This was one of those "occupational hazards of being a stagehand" that is an occupational hazard of life right now. It's eleventy hundred degrees across half the nation with 148% humidity and a heat index of 456 degrees, which doesn't make for a good day for anybody (unless, of course, you're Stacy London, who once confessed that it "takes an entire village" to look as good as she does).
By the way, I have a tendency to be melodramatic, which means I exaggerate from time to time. The overstated numbers here don't change the fact that it feels like an oven outside, and a sauna would probably feel like a refreshing place to hang out these days.
I have worked in these conditions, which is plenty miserable. Yet somehow, I think it feels more miserable when I am not working. See, at least when I'm working, I pretty much expect to feel like that, along with sticky and gritty and all that.
But when I am not working, I am no different than any other girl or woman out there. I want to be the prettiest girl at the barbecue (jeez, I have got to find another copy of that book "Southern Rules for Women", too fucking funny), and when it is this damned hot and humid nobody is the prettiest girl at the barbecue. Except maybe my puppy, who seems to thrive in this crappy ass heat.
I remember reading news articles last summer about the folks in New York who weren't washing their clothes because it was "too hot". Really people, that's just gross. Here in the South, where one can easily get sunburned in late November, that's silly. I'm reading news articles about people buying khaki and tan and brown clothes because it's "too hot" to do laundry and those colors don't show dirt, and I'm ironing my beautiful non-oatmeal colored clothes because I want to feel fabulous all the time. Sometimes, that means sweating over the laundry. Besides, it smells better.
I guess I do have to cut those people a little slack. It's not like they have been dealing with weather like this for generations. Although at the rate we're going, they will be dealing with it for generations to come, so they better get used to it. It's not like the polar ice caps are growing, now is it?
Then again, I was in Chicago back in the 90's when it was so hot there that the National Enquirer published photos of Satan's face in the clouds over the city and people were dying with frightening frequency from heat related causes. And those guys didn't buy brown clothes because they didn't want to wash laundry. It was stupid hot up there that summer. And I drove a black truck, which became a crematorium around 4 in the afternoon after baking in the sun all day. (have you ever tried to park a king cab, long bed truck in Chicago? Don't. It's not an easy task. It takes a special team of spotters to find a space, and you better hope it's still there by the time you arrive with the truck.)
I digress. (I seem to do that a lot.)
Back to the bad hair day I feel coming on for tomorrow. If I find I have to go somewhere, I think I'll just go all 80's redneck on the world and make sure that it's a hair day so bad I need to watch out for ceiling fans.
I suppose I'm grateful that I'm older and wiser today. (Older and wiser than what, I don't know, because I sure was stupid before I got clean.)
It means I can feel a bad hair day coming on and revel in it to a certain extent. Because it's either that, or cry. And if I cry, there goes the make-up too.
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