Knee Sweat

God, I'm sexy.

San Francisco suffers from about three heat waves a year. One in the fall, September-October-ish. One in the middle of the summer. And one when no one can expect it. Sometimes it's in the middle of like February, or, as I look around my apartment at the four furry puddles that used to be my cats, it can come in the middle of May.

The first time I moved to a loft, it was a week before the October heat wave, and I learned that when the thermometers read over 90 degrees, lofts function less like "apartments" and more like "fucking convection ovens oh my holy hell."

Back in that October I was IMing with my friend, Snarky, and we spent a good 8 hours doing nothing but lamenting the heat and our spoiled spoiledness. She grew up in MODESTO which is basically the DESERT. I grew up in Connecticut where heat waves make everything wilt and you can actually feel the humidity on you at all times. A hot day in San Francisco is never as bad as a hot day in the desert or a hot day with 90% humidity, and yet.

After a few years of living in SF, you forget. And you get soft and spoiled.

So when a heat wave of this magnitude comes along, forget it. Life may as well be ending.

Snarky IMed me something along the lines of: my office is fully air conditioned, and yet I can feel my knees sweating.

That's some kind of poetry. Since then, my IT IS TOO HOT TO FUNCTION limit is gauged by knee sweat.

Ex: If you're not even moving, if you're just working and typing and sitting, and you realize your knees are sweating? That means you no longer have any responsibilities whatsoever. No one can expect anything from you. It is too hot to exist.

* * * * * * * *

Ish and I are flying to Phoenix tomorrow because, as Ish said, "We wanted to go somewhere cooler."

We'll be staying with his parents, visiting for a post-Mother's Day/his mom's birthday weekend. Should be lovely. (Except for all the stupid flying.) (BTW, can planes melt?)

It's currently 7:37 p.m. and I am not packed. I have not washed the clothes I will be packing. I have not identified the clothes to wash.

I am behind.

But laundry? Really? How can anyone be expected to do laundry during a bout of knee sweat?

* * * * * * *

Someone outside my apartment is having a party. I hope it's not my upstairs neighbor, because his parties go until well past dawn and his drunk guests go out onto his patio and throw their cigarette butts onto OUR patio, which juts out past his. This displeases me greatly. However, the music coming from the party is not random Indian dance mixes, so I'm assuming it's not him.

Seriously, it's three hundred million degrees in this Convection Loft.

And I can't open the doors or windows to the patio because the cats will go outside. They LOVE going outside. And I would be happy to let them, if our patio didn't share a wall with our Neighbor The Architect. Neighbor The Architect has a patio full of plants and trees and flowers and gorgeous furniture and pottery. Ish and Kiki have a patio full of one discarded office table and someone else's cigarette butts.

GUESS WHICH PATIO THE CATS PREFER.

Not only do they hop the wall into Neighbor The Architect's patio, they have gone so far as to CLIMB INTO HIS APARTMENT through his open windows. Yeah. Try convincing your neighbor you're not complete assholes after that.

Obviously, Ish and I need to construct or buy some sort of fence-y thing to block the cats from jumping over the wall, but we haven't managed to figure that out yet. Or buy patio furniture. So until we do --

--wait. A note about patio furniture:

WTF is up with outdoor furniture costing a fortune AND being SO DAMN UGLY? It simply must be possible to buy an outdoor dining set that doesn't look like something spawned from a mutant wicker demon. Right? That also costs less than my car? Anyone?

-- until we do, all SIX of us (that's me, Ish, Sherlock, Moriarty, Eddie and Leon) will just stare longingly at our patio space, dreaming of its sweet, cool air. And of knees that don't sweat.