central air

for weeks (months, actually, if you count the very warm weather in april) i've been living with open windows. it's a beautiful thing, even if the spring pollen will leave itself all over everything and require a little extra effort to keep things looking well-tended. (to which i should digress a moment to observe that, now that i'm no longer living in close proximity to cats, i've had zero allergic reaction to pollen this spring, and one has to wonder why one person would subject another they're supposed to care about to that sort of thing for decades, and while said other person wouldn't object to it, but that's another story for another time).

where were we?

ahh, yes, open windows...

this past weekend we've started to cross the line into the occasional new england summer swelter, where even seventies can feel a bit close, when the humidity gets high enough. and then it hit me... i've got central air conditioning!

now i'm not saying i'm looking forward to hermetically sealing myself into a little box for the summer, because i'm not, and i won't. (as a matter of fact, with the humidity passed again today, i'm back to the open windows with hopes of not having to close them in the same way i have hopes every day of not having to use my car). but when the sticky, hot line gets crossed, there's something decadently luxurious about being able to say to yourself, gee, i think seventies sound better than eighties for me right now, and lets wring a little of that moisture out of the air so we can breathe again while we're at it, shall we?

i can hear all the environmentalists in the audience already starting to groan at the sentiment, but i have to ask 'em, what with my walls being surrounded on five out of six sides by other energy-efficient living spaces and not the climactic crapshoot that would have been nature only now is suburban sprawl, how long they think i'd have to run the central air to catch up to the carbon dioxide emissions of their gas-belching two-cycle lawnmower alone? (not to mention their cars for all their trips to places to which folks like me can walk, etc. etc. etc.). that snifty little (or not so little) hybrid suv sure feels good, but it's true that one could drive a hummer for a goodly long time before the environmental impact added back up to the global-warming body punch contributed by the chemicals in that mutha-big battery. but you'd have to think about it to get it.

so i guess this is all to say that i don't think folks think for themselves all that often. i know i went for decades without it, and as much as i loved those cats, (zipper, i miss you most of all), it's pretty clear to me now that i shouldn't have been sharing my living space with them for all those years. funny what we'll do for the mirage of love...

i think i'll go open some windows.