The past few days in the Pacific Northwest have been rather uncomfortable. The temps have risen well past 100°. Being in a third floor apartment with the only windows facing the morning sun and later the scorching afternoon sun, it was like being in a oven. Luckily we have a floor unit air conditioner. Unluckily, it only managed to cool down the living room and reached neither the bedroom nor my studio. The result was my boyfriend and I spending all of our time in the living room during the heat wave. I ventured into my studio momentarily to retrieve something to work on while sitting on the couch, positioned to recieve the direct airflow of the air conditioner.
What of the guinea pigs in this hot weather, you ask? OK, well you may not have asked, but it is an issue on days like this. Despite their homeland being in South America, cavies are not well suited for very hot weather. The three boys, Miso, Kokiri and Archie, were already in the living room, but the girls' cages were in my studio. With naught but a ceiling fan, the room had already reached uncomfortable levels on days when the temperature spiked up to 80°. My boyfriend, always the kind and considerate one, set about the task of taking the C&C cages apart and bringing Mochi and Pocky into the living room to rejoin their kin. Some shuffling of furniture was required, and my studio had to be completely rearranged. I spent a couple of days working on the redecorating a few minutes at a time, doing as much organizing as I could manage before the heat became too much and I had to retreat to the cooler clime of the air conditioned room.
The end result was gaining more floor space, a new table to work on, and a leather recliner in my studio (which no longer fit in the living room with the addition of the C&C cages). All of my guinea pigs were now in a (somewhat) temperature controlled area and could be easily monitored. The thermostats in the bedroom and studio actually read 100° at some points in the preceding days, enough to give any small animal (or human, for that matter) heat exhaustion. Even when the nights cooled to around 70° we opted to sleep out in the living room with the ac running overnight. One of the advantages of a floor unit air conditioner is that you can roll it into another room and set it up rather easily, but we didn't want to risk letting the living room heat up overnight, as warm air so easily becomes trapped in an upstairs apartment. Out came the air mattress, a sleeping bag and some comforters.
It's a brick pig! Kokiri's favorite hangout on a warm day is a cool brick. He doesn't normally have to mess with his eyebrows to cool off, though.
To reiterate, the erstwhile days of this past week were, to say the least, hot. The kind of hot days where you just don't feel like doing much of anything. The kind of days where you can't help falling asleep in the middle of the afternoon, yet have trouble getting comfortable in bed at night. The kind of days where a grilled cheese sandwich is more than enough for dinner. The kind of days where you don't want to so much as lean forward from your seat because of the sound and feeling of your skin peeling off the leather couch. Ever since I was a kid I was the kind of person who was always cold, and was so very relieved when I moved from New England to Southern California. Somehow in the past few years, perhaps due to a change of diet and other circumstances, I can't stand excessive warmth. I'm looking forward to next week's milder weather, hoping that it'll bring with it some rain and the creative enthusiam for my ongoing projects that I'd previously been robbed off.
That's crazy! I didn't realize it got so hot there! It's only been in the low to mid 80s this week and thankfully we have central air.
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