Hot vs. Hot

One of My "Hot" Shirts

Pennsylvania weather is in full Summer gear as of now. Hot with high humidity, this will be the norm for most of the days and nights until September mercifully comes. Last Summer with all of its rain was an anomaly. This Summer is sticking to the script with the weather. It's sticky alright.

Pennsylvania, at least this part of South Central Pa, is 1/4 Summer, 1/4 Fall, 1/4 Winter, and one 1/4 Spring.  This may not be meteorologically precise but it seems correct in my reckoning. Each season has its Shakespearean time on the stage and the transition between Summer to Fall and Winter to Spring is particularly delightful. I have lived in Pa. since 1970 and am used to it. I have a relocated Colorado buddy who just can't stand the humidity. He looks like a Siberian Husky at the beach in the Summer.

I have a buddy who lives in Buffalo which is like 9 months of awful Winter and 3 months of a lovely Summer.

I am partial to the Fall. Summer is my least favorite season by far. Although I enjoy the outside activities it affords, it brings incessant itching (or at least it has in the past, we'll see this Summer), bugs, sweat, and the dreaded swamp-ass. My car AC broke which is not a huge deal as I like the sunroof and the windows open. But, sometimes it is a necessity. At a $500 repair job, I am skipping it for now. I will see how the Summer proceeds and if I break at some point.

My home window AC is also on the fritz. The control panel doesn't work except for once in awhile for no rhyme or reason. A couple of weeks ago I had pushed the temp control function which turned off the AC once the set temp was reached which resulted in R2D2 beeping sounds all night with the off and on every 20 minutes or so. Mercifully, I was able to get it changed to 78 degrees and on all the time. To turn it off, I have to unplug it. I am waiting for it to keep running with no electricity. I half expect it to since it appear to making up its own mind about when and how to work. That will freak me out but I will adjust as I contemplate the electricity bill lowering.

I don't like it cool in my house. I just don't want it to be a pizza oven either...right now it is a comfortable 82 degrees. 

Yesterday, I was out mowing the lawn and it was 92 degrees. There was a decent breeze and less humidity. Nonetheless, I sucked down two quarts of ice cold water from the fridge during the mowing time. As the day wore on, it got much more humid. And then the storm hit. I happened to be homebrewing out back when it happened. I had to finish up indoors and run the wort chiller inside which created some serious waterworks. It is not easy to brew alone. All is well, though. I got it done and look forward to the Belgian Tripel Tres Noel (Tres=3, for the added Ginger, Cinnamon and Nutmeg). We'll see how it turns out. I enjoy tweaking beer recipes. I call 'em Frankenbrews. So, I add ingredients to make the taste unique. 

This brings me to the main point of the blog....my apparel in the heat. I have learned to dress lightly in the Summer and wear fabrics that either wick or at least don't absorb water. I skip the boxers...I know TMI. But, putting a layer of fabric on another layer of fabric, especially if both are cotton, creates that dreaded Swamp-Ass sweaty sandwich. The backside just rots in the moistness of it all creating a high degree of discomfort. I learned this trick from a good friend who shall remain nameless. I rotate the shorts among 4 pairs.

When I am going to work, I dress traditionally. This is just when I am on personal time.

By the end of the week, the clothes are pretty saucy and skanky, along with the accompanying shirts, which I likewise rotate. As I work-out six days a week, things get a bit dicey.

Every Saturday I have to wash the aforementioned clothing with hot water. Cold water doesn't cut it. The skank is far too strong. No, hot water wash and cold water rinse knocks the odor out. As a tip, I always dry wet clothing out on the laundry rack and never throw sweaty clothes into the hamper. It still reeks but at least is not fostering a bacterial colony.  My clothes do get stiff after drying like beef jerky marinated in the skank sauce. 

I have found it instructive that only the hot water drives out the skank from the hot conditions. Fighting fire with fire type of concept. Yesterday, before mowing, I read a William James quote that stated, "Wiser are the tygers of wrath than the horses of instruction."  William James these days would probably be crammed with psychotropic drugs as he lived in a vivid world of angels and demons all-around, some of whom he communicated with at times.  And, although he was no orthodox Christian, the quote opened up a door of perception for me in terms of my own theological beliefs (door of perception is his phrase which Aldous Huxley co-opted as well as Jim Morrison from The Doors through A. Huxley's book of that title).

James, from what I can tell, was positing that evil and good were all of God, whereas Christians and other Theists would posit that God is not the author of evil, although He does superintend over it for His own purposes. C.S. Lewis's Great Divorce was apparently an answer to James' take on it. 

Here is my take...hey, it is poetry after all.   

Hot and hard experiences have the ability to drive out bad from us, depending on our approach and attitude. It is a general truism that people don't change until the pain of not changing is greater than the pain necessary to change. And many don't want to change, or cannot, and the chains just get stronger. But, those same changes can happen when the "tygers of wrath," hot and horrible, melt the chains if we forward them to the front. Our liberation consists of the melting of the iron of addiction to use modern parlance, or the sin nature to be more theologically precise. Addiction in the end is from humanity's desire to manipulate the creation for pleasure and to avoid pain. But, the apple of addiction deceives the more we delve into it. The cycle heads downward into the abyss which is never full.

* We all struggle in many ways, as James writes, so I ain't judging nobody here.