coping with the heat

Heat Wave

/ Re-Farmer / 2 Comments

Today was our day to go into the city to do our big shopping trip.

We didn’t finish.

We currently have more weather warnings. This time for heat!

I took the above screenshot shortly before 4:30pm. We might actually go a bit higher before it starts cooling down. 30C/86F is hot enough, but check out the humidex expected for Monday! 40C = 104F

We’ve been getting enough rain lately that our municipality has removed the burn ban, completely. No restrictions at all right now! We have lots that needs to be burned, but with the heat, who wants to be around fire right now? :-D

And we don’t have air conditioning in the van anymore, nor even working fans in the console.

It did make the trip into the city … interesting!

We managed to get to the Walmart and the Costco to stock up. After gassing up at the Costco, we were going to go to a couple more places. Then road construction and detours had us doing a route march through residential areas (why are they designed to be such mazes???) before we could back track, go back through the construction, and finally take a road that would get us to the street we needed, albeit at a different spot than I was originally after. By that time, I was done. We just went home.

Part of the reason I was okay with doing that is because my daughter asked for an extra trip into the city, which we’ll be doing tomorrow. She’s buying us a new stove! Since we’ll be in the city again anyhow, we can also pick up the rest of the stuff we need for the month.

Considering she is using her savings and had to quit her job, I am extremely grateful that she is willing to do this for us. The stove we have has only three working elements right now – we stopped using the 4th when we saw sparks every time we turned it on – and even those don’t heat up well, among other issues.

There isn’t much in the monthly shop we need to get, though. The freezer and pantry are stocked up again. We also have lots of cat food and litter – we’d run out of both, completely, as of this morning! The only things left are the items we don’t want to get in bulk quantities, like fresh fruits and vegetables, or ingredients we can only find in various ethnic sections of a grocery franchise we regularly visit now.

With the current heat wave, getting work done outside is going to be difficult. Unless I start getting up at 5am, while it’s still cooler (well; not so much over the next few days). I might just have to start going that. Which means, no more staying up until 2am!

It would mean kicking cats off my bed, too. :-D

Oh, to have the life of our cats! <3

The Re-Farmer

Current conditions – going up!

/ Re-Farmer / 5 Comments

While working on my last post, my friend mentioned the weather conditions, so I paused to take a look.

29C, but feeling like 38C (that’s 84F and 100F, for you folks in the US), with 61% humidity!

No wonder going outside feels like walking into a wall of moist heat. That’s exactly what we’re doing!

Less than 2 hours later, I checked the conditions again. I got this screen capture just minutes ago.

The temperature is still going up! 30C (86F), feeling like 39C (102F).

The forecast over the next few days hasn’t changed (yet?). I’m driving my friend to the airport tomorrow, and we’re planning to go in early to play tourist a bit.

Somewhere with air conditioning.

We might be driving through thunderstorms!

Looks like I might be driving my mother through storms when I take her for a medical appointment in a few days, too.

At this point, a nice storm would be very welcome. More rain to cool things down and get that humidity out of the air, and into the ground!

Chances are, the storms are going to miss us again, but I’ll take the edge of a storm, too!

The Re-Farmer

An Experiment

/ Re-Farmer / 3 Comments

Like so many others right now, we are experiencing a bit of a heat wave.

2018-07-07.heat

It’s the “feels like 41” part that’s the killer.

For those of you in the US, 31C is 87.8F and 41C is 105.8F

Thankfully, my daughter has air conditioning where she works.  Whether or not it will make a difference behind the counter is questionable, though!  I will find out when I pick her up tonight.

So we’re doing very little of anything physical during the hottest parts of the day, right now!

Meanwhile, inspired by a video someone shared on Facebook, I am going to try an experiment.

20180707.water.balloons

After dropping my daughter off at work, I picked up a bag of mixed size balloons.  I used the big enameled container I found in the old kitchen – the one my mother used to mix bread dough in – and gave it a wash (a challenge, since it’s bigger than our sink), then used it to hold the balloons I filled with water.  The package had some teeny tiny balloons, too.  Those, I put in the fridge freezer.  Two batches of these bigger ones are now in the chest freezer.  I’ve got them sitting in reusable grocery bags, so they will be easier to access, later.

When they are frozen, I will put some out for the cats.  The tiny ones will fit in the bowls we have for the indoor cats.  I will start with one big one in one of the water containers for the outside cats and see how it goes over.  I plan to put a smaller one near where the kittens are.  As it melts, it will also water the bush that’s near the entrance to their hiding place.

It should be interesting to see how it works.  For starters, I foresee potential problems with the balloons freezing to each other, due to the condensation on the outside.  As long as I can transport them, that shouldn’t be a problem, since the balloons will be broken and removed before the ice is put out.

I hope the cats like it.

On the topic of animals…

While driving my daughter to work, about half way to town, we saw a small black bear crossing the road!  While I have always known we sometimes have bears around, this is the first time in my life I have actually seen one out here.  Pretty cool!

I imagine the poor thing was really suffering from the heat, though.  :-(

The Re-Farmer

Update:  Wow, that didn’t take long!  After finishing this post, I looked at the weather app again, before closing it down.  It’s already gotten hotter.

2018-07-07.heat2