I live in a hot area of the country. We are used to hot,steamy summers. Yet, every year, the media gets all nutso about how hot it is/was/ is going to be. As if we don't see the upper nineties for about a week every year. There tends to be the same amount of hype surrounding the one snow we are sure to get every winter -- it happens literally every year, but somehow it becomes all the buzz, as if a circus train derailed downtown and the elephants and lions were roaming around, getting coffee. A big deal. As if weather has never happened before or since.

Except that this year it feels different. I'm totally buying the heat-panic. Maybe because this year I drive a car with a little digital thermometer on the dash that is all too eager to tell me it's reading 106 degrees when I get in and my flesh melts to the seat. Maybe it's because I'm ten pounds heavier post-baby and getting old and grouchy. Maybe it's because Al Gore is getting louder and people are listening. Maybe it's because it's actually getting hotter.

I do know one thing, though: I stopped to pick up carry-out Chinese food this evening and the place wasn't air conditioned. The cooks and cashiers were all crammed behind the counter, cooking fried rice and meats and beans over very large and very hot pans. It was so hot I could not see or hear,just mumble my order and feel my way around, running into things and sweating.And I took the moment to reverse my thinking about the heat, to appreciate my air conditioned beast of a car and my ability to afford the electric bills that I generate with my cushy central air that kind of works.

I remember a period of college years where we all lived in 4+ bedroom houses with hodgepodge construction and sticky floors and no air conditioning at all. I remember sitting on the nasty sofa in front of our crappy television in the summer with one roommate, up to our knees in a cooler of ice water. Sleeping in a pool of sweat next to my boyfriend and my dog in a poorly ventilated room on a gnarly futon mattress. Global warming aside, things in my own little world have been hotter.

I know my new, thankful heat-acceptance will be forgotten tomorrow, when I have boob-sweat marks on my shirt before I even make it in the door of my office.And Al Gore, you are right, it's getting hotter, I can feel it, and I know we're fucking up our resources to combat it. But damn it feels good to walk into a cold, dark house.