Log Cabin Chronicles Heather Davis' Living in the city now Column

Log Cabin Chronicles

Heather

Popsicles & a prayer for snow

HEATHER DAVIS

I got mixed up today while I was driving and referred to "Cote Saint Neige" instead of "Cote des Neige." It made me think.

There should be a saint of snow. If there were, I would have been praying to him this weekend in Montreal from my hot and humid second floor apartment.

Air conditioners. Swimming pools. Ceiling fans. Living in Vancouver, I had previously thought of all these items as "luxuries." But I was wrong. They are as much a part of life here as a Gore-Tex jacket is in B.C.

What I don't understand is why the public pools are so slow to catch up with the heat. The planned June 21 openings denied the obvious. Over the weekend, I had to call on my networking skills to cool off.

"Hmmm," I thought. "Who do I know who has a pool?"

I wasn't sure where the local residents had gone. My neighbourhood seemed deserted. No kids playing in the back lane. Nobody washing their car. Nobody mowing their lawn. Yet everyone we knew with a pool was home.

Friday morning I decided I had to subsist on Popsicle's alone. I packed four different types back from the local IGA. Suddenly cold soup sounded like it might actually taste good. Gazpacho or maybe cold avocado. Some fruit for dessert. Then another Popsicle. And maybe a siesta.

If these are the dog days of summer, how come our two Siberian Huskies can handle it, but I can't? Sometimes, during the middle of the day while I am flat on my back under the whirring ceiling fan, they go out on the balcony to lie in the sun.

These are dogs that were bred to live in the Arctic. Maybe hair insulates from the heat, which is too bad, summer being the time when women shave all the way from their armpits to their ankles and almost everywhere in between.

I know nothing about air conditioners, but I'm about to learn a lot. Finding the right one can be quite the art.

Our apartment's windows are all wrong – tall, but not very wide. Some people seem to use Plexiglas or wooden boards to plug up the holes around their newly installed air conditioners. The ones they bought on sale before it got hot.

Incidents of road rage are becoming more common. They usually take the form of me yelling at Ghislain, "Why did you stop? That light wasn't really red. It was mauve!"

I am unbearable in the summer since I believe I might actually die from the heat. And if you're going to die anyway, what's the danger of a few more ice cream sundaes welded to your thighs?

I don't have a pool, but have been trying to spruce up the bathtub so it feels more like a beachside resort. A little sand in the tub, some coconut suntan lotion, and a travel magazine will have to do. An active imagination always helps.

When I'm not feeling sorry for myself, the people I feel the sorriest for are:

Garbage men and women

The people paving the highways

The people who never get to leave the city all summer

The best things to do when it's hot:

Hang out in a pool with friends (we have a few friends, but no pool)
Go to pick up cold drinks in your air-conditioned car (ours isn't)
float down the river on something buoyant (I'm buoyant, but how clean is the river in Montreal?)

> The craziest thing I ever heard of doing:

Running a triathlon (this is what my friend and her husband did on Saturday near Quebec City)

Some ways to cool off that you may not have tried:

Drink hot tea (like the British, then you feel cooler in comparison)
Have a hot shower (same theory, I haven't tried this either and don't plan to)
get in your car and drive to the Arctic (if you don't have a car, take a bus tour)
Close your eyes and imagine an ocean breeze (you have to try really hard unless you are at the ocean)
Slather yourself with ice cubes
Re-organize your freezer every five minutes
Enter a walk-in cooler (my local IGA has one where they keep the beer)
Wear nothing
Go swim at an old rock quarry
Don't move

Some ways to stay cool in the car:

Ride on your rooftop bike rack, spread eagle
Mist yourself with a spray bottle
Ignore red lights (keeping moving is key)
Stop for slushes every five minutes
Only go out between midnight and 5 a.m.

If it's true that just before you freeze to death, you feel a burning sensation, then maybe before melting to death in Montreal traffic, I might feel, for a brief moment, like a polar bear sucking on an igloo.

It won't be the last hot weekend. And I know the smart thing would be to buy an air conditioner. But for now, I am rubbing my huskies' tummies, and asking them gently, "Can't you just make it snow a little?"

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