You were cussing, you were steaming, you were slick with sweat, you were already down to the flimsiest clothing you own, you couldn’t take any more off without getting divorced or arrested or both.
That was summer in Ipswich. Ground zero for global broiling.
But you’ve forgotten all that. Because it’s the final third of October and the temps are dropping and you only have so much bandwidth for responding to the weather.
It’s time to switch from complaining about the heat to complaining about the cold.
This is not a single, sudden switch. It’s not as simple as going directly from “It’s hotter’n Hades out here!” to “I’m freezin’ my tail off out here!”
We’re in the in-between time. No longer hot enough to keep complaining about, but not yet cold enough to start complaining about.
So we transition gradually.
New Englanders are perfectly designed for this transition. We’re wired like my electric car:
When I press the accelerator, the car goes faster, and the battery is drained.
But when I release the accelerator — coasting, braking, going downhill — the battery is actually recharging.
Likewise, we New Englanders come standard-equipped with the remarkable Weather-Whinge™ Complaint Pak. Basically a battery for belly-aching.
During the summer, as we complain about the heat, we’re using energy; we’re draining our Weather-Whinge™.
But as temperatures begin dropping, it’s like my Hyundai’s speed dropping. Your Weather-Whinge™ recharges, and stores up your complaining energy.
You have to stockpile your complaining energy now, otherwise you won’t have enough left to get you through the winter.
It’ll be the end of January or so, when it’s truly miserable outside, and you won’t have the strength to gripe about it.
Your neighbor will stammer “I c-can’t — f-feel m-my — n-nose” and you’ll barely manage to mutter a mumbly “Mm, I’m okay,” and there goes the friendship.
In my creaky, poorly insulated house — 208 years old in the front, 228 years old in the back — this is the time of year when my wife and I start playing a tense game of chicken: Which of us will cave in first and turn on the heat?
The old oil-burning furnace standing stoically on our basement’s dirt floor is ready and willing to serve, but just starting it up for the season costs more than the state budget of Delaware.
And it’s wrenching to realize, from that day on, you’re basically burning hundred-dollar bills, as that toasty air leaks out through the clapboards and the mother winter moth says to the father winter moth, “Does it seem warm to you?”
Avoiding that fateful first furnace-firing, we lugubriously load wood into the fireplace. This heats the core of the house, but doesn’t do a thing for you when you’re near any window, with the bitter New England winter heartlessly sucking BTUs into its icy lungs through the frosty glass.
In the olden days, people built beds directly over the central oven, to stay warm. In our “sophistication” we put bedrooms in the nether regions of the house, with plenty of windows and beautiful views and no hope of the slightest warmth from the living room fireplace.
So my alarm goes off at 6 a.m. — an angel of the morning, playing her harp: ploing, ploing, ploing — and when I say “Alexa, stop,” I can see my breath.
I pull on my fluffy bathrobe — which hardly helps; it needs my meager body heat to warm it up. I head down through the glacial stillness of the staircase. I cross the tundra of our kitchen to turn on the coffee pot.
(Why, oh why does the coffee pot have to be in the furthest corner of the kitchen? Years from now, archeologists will find my stiffened corpse halfway across the room, one hand stretched out in desperation for the Keurig.)
My Weather-Whinge™ Complaint Pak is in perfect working order. Storing up for winter.
Oh sure, it’s supposed to be in the 40s tonight; you’re snickering today, making jokes about the “climate change hoax.”
Just wait a week and see how you feel.
Follow Ipswich resident Doug Brendel at Outsidah.com.