I Hate The Stupid Weather!

I HATE THIS STUPID WEATHER!

Move to the city, they said. You’ll love the city, they said. There’s soooo much to do in the city, they said.

These thoughts scrolled through my brain, as I trudged down the street. It’s literally hotter than hell out, and the city is doing its best, trapping all the heat under its invisible heat dome. All that black asphalt, all those impermeable surfaces—chef’s kiss—all the heat is trapped, all the time, all over the city. No escape. Gross.

I hate it. A lot. I don’t even like hot yoga, let alone the unrelenting heat that prevents any type of cooling. Walk out in the middle of the night, and the sidewalk is still hot on your feet. There is no relief. And don’t get me started on the humidity! If I wanted to live in a sauna, I don’t know, I’d move to Finland. I don’t want to live in these stupid “dog-days of summer.” I hate it! And according to my weather app, it’s expected to continue for the next week, at least. Seven more days of melting in the heat. I feel like the Wicked Witch of the West at the end of The Wizard of Oz—“I’m meeeelting.”  

Today is supposed to be the hottest day of the year, temperature records broken, humidity one hundred percent, no wind, not even a breeze. Until the raging thunderstorms arrive in the evening, soaking and flooding, but not cooling.  

I officially hate summer! There, I said it. And don’t pretend that you like it, either! I know you hate it, but are programmed to love summer because it’s so short! Nobody could love this morass of scorching heat and stifling humidity.

Public transpo woes don’t help. I’m clomping down the street on my way to work because of them. There is no scenario in which I would be walking to work, ever. Normally—on a normal day—which today isn’t—I would have taken the subway to my office, but because it’s so eff-ing hot out, the subway is out of service. All the lines. For the entire city! Something about the heat not being conducive to steel rails—too hot, and the rails swell, and warp, which can lead to a derailment. Nobody wants that. Especially if you’re on the train. So the powers that be shut the entire system down this morning before eight a.m. If it’s too flipping hot for the subway to work, then it’s too hot for me to be hoofing it to work. And, yet, here I am. What kind of hell am I living in?

If I’d known the subway would crash and burn (not literally), I would have stayed home. But nooooo, I was well over half way to work when the system shut down—with no idea when service would resume. So I continued to work. On foot. They said that buses would be available, but tell me, who in their right mind would want to jam onto an overcrowded, overheated bus in this weather? All those sweating bodies, the pungent tang of body odor filling the air, bad breath circulating, sweaty bodies pushing against each other, Every person on the bus has somewhere important to go, right now, so to hell with everybody else. Every person for themselves! And all these people are on the same bus you want to get on, and they will squish in ’til there is no inch unoccupied. No. Thank. You. Just the thought of it makes my skin crawl. Ergo, here I am schlepping towards work, sweat pouring down my face, sweat-soaked clothes sticking to my frame, head blooming from the heat.

Oh god! My face! I can feel it melting. This morning, when I was putting on my makeup, it never occurred to me that I would actually be outside, walking in this heat. I realized that it would be warm, but there is pretty good air-con on the train, and the office is always cool, so no worries, right? Wrong. No sunscreen, no hat, the sun beating down on my head. Just thinking about it, I feel my hair frizz.

I HATE THE CITY!

I HATE SUMMER!

I HATE MY LIFE!

Finally, after an eternity, I make it to my office building. I push through the revolving doors and enter the wonderful, marvellous, amazing climate-controlled sanctuary that is the front lobby. I revel in the air conditioning that is so efficient I sometimes have to wear a light sweater while sitting at my desk. The bliss. The ecstasy. The cool air caresses my cheek. I almost weep and fall to the cool marble floor, I am so thankful to have made it this far.

“Hot enough for you?” asks Jake, the front desk security guard. He chortles at his own joke.

I glare, saying nothing. I stomp over to the elevators, and jab the up button. When the doors open, I step into the car with the three other people waiting to ascend to their climate-controlled offices.  

We stand in silence as the car doors close, and the car moves upwards.

Standing there, I let the cooled air wash over me, just enjoying the moment. But, what’s that? I can’t believe it! Is it karma, or someone’s idea of an ironic joke? The muzak is playing Heatwave by Martha and the Vandellas.

I can’t help it. I start to laugh. It’s been a morning, and I find the coincidence humorous— laugh-out-loud humorous. The three other people in the elevator look at me, and each takes a step away from me, leaving me standing alone in the middle of the car, laughing like a loon.

“No! No!" I sputter between guffaws, “the song playing—” I point up at the ceiling “—is Heatwave! Like today! Apropos, or what!” I continue to laugh.

I can see that they’re listening to the song, but, apparently, don’t find it nearly as amusing as I do. I assume they didn’t just walk thirty blocks to work in sweltering heat this morning, either. So, there’s that.

My stop is first, on the thirty-first floor. The doors open, and I walk off, smiling. Heatwave! At least I can find something amusing about an overall crappy day so far.

Melanie, our receptionist, is a just getting to her work station. I know that she lives downtown and always walks to work, but she certainly doesn’t look like I feel.

“Oh my God!” Her eyes are wide, a look of surprise directed towards me. “What happened?”

I look around. I’m the only one in the reception area, so … She’s talking about me!

“What?” I ask.

“You’re all sweaty, and gross.” She scrunches up her nose in distaste. “Eww!”

Without another word, I turn on my heel, walk out of the office, and head to the women’s washroom.  

Standing in front of the mirror, I understand why my elevator mates were wary of me. I look like a crazy person—a hot, sweaty, crazy person.  

“Eww!” I say aloud to my reflection, “Melanie’s right. I look hideous!”

My hair, which I straighten every morning so it doesn’t do exactly what it is doing right now, is a catastrophe. It’s twice as wide as it is long, with my ends corkscrewing out all over my head. I look like I’ve been electrocuted!

My makeup is a disaster. My running mascara makes me look like an Alice Cooper wannabe, and there are sweat streaks through my foundation and blush. My lip gloss has melted around my mouth, giving it a Joker-esque appearance. I really do look like a crazy person—a hot, disheveled crazy person.

Plus, plus, plus, I have a frigging sunburn on my face. Fantastic. People as pale as me should never leave the house without sunblock and a hat But, yet, knowing this, I did just that. Sigh.

My clothes do not look like the ones I put on this morning. I’m wearing a long-sleeved white shirt, with a pair of khaki slacks, that looked pretty on-trend when I left the house. Not so much now. There are sweat stains under my arms and across my back. I’ve perspired so much my blouse is almost translucent. Not a good look. And the back of my pants show the dampness from my butt sweat. Just not the vibe I was looking for this morning.

I look like a complete tragedy. There are no other words for how I look—disaster, catastrophe, and tragedy sum me up perfectly.

I turn on the water in the sink, and try for some sort of remediation. Ten minutes later, I return to the office, sans makeup, hair pulled back and manhandled into a messy bun, shirt mostly dry thanks to the hand blower.

Melanie smiles at me. “Much better!” she says, smiling.

I’ve been working diligently and the morning flies by. I look at my watch and am surprised to find that it’s lunchtime. I’m supposed to meet a client after lunch, at his office, which is only a couple of blocks away, so I decide to grab something for lunch and then head over. The downtown core is connected by a series of underground walkways and stores—havens in the winter and in the summer heat, like today.  

I decide to go underground to get to the client’s office, never having to surface, and enter the inferno—thank you planning god, you have my eternal gratitude!

I say goodbye to Melanie, and tell her I should be back in a couple of hours. When the elevator arrives, I’m the only passenger. I enter the car and press the button that will get me to the lower level. The doors shut, and the car begins its decent.

Then it stops. And the lights go out momentarily, but the emergency lights come on.

A power outage? We’re having a power outage? And I’m stuck in the friggin’ elevator. This cannot be happening? Was I a climate change denier in another life? Is that why I’m being punished? First the subway, and now the elevator? Just shoot me and put me out of my misery.

I push the emergency button, and voice booms from the small speaker on the panel.

“Help you?”

“Umm, I’m in the elevator, and it’s not moving. What’s going on?”

“Lotsa people are stuck in elevators, lady. The whole grid just crashed. Yur gonna hafta wait ’til fire rescue gets here.”

“Any idea how long?” I said, already noticing the slow creep upwards in the temperature in the car.

“No idea. Yur gonna hafta wait ’til they get here. I told ‘em we’ve got people in elevators, stuck.”

Two and a half hours later, another voice came over the speaker.

“Hello! Anybody in this car?”

I almost jumped out of my skin. I’d almost accepted that I was going to die in this elevator car, alone, and dehydrated.

“Yes! Yes! I’m here!”

“We’re coming to get you now. Just hang on. You should be out in about twenty minutes.”

It was the longest twenty minutes of my life. The elevator dropped a bit (and I saw my life pass before my eyes, thank you very much), then settled. I saw some hands prying the doors open

Thank you, Sweet Baby Jesus!

We were between floors, so a couple of burly firefighters hoisted me up and out.

Yay! Freedom!

“You’re free to go,” said one calendar-worthy fire fighter.

I looked around. “What floor are we on?” I asked, dreading the answer.

He said, “Thirty. You’re going to have to take the stairs down.” He tried to smile. “Normally, the elevators reset during an outage, and descend to the lobby, but this time something wonky affected them, so you have to get down on your own.” He handed me a bottle of water (which I gulped, greedily), and flashed me a stunningly white smile.

“Fine,” I said, peeling my re-sweated-through shirt off of my torso. During my entombment, the temperature had become almost unbearable. By the time they freed me, I wasn’t sure that I would be able to rehydrate my desiccated corpse. And now, I had to trudge down thirty flights of stairs to get to street level? 

I HATE THIS WEATHER!

I sighed. Significantly.

“You’ll be okay taking the stairs?” asked Dazzling Teeth Fire Fighter.

“Sure,” I said, eyeing the stairwell door. “I probably won’t die.”

He smiled, and handed me another water. “Take your time going down. You’ll be fine.”

And, off I went into the stairwell. I’d been stuck in the elevator so long that I was the only person left to escape the building. All the other floors had already evacuated. I opened the door and stood looking over the rail, down towards ground level. The emergency lights kept flickering and buzzing, not illuminating the stairwell at all. I started walking, making my way down, alone, in the stuffy, poorly lit, echo-y stairwell. Nothing creepy about that, at all.

There are no psychos in the stairwell. There are not psychos in the stairwell, became my mantra.

About a million years later I made it to the lobby. Jake had abandoned his staton. Of course he had. I made my way out onto the street.

Still really, really, really hot. Maybe even hotter than it was in the elevator. With less air circulation.

Gross!

I shielded my eyes, and looked around. People were lined up, waiting for busses to ferry them home. The line ups were daunting. The traffic was epic. No stop lights, so mayhem was ensuing.

I sat on the low wall in front of my building, surveying the chaos. There was no way I would be able to make it home within my natural lifetime. I would die here, at work. Good thing I don’t have any pets waiting for me at home.

I sat there, exhausted, looking at the bedlam surrounding me. There was nothing I could do. I did consider walking the twenty miles home, but, really, no thank you. Or I could just sit here, and watch the pandemonium unfold. I opted for option two.

“You made it!”

I jumped, startled out of my reverie. It was Dazzling Teeth, standing right beside me, smiling.

“I did,” I said, stating the obvious.

“What’s next?” he asked.

I shrugged, and wiped the sweat from my brow. “I have no idea. I think I’m just going to sit here, and … I don’t know, wait for life to return to normal.” I shrugged again.

He smiled. “Last time this happened, it took over twenty-four hours for the grid to be restored.”

“I can wait,” I said. “It’s either that, or I walk twenty miles home.” I returned his smile. “That’s not going to happen, so wait it is.”

He nodded, thinking.

“You wanna come to my house?” he asked. “I’ve got a generator that powers my entire house when the grid goes down. It even runs the a/c.” He smiled at me. “I’m off in an hour. You could wait for me at the station. There’s a/c there, as well.”

I looked at him, considering. What if he was dangerous? He didn’t look like a serial killer. But what, exactly did a serial killer look like? He could be dangerous. I didn’t even know his name. But he had air conditioning.  

“Sure,” I said. “Lead the way!”

I was willing to risk it. At least if he was a serial killer, I’d die in climate controlled bliss.