by Tricia
Yesterday was a pretty hot and humid day. Today was supposed to be more of the same, so last night and today we did a few things to help keep ourselves cooler today.
Put fans in the windows to bring in the cooler night air. Once the sun went down yesterday, we got some relief. Unfortunately, our house was still pretty hot. We put some fans in the windows and sucked in as much of that cool air as we could before going to bed.
In the morning, I shut all of the shades. It’s a little depressing to live in the dark during the day, but it worked wonders to keep our home cooler. Just one ray of sunlight coming through the window can really heat up things. We have good shades in the home we have now, but in that past we’ve hung blankets on windows to keep out the sun.
Throughout the day, I drank water. I recently purchased a large jug/water bottle to hold 8 glasses of water. It will help to make sure that I drink enough water in a day. When filled with ice water, it it really hit the spot to help keep me cool.
After work, we headed to the lake. Lake Superior (the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area) can be quite chilly for swimming. It’s so large that it takes a lot for the water to warm up in the summer. The minute I stepped into the lake, I couldn’t stop. I had to keep going because it felt so good. Before long, I was dunking myself and swimming around like an alligator (that’s what my son was calling me when I was chasing him around). Man, I love that lake.
I do have to confess that I did turn on the air conditioner for about twenty minutes around 3:30pm. My office gets the afternoon sun for about three hours before my trees start blocking it. My office is also upstairs, and all of the heat rises up there. I broke down and kicked on the air to help cool things down a little bit.
In all, it ended up being like a game for me to try to do what I could to prevent the need for the air conditioner. Making it a game where you are challenging yourself makes it fun. What Rob in Madrid discussed about fighting discouragement about debt applies here as well. I really wanted to see how much I could do.
