Beatin' the heat

It seems to keep getting hotter.  I used to think I liked hot climates, but maybe only the hot ones with running water and/or rain.  Hot and dry is definitely not my bag.  The soil is like…reflective.  The wind doesn’t help the feeling that I’m being attacked by the weather when I step outside my house.  I get sweaty and sticky almost instantly, and then the dirt sticks to me.  Yum.  Inside it’s just really hot from about 10am-4pm, but opening the door during the windy season means disaster: leaves and ashes (from the newly burned lot next door…don’t EVEN get me started) and dust fly in, and my precariously hung photos and cards from home all fall off the makeshift cardboard bulletin board.  But aside from the occasional freak out, I cope with the discomfort in the following ways:

I collect water in a 5-gallon tank when there is water coming out of the tap.  This water is for dishes and bucket-bathing.  On rare occasions, I run out, and then we have problems, since I can’t stand dirty dishes (now they get ashy too), and I need to rinse myself off if I go walking around at all.  My neighbor has a well and shares, but the truth is that in my town everyone should be getting water every day, at least for a few hours, but they’re not.   There’s a simple way (or two) to accomplish this but people are stubborn and I gotta say, a little selfish.  I won’t get into it. 

I eat fruit.  Lots of it.  I’m convinced my fruit habit is why I can’t save money here (ok, on $340/month it’s difficult anyways).  My poor garden died, so I never got a watermelon out of it.  I get good exercise carrying watermelons back from the city though.  Now it’s turning into canteloupe season, hooray!  Reminds me of Lancaster County in the summer time.  I may be basically out of luck with the mangoes, thanks to this wind that’s blowing the fruit off the trees still unripe.  I’ve eaten green mango, it’s sour and nice in a salad, but poor stuff compared to a ripe sweet mango.

My refrigerator is a life saver.  I always have cold water, cold fruit and veggies and cold M&M’s which here do melt in your hand, or on a plate (they’re a vice, but I make sure to measure them out so I know how much I’m eating).  The electricity for the fridge and the fan are paying off in sanity. I’ve started storing wet washcloths in the fridge.  After lunch every day, I put a cool washcloth over my eyes and rest for about 20 minutes.  This might be my greatest coping technique.  I can suddenly see again in the afternoons, after squinting all morning.  I think it’s also like a meditation since I can only listen to things, be it music, a DVD or just silence.  I always feel refreshed more than I’d anticipate from just a cool washcloth.  Turning off my eyes helps me see inward, I guess.

I wash my feet every night.  I’m not sure of the cause, but I always feel that my joints are really stiff and swollen, my feet being the worst.  As a dancer (at heart, at least), I need to feel like I can move freely.  Even doing yoga every day, I feel stiff.  I’ve been monitoring my salt/sodium intake, and I don’t think it’s that.  Must just be the heat, but going to bed with scrubbed and soaked feet is comforting and for whatever reason increases mobility.  I'm on the lookout for herbs or natural things I can stick in the water for an even more spa-like experience.  I’ve considered looking for a very large basin I could use as a bathtub (if there was enough water…).  I hope I never again have to live where I can’t take a proper bath. 

By my calculations, about one month till occasional rains start, and not soon after that there will be rain every afternoon!