I don't know which is sadder: the fact that we've gone in a little over two weeks from glacial winds and snow flurries to vim-sapping mugginess, or the fact that after a mere five years of not living in Texas I find I can no longer stand heat.

And this is by no means 'hot'. We were barely pushing at the high eighties today. Surely that is nothing compared to the months of over 100 degree weather and constant ozone alerts of home. To say nothing of all those summers in my childhood when we had to carry tattered towels about in the car to sit on to protect us from the scalding seats and to use as de facto gloves when touching the metal part of the seat belts.

And yet. At least Texas (Dallas, not Houston, mind you), has a dry heat. Being by the lake here means that we get a cooling breeze, sure. But if that breeze isn't blowing directly on you, you are instead smothered by blankets of damp, sultry air.

Plus in Texas they over air-condition everything, to where the trick is actually to remember to bring a sweater with you at all times so as not to catch a chill in the 50 degree movie theater or grocery store.

Not so much here.

We should break down and dig the air conditioners up from the storage closet. We could at least run them at night and get some amount of real rest. When the air is still and the same temperature as my insides, I can't sleep at all. I spent my entire first summer up here staying up nights until five and then sort of half-dozing until noon. Thanks to the Sunday paper weather report, I always knew the exact minute when the first bits of sun would begin bleeding through my venetian blinds, and counting down to that moment each morning would become just one more thing keeping me awake until sheer exhaustion let me pass out in a pool of sweat.

I suppose I could have bought an air conditioner sometime back then, but I felt like a wuss doing so, plus I was poor. Plus I kept thinking the heat streak would break soon. I moved up here for the cold weather, after all. Plus I would probably have dropped the unit out the window and killed someone while installing it, so it was best all around that I didn't have one in my unsupervised bachelorette days.

I got so hot that summer that I used to try to think up clever solutions to stop sweltering, like dousing the entire futon with cold water and then wallowing in it until I caught my death of pneumonia. At least then I would have gotten some rest.

I was on the top floor of a three-story apartment complex, but my windows faced into a courtyard, so even with them and the kitchen door open, there was no way to suck the wind down and into my apartment to create a crossbreeze. And there was a horrible catch-22 between how few clothes I could wear vs. how wide I wanted to open the blinds. Either/or. Not both. I did keep the windows open behind the blinds, but the loud drunken poker games of my neighbor across the courtyard (all of like fifteen feet away) were also not conducive to deep sleep. Plus there were the guys in the apartment at the end who used to listen to the same five minutes of this porno (they must have had it on repeat) over and over at high volume. With their windows open. And then there was the couple below me who over the course of the summer months went from having wall-banging sex to having screaming fights.

When I moved out, I swore to myself that, like a guaranteed parking space, air conditioning was no longer a luxury, but a staple in the Maslow's hierarchy of needs in my life.

And yet, here I am, Cole Porter playing in my head as I open the windows as wide as they can go and try to remember where I put my little fan.

Bad memories of straining my finger carrying those air conditioning units up from storage last year or not, we are so putting them in tomorrow.

I wrote it in my diary, so it must be true.