I know whining about the weather in the NW is silly. All of you who normally deal in the triple digits should skip this post. Our climate is mild; rarely very hot and rarely very cold. After my first winter, I had no problem with the months of rain. (Short days are another thing; we have a lot of full spectrum lights.)

The rain and the wet and days of 60 degrees in June and July? That’s why I live here. I’m relatively sure that’s why my family ended up in this neck of the woods five generations back. I am all about merino and cashmere. Almost my entire wardrobe was, at some point, shaved off a sheep or goat, and in a few cases, an alpaca.

The problem is very few houses here have central a/c. You can add mine to that list. (We have a small unit downstairs — oddly, downstairs gets hotter than upstairs, because of a bank of east-facing windows along one wall.) Oh, except for the lady den. By 4 PM, it’s the hottest room in the house. Because I am morbidly curious about these things, it’s the only room in the house with a thermometer.

And I? Do not do heat well. At all. In addition to all of my other medical weirdness (I take seven, count ‘em, seven pills a day), you can add “swells up like balloon” if the temperature rises above 75. Seriously. I don’t sweat; I glisten, and believe me, I would much rather just sweat. From morning to evening, I’ll put on 3-5 pounds of water weight, which will (thankfully) go away once I cool off. But then I get to do it again the next day.

I don’t bother wearing rings in the summer.

So sleeping when the temperatures are in the 80s or above is, well, miserable. I take a cold bath before bed and rely on my very long and curly hair to stay wet most of the night (yay, evaporative cooling). My NW-bred daughter appears to suffer the same affliction. Right now we’re parked downstairs in front of a huge fan sucking in cool(er) air — it’s cooled down to 72 — from outside. She’s asleep on the rug. I spent last night on the couch. I haven’t gotten more than 5 hours of sleep in I don’t remember when because I’m too tired.

Tomorrow is supposed to be 88. I know, those of you in the rest of the country are thinking STFU. But I’m guessing you can sweat. I’m planning on hiding out in a museum, at least until closing time.

This is the first real week of warm temperatures…and already, I am so over summer.