Tiffany Rambles

I'm the type of person that finds a reason to go outside every day. I blame it on those seven or so months I spent at Indiana University Bloomington. There really wasn't any way for me to stay inside. If I didn't have to head out for classes, I had to head out for a meeting. If it was the weekend and I had no classes or meetings, I had to head out for food. I tried to hoard food that would be great for weekends where I didn't want to leave the dorm, but that always failed. It's amazing how quickly the food I saved became unappealing.

Meh, been there done that.

There's nothing wrong with loving to walk around...at least when it's not damn near 100 degrees every day. And it has been damn near 100 degrees every day, so there is clearly something wrong with me. Still, the heat didn't matter as much to me when I walked around near my house. My house has air conditioning, my dad's car has air conditioning, my boyfriend's house has air conditioning. As long as I know I'll  be returning to an area with A/C, braving the heat isn't a big deal.

Braving the heat is a big deal now. It has been a big deal ever since I left Hammond for 4th of July to do stuff with my family, since no one seems to have A/C. But I'm a trooper. I can't stop working just because I'm hot and a bit crampy. I have books to read and review and coaching sessions to renew. Initially, I thought about asking the authors whose books I'm reviewing if I could write the review next week, but then I'd end up having to read and review three books in one week as well as work on my new author website, author photos, and the Indiegogo campaign. Plus, I really want to go to the beach. I don't want to overwhelm myself.

These are the methods of survival I came up with for my current predicament - staying in an apartment with no A/C and limited fans. For me, it really is survival. I have a frail body. Frail bodies are susceptible to fainting and death, yknow. D:

Buy an Extra Fan

By Buy an Extra Fan, I mean buy a fan for yourself. That was the first thing I thought to do when I entered the apartment and noticed that there was five of us and only three fans, two of which are broken. This may be a tricky one if you don't exactly have money, but getting money in any way you can is vital for this option. At the Family Dollar near the apartment I'm staying in, a box fan is $18.00. You should probably stay away from illegal things like drugs and prostitution. You see, Independence Day just happened, and police are always more on edge a couple of days before and after Independence Day. Chances are you'll get busted pretty fast.

You can always start a hobo style Indiegogo/Kickstarter Campaign. You can go about this in a couple of ways. You can set up a lemonade stand and sell lemonade, but this may be ineffective if you're an adult and need a license to sell objects. I've never seen anyone do a lemonade stand in reality, so I don't really know how it works. Maybe you can find a cute kid to do it for you or enlist your own kid?

I expect 50% of the profit.

Or you can get the whole hobo experience and label a can "Help Me Buy a Fan." Then stand out outside, dressed in rags, and wave the can around. Or you can pretend to be a statue that only moves when you put a quarter in the can. Amanda Palmer did it for years.

Pros: Your own fan; constant air.
Cons: Depending on what you buy, noisy; constant air, but it's constant hot air. That's arguably better than no air.

Cover Yourself in Wet Hand Towels

You know what's really hard? Trying to sleep on a small couch when you're really hot. When you're really hot, you don't want any parts of your body to touch each other. That's as disastrous as the *mashed potatoes touching the spaghetti on the your dinner plate.

*EDIT: So, it's been brought to my attention that mashed potatoes and spaghetti is an odd combination. So feel free to replace mashed potatoes with apple sauce or something. I have a bad understanding of what foods go together. 

Don't judge me and my belief in food segregation!

My mom, who sweats a lot more than I do and wears a wet towel around her neck, suggested I wear a wet towel as well. That's when I decided to get two wet towels and put one on my belly and the other on my legs. The hot air coming from the fan wasn't as hot with the cold, wet towels on me and I was finally able to sleep.

Pros: You can wipe the sweat off; the hot air coming from the fan isn't as hot; it feels good.
Cons: Sleeping with wet towels on you all night could make you ill, but if you're in a house that really is 100 degrees, the towels will dry pretty damn fast anyway.

Put Your Head in the Freezer

One fan is so broken that the air coming through it is either nonexistent or hot. Still, my mom used that one. The other fan works as long as its put in a box so that it can stand up some way, but that wasn't discovered until this morning. My niece and I have our own fans.

My younger sister doesn't have a fan, and I couldn't afford to buy her one, so she stayed up all night, really hot. Sure, she would've stayed up all night anyway (that's how she is with her laptop), but I felt bad because of how hot she was. At 8 am, she came and sat next to me to get some of the air from the fan. After complaining about how her body heat was clashing with my body heat, I finally just got up and let her sleep under the fan. Unfortunately, that left me without a fan for a couple of hours, so I walked around the house like a zombie until I decided to put my head in the freezer.

That was such a wonderful experience. I kept my head in there for about 3-5 minutes. The longer I kept my head in there, the more I felt like I was exaggerating about the heat. I thought, "You know, its not THAT bad. As soon as I get my head out of this freezer, I'll get right to work."

The instant I took my head out of the freezer, the heat instantly bombarded me. It was like that moment when you're taking antidepressants and you stop taking them because you think you're not depressed anymore but the depression crashes down so hard that you feel like the pills betrayed you (that's why I hate pills and hate that psychologists are always so quick to give them to you. They don't cure anything). I continued my zombie tactics until my niece gave my sister her fan and I took my fan back.

Pros: It feels good.
Cons: It only feels good when you're head is in there. The freezer effect is not long-lasting. Also, if you do it too often, you'll run the risk of irritating people or somehow breaking the freezer. And trust me, you don't want to break the freezer or the fridge on a 100 degree day. 

Lay Down in a Depressed Stupor

At some point during those hours where my sister had my fan and my head wasn't in the freezer, I laid on the coach, arms and legs spread completely a part in a fashion that I'm sure looked ridiculous, and gave myself a self pity party. I thought back to the time I almost fainted in Six Flags Great America and had to spend the rest of the day in my friend's car while he and my other friend lived it up in Six Flags (I'll write a blog post about this later). I thought about how I could very easily faint now and how much easier that would be than trying to survive the heat. That gave me some type of vengeful satisfaction, though I can't for the life of me understand why. Who was my vengeance aimed at? The sun itself?

Your vengeance feeds my happiness, silly frail human.

I kinda wanted to cry, but then I also wanted to save my tears. I mean, I already wasted enough water sweating. I didn't want to waste any more on tears.

That lasted for all of two minutes before I put my head back in the freezer again and decided to check Facebook.

Pros: Vengeful satisfaction against the sun?
Cons: It's the sun, you goober.

You should also drink lots of water and try to wear as little clothes as possible without being completely naked (unless you're not in a house with four other people and being completely naked is fine).

How are you getting by?