RantWoman spent her youth in MT in a house with a big attic fan. By closing key drapes until the sun went by and using lowkey room fans, the entire Rant family held out until evening. Then the drapes would open and the fan and pure convection would blow the heat out the attic and draw cooler air into the house. Okay, RantWoman admits spending some summers on ice in computer centers where the cooling needed to dissipate the heat given off by massive computer installations was , brrrr, more than adequate to cool RantWoman, but somehow this does not count.
More to the point, as with snow, RantWoman's severe weather coping skills have grown lax from disuse and RantWoman too resorted to such information as was provided locally.
The WORST day of the heatwave, RantWoman in fact rode a bus to her nicely air-conditioned medical provider. Her peculiar reward: "you want a mammogram with that?" Ummmmmm. "We can schedule it down the hall in 10 minutes." Ummmmm, a few more minutes in the AC in exchange for serious body mashing. Ummmmm. RantWoman GUESSES she is glad to have that done for another year. She is not sure whether the coincidence with the heatwave is a boon or a bane, but that left other days for other devices.
After the fact, RantWoman read the following warnings about Metro: guess what, even if you think you want to go somewhere, many buses are not air-conditioned either.
http://transit.metrokc.gov/tops/bus/hotweather.html Surprise.
RantWoman detected public health items in several languages http://www.kingcounty.gov/healthservices/health/news/2008/BeatTheHeat.aspx about, basically, the symptoms for heatstroke and heat exhaustion and exhortations to get help if such symptoms are detected. RantWoman thinks she also recalls bits about drinking fluids but not necessarily about electrolytes, augmenting one's fluids with salt or fruit juice. Most strikingly, the wonderful effects of fans or damp cloths on one's face or neck were hardly mentioned. RantWoman found herself wishing the materials were a little heavier on ways to prevent heatstroke in the first place.
Instead, the public was vaguely exhorted to go--on the aforementioned buses?--to "cooling centers" defined as libraries or community centers. Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha. In Seattle not every library branch or community center is air-conditioned.
But suppose one actually knows of a library, say the downtown branch that is air conditioned. Suppose one is tired and cranky from not sleeping. Suppose further that one actually totes along one's laptop, hoping to do work in the wi-fi even if one's concentration is shot, one is distracted by the sounds and smells of espresso in the lobby and one does not dare shut one's eyes for fear of falling afoul of proscriptions about sleeping. Napping in the library lobby, no matter how professionally dressed, is officially verboten.
The library lobby offered other sonic charms: two software geeks talking about cascading style sheets. Next, a conversation in unnecessarily bad Spanglish: the person with the Spanish accent spoke English better than Mr. Spanglish spoke Spanish. Add a guy reading a book who seemed to have bathed recently but smelled of beer so strongly that RantWoman wondered whether he had bathed in beer: these people too clearly needed to cool down.
After other even more piquant library moments, RantWoman decided just to go home. Conveniently RantWoman's email contained some newsletter from the Fire Dept about fire doors. RantWoman noted that some of her neighbors had propped open fire doors in the hallways for really obvious reasons: they needed crossdrafts. Remember that one's apartment door is also considered a fire door per fire regulations. What if one really needs a cross draft, needs a cross draft more than he or she needs an electrical fire from a strangely functioning fan? RantWoman discovered that her box fan which had been barely hanging on last time it was plugged in would only hum if upright and turn if left on its side, an accommodation RantWoman did not think it practical to rely on.
At this point, RantWoman decided that, although she is very grateful to live on the sheltered north side of her building, it was still time to get creative. RantWoman washed her hair on its weekly rotation then realized how cooling it is to have wet hair and kept her braid wetted down for the rest of the day. RantWoman also took note of several bus passengers with damp rags on their heads or along their necks.
RantWoman also notes the following thoughts:
SOMETIMES when public resources are not adequate, requests go out for help from the private sector. For instance, RantWoman knows a fair number of air-conditioned bank lobbies. As much of our tax money as the banking industry has been soaking up lately, RantWoman could easily make a good case for the cooling imperatives of napping near our own money.
Who said malls are just for sneaker-clad seniors doing powerwalks? Window-shopping anyone? True, bus travel is required, but...Go to the movies. RantWoman's finances did not line up to support this but she kind of got the next best thing paying a visit to Little Sister.
Little Sister's floor due to a glitch in her cleaning routine felt just like a movie theater floor without having to pay $9+ for the experience and Little Sister's fan and ice water did fine. Meet survival on a budget!
No comments:
Post a Comment