Me vs The Heat Death of the Universe or "July"

Pretty, but in an evil, Mean Girls kind of way

As an adult, I've decided that I really don't like snow. It's cold, which I hate, it's slippery, which makes it shit to drive in, and shovelling it has caused me to severely injure my back.

It's because of that back injury that I'm sitting here now in front of the computer, and not out doing something more fun. Movement is not a thing I'm currently doing a lot of, so in order to distract myself from both the pain, and the insipid snowy landscape out my window, I'm going to write about a heat wave. 

It was July of 2009 and I was 8 months pregnant. This, for those of you who haven't experienced the miracle, meant that I was fucking miserable.  I was massive, everything hurt, and I was lucky enough to experience raging morning sickness throughout the entire affair.  I had trouble sitting because the little parasite would jab me in the ribs causing eventual nerve damage, I couldn't stand because my back was being kind of a dick about that activity, and lying down made my calves irrationally fly into charlie horsed knots.  It was super fun. I'm astounded we ever had a second kid. 

Up until that point, I hadn't thought being pregnant couldn't get worse, and then it did, because as I mentioned, it was July. And it got punishingly hot. 

One of my rare not-actively-puking
moments

When I wasn't sobbing hysterically at the Sarah McLachlan SPCA commercial, or a reveal on Extreme Home Makeover, I was floating in a cold bath contemplating the pros and cons of adding ice cubes. I was melting. Our little condo was an oven. It was 1000 square feet taken directly out of the burning fires of hell, and it was making me crazy. 

And then one afternoon, the heat broke me. Husband came home from work to this insane woman, mad with desire. I wanted an air conditioner. NOW!  

He tried to tell me that buying an air conditioner in a heat wave was going to be next to impossible. Our condo's strata rules didn't allow us to put window mounted units in, so we would have to get a stand alone version, and that wasn't going to be easy.  Challenge accepted. 

Our battle ground was Home Despot; the air conditioner section a post apocalyptic waste land of left over units too small to be useful to anyone. There was absolutely nothing left that would meet our needs. 

And then I spotted it. She was beautiful. Tall, sleek, black and silver, out of her box and set up like the sexy vixen she was. I wanted her.  I waddled my way over to the returns desk where her previous owner was returning her. I looked at him and point blank asked him why he was returning such a beautiful thing? Apparently she was a bit loud, and he didn't like her. I bluntly turned to the woman at the returns desk and said I wanted her (the air conditioner, not the returns lady...though she was fetching). She seemed a bit confused for a moment, and then said that was fine, but I'd have to take it down to the checkout counter at the other end of the store, as she could do returns but not sales.   

Onlookers would likely have described a pregnant Gollum-like figure waddling down the aisle screeching My Precious at anyone in her way, while hugging a ridiculously large air conditioning unit. It was the fastest I'd moved in months. If I could have, I would have skipped. 

One guy even had the audacity to ask if I was buying it....could he have it? He wanted My Precious! But she was mine. I wanted to run over his foot. 

To this day, I'm not really sure how much we paid for the air conditioner, and I don't care. She was the big and beautiful, and made my existence almost tolerable for the remaining weeks of pregnancy. To this day she cools down a room like a boss, and I don't regret bringing her home for a minute. 

So now this snow can go the fuck away....it's time to bring My Precious
out for the summer!