About that heat…

The duck and I agree that this summer has been too hot. I haven’t (yet) felt so hot that I feared waking up a perfectly baked cookie (nothing has come close to the comparatively cute but intense 2019 heat wave in Germany and that oven of a bedroom I still have waking nightmares about). Uncomfortable it’s been, nonetheless. While the duck spends most days swimming in the bathtub among tubs of ice cream in bright floaties, I have spent those hot weeks trying to avoid the heat as much as possible and going through loads of sunscreen.

As the duck has been happily splashing around, I’ve made yet another list of realizations (fueled by the joys of living in a house with no AC and weeks-long average outside temperatures well above 30ºC/86ºF):

5 weird things (the duck and) I learned in prolonged heat delirium

1. Hot coffee actually heats up your body?! On extra hot mornings, drinking a cup of warm coffee too close to my yoga session makes my body feel like it’s doing high-intensity interval training instead. Shocking, I know! Now I can see why caffeine is such a popular pre-workout stimulant. It’s good to know that when my surroundings are hot enough, the combination of the warm liquid and the caffeine can trick my body into forgetting that it’s lazy. I wonder if drinking coffee in a sauna can replace actual exercise. That could be an exciting new ducktective case!
2. At home, we’re literally in the dark (which coincides with my prevalent figurative state). One of the disadvantages of living without air conditioning is that if we want to keep some of the heat out during the hotter days, the duck and I have to pull down the blinds. We don’t even mind the bonus bruises we’ve accumulated as a side-effect (because turning on the lights is for windowless rooms and nighttime only). Not feeling like cookies in an oven is great, but we also haven’t felt prolonged sunshine-happiness in a while.
3. We are one with our neighborhood. For the duck and me, every night is an open window night now (you’re welcome, curious spider tour groups)! While we lie awake, hoping for a refreshing breeze, we get a nightly update on the goings-on in our neighborhood. The nightly breezes lure out nocturnal explorers – who like to travel in hordes (or solo, entertaining themselves through external discussions with their inner voice).
4. Some mornings we wonder what has become of us. Usually, if I don’t have to be somewhere, I have trouble getting up within my first three alarms. Why leave a state of comfortable laziness if there’s no threat to our punctuality streak? Well, this summer, the duck and I have been purposefully setting our alarms early so we can go for our slow jogs before the heat becomes unbearable. Getting up early to go for a cool jog comprehensively betrays the lazy lifestyle we’ve been subscribed to most of our lives! Seriously, what has become of us?!
5. Air conditioning is beautiful ❤ I’ve always felt conflicted about this one, you know, morally. However, not having any AC when it’s genuinely hot out definitely sways the duck and me toward building a shrine to the AC gods. Yes, most of the time, air conditioning is too cold for us. And, yes, it’s not great for the environment. But we still can’t help but wish we had it so we wouldn’t have to sit (or float) in the dark all day. Maybe it is time we move to a place where air conditioning is the norm.

Of course, the duck’s favorite side-effect of the heat is that everyone agrees that anytime is ice cream time.
If you have any tips for combatting the heat, we’d love to hear them.