone on the concrete in the shade like squirrels and my phone started stuttering like Max Headroom and then for the next two weeks all the alliums and half the jasmine in the Valley died off..."

Of course I have a lovely birth center with two beds and double air conditioning. And of course we were hosting an instructor who stayed there Saturday and Sunday night so we couldn't. And of course she's been voluntarily choosing to live in fucking Tucson for the past fifteen years so she delighted in calling us all a bunch of pussies the entire time she was here while also turning the thermostat down to 68 while I tried to get my kid to sleep when the house is 92 at 10pm.

Heat is the universe coming at you where you live, denying you of escape, and willing to kill everything around you just to make you suffer.

According to Consumer Reports, 75% of American houses (and 90% of new construction) have central air conditioning. According to the Seattle Times, 44% of Seattle homes have so much as a window rattler. We've got a little portable guy; I was able to keep the delta between inside and out at sixteen fuckin' degrees until it starts hitting the south wall, at which point things start climbing eight degrees an hour. By the time the sun sets inside and outside are the same and inside will climb for another two hours before equalizing and eventually sinking back down to "outside plus ten." by then the floorboards are hot. You can smell the roof tar in every room in the house. And the ghost of every dog that ever peed in the corner comes out to stink at you, despite replacing $9k worth of subfloor.

I planted 500 bare root plants six weeks ago. I left the soaker hoses on for three straight days. It may have saved half of them.

Was on a zoom meeting Sunday. Old fuckers. TO A MAN they had central A/C, 44% be damned. That's about when I realized that if I was successful enough to retire at 44 I'm fuckin' successful enough to never goddamn be hot ever fucking again.

Second bid is here Tuesday. No fucks given. I ain't putting up with this shit ever again EVER. I told my wife that I would legit move to the ARCTIC CIRCLE if it meant never enduring triple digit temperatures.

It doesn't tho.

Hope it was worth it, boomers.