Having grown up in a desert (despite my mother's best efforts to turn our yard into something other than) I consider myself fairly good at dealing with the heat. I've survived at least four blistering sunburns. The worst of which I got at Seven Peaks along with my good friend Heidi Banks on the last day of seventh grade. That summer my shoulders peeled six times. My Dr. husband informs me now in his clinical voice that I probably should have been hospitalized for second degree burns. Anyway, after living most of my life in that western desert I then spent a few years in very green and very humid places, New England and the Great Northwest. (Yes, we've bounced around a bit.) For the first time I found myself closing up the bread bag so the bread wouldn't go soggy, and wishing my dishclothes would just dry on the sink instead staying incessantly damp. My stick straight hair even picked up the tiniest hint of a wave. But really, no big deal, I could definitely handle the extra moisture in the air as long as the thermometer stayed hovering around 74 degrees. Then I moved to Iowa. Which I love. It really is heaven like the movie suggests. But for the first time I've seen the totally dehabilitating power of desert temperatures that bump around triple digits combined with humidity levels almost as high. Vermont and Oregon just didn't get this hot. So here I am thinking I have the worst planning ever, a month from my fifth child's due date and watching my feet get as puffy as an old woman's. There are pillows potruding from my sunday shoes that look nothing at all like a part of my body and my hands have carpal tunnel so bad that I can't hold a pencil long enough to write a grocery list. So whether its that I wish I'd known sooner to work out a pregnancy earlier in the spring, or that I wish I'd known not to underestimate the intense midwest climate I'm not sure. Either way I'm just telling myself over and over again how thankful I am that I'm not living in a dugout or out of a wagon, I have popsicles and air conditioning and my doctor is a woman and just might admit me a little ahead of schedule out of pure pity.
