Summertime Painefull

My feelings precisely

I’ve received several genetic gifts from my Dad – thin hair, ear wax and awful eyesight amongst them.  I know, what a catch?  I’m selling Father Painefull short with that list, he really is quite a handsome man (for the record, that’s another gift he’s given me, the opportunity to be mistaken for a handsome man, and if I wasn’t a woman that would be lovely*).  But chief among those blessings is a strict and overwhelming dislike of hot weather.

It’s an aversion matched only by Lance Armstrong’s disinclination for clean victories and Tina Fey & Amy Poehler’s inability to be anything but funny**.  That and my natural instinct to sleep all day and party all night (if you exchange the word ‘party’ with the phrase ‘re-watch the West Wing’) have led many to reach the only sensible conclusion available – I am a vampire.

There’s certainly a lot of hay to be made with that suspicion.  I’m so pale I practically glow in the dark, my personal ‘style’ can give the appearance that mirrors don’t allow me to see my own reflection on the way out the door, and I only ever play baseball during lightning storms (yep, that baseball thing is all I remember from my entire Twilight viewing experience).

On stunning 41 degree days such as was experienced in ye olde Sydney town (and by extension my own un-air-conditioned, shoddily carpeted rental crib at the Cliff) last week I almost wish I was a vampire.  If I was, the sensation I was about to burst into flames would have made slightly more sense.

How much do I hate the heat?  Let me count the ways.  Here are but some of the signs I am not made to live in such warmth:

I am a vampire
The jury remains out on this one.  This holiday period I managed to score a new personal best when I achieved sunburn at 7pm at night.

My standard life uniform involves jeans for every occasion
Even I must admit I’m pushing the boat out by sticking to them when it gets hot.  It’s heat, and not Mother Painefull’s traumatized sideways glance at my outfit choice, that brings me closest to wanting to own a rack full of dresses.

No one in my family owns a pool
Oh the inhumanity.  Each summer someone promises they’ll be in possession of a cool body of water the following festive season.  They lie.  My standards aren’t even particularly high when the mercury starts to rise - bug-infested, stagnant bodies of water start to look inviting pretty quickly.

It makes me question my commitment to tea drinking
If something shakes my addiction to English Breakfast, then you know it’s not quite right.

Like the American government on an annual basis, I enter total shutdown
Most of my conversations on hot days begin and end with “Don’t talk to me, I’m busy lying still.”  I can’t function.  A majority of my friends have a  photo somewhere from the first time they discovered me spread-eagled on the lounge room floor and refusing to speak in complete sentences for fear of breaking into a fresh sweat.  If I’m sweating and not getting fitter in the process then the world is officially an unfair place***.

One of said friends' photos of me

But never fear fair weather friends (mum, when you read this in a month you’ll see I’m referring to you in the plural now, because it makes me feel more special… so I’m counting you, and the portrait of you that hangs on the wall behind you in your office when you peruse this… that painting is just the gift that keeps on giving), some mild relief is at hand.  One of my besties, Fi, has just moved into an apartment block with a pool.  Which I now refer to as My Pool.  I’m officially like the French royal family pre cake eating fiasco – I have a summer palace.  Now the plan of attack is to simply wait this ‘thing’ (‘thing’ being Painefull for ‘season’) out from the confines of My Pool, emerging only to dowse myself in sunscreen once every hour.  It’s fool proof.

Painefull Out

* = Coming up… The Painefull Guide to Being Mistaken for a Dude

** = And soon… Why one of my closest friendships has been entirely defined over who’s the Tina, and who’s the Amy

*** = But after the break… Ridiculous statements by first world brats regarding what constitutes an unfair world