Well, the nice weather is almost over. We had a frigid February and an equally cold March, save for one pleasant week at the start. April has been balmy and enjoyable (barring a period of four consecutive days of rain), as the trees flowered and the bushes began to leaf out.
And then yesterday it was ninety degrees. Admittedly, it is cooler today, but the nights have become sticky and the days sweat-stained. Any second now the mosquitos will appear.
I'm poorly equipped for humidity. Where I grew up, the only issue with humidity was the almost total lack of it. Irrigation of both yourself and your yard was mandatory - here they fully expect to never water their lawns.
It's the nights that are the most annoying. We don't have central air, so the choice is between uncomfortable heat and stickiness, or a rattling window unit that produces cold air for one spot and begrudgingly lets it slowly filter around the house. Back in California, if you got too hot you had only to enter the shade, and even though your lungs were still sucking in parchingly hot and dry air, sweating would cool you off. Here sweating only makes you damper.
Undershirts are an interesting case in point. I'd always wondered what they were about - now I know. Sweat blotters. Back home, most folks didn't wear undershirts beneath their dress shirts. Too hot, and if you exerted yourself enough to develop those dark folded circles under your arms, you just had to calm down and wait a while and they'd go away.
Not here. Here in the damp East, undershirts are mandatory because sweat circles never go away. I suspect if I looked in the laundry bin, I'd find last week's shirts still dark at the armpits.
So, grudgingly, I've taken to wearing undershirts. I buy the ones with the deep 'V' neck, not to show off my healthy expanse of chest hair but because, not being accustomed to undershirts, the ones with collars drive me freaking batty. Like there's some sort of poltergeist with its hands around my neck all day long. No, thank you. So it's the 'V' necks for me.
Wife-beaters I don't get. I wear sleeveless tank tops to the gym, but that's an outer shirt. Since undershirts are, basically, blotters, why you would ever buy one without armpits is beyond me. I guess it's a look. Maybe I would understand were I from New Jersey.
Anyhow, it's supposed to be in the seventies and overcast with some rain for the rest of the week. I guess I should enjoy it; it'll be ninety again and dripping for the next five months.
Time to go buy some undershirts.
- Sun Ra