It isn't easy being Green....

...when it's so gosh darn HOT!

Yeah, we have an air conditioner(a newly purchased and very powerful one that pretty much cools down the entire house. I live in a small place.)and I am happier than I ever thought I would be, having one(ordinarily, I hate being cooped up with the A/C on and being cold and not fresh air). My husband loves the A/C even more than me. He gets warm very easily and has a hard time sleeping in the summer, even when I am perfectly fine on a mild night with the windows open.

But, still...I feel guilty about running one so often. I constantly think of all the other air conditioners and fans running in all the other homes and businesses and the enormous power usage(as well as the bill!). The connection between our comfort and energy use and way of life and .....disastrous oil spills in the ocean is all too clear to me.

Still, having the A/C was a godsend to us.

We had company stay with us for four days and it was smoking hot the entire time, so in order that our guests(my brother and his wife and their two small children) were comfortable here with us, especially at night in bed, we had that machine running almost non-stop.

In summers past in this house, we had an older one that did kind of a poor job of cooling down the place, but we rarely had to turn it on(maybe a full seven days in the entire summer), anyway.

But, since May(and even April) it has been hotter than usual. Before this summer, I thought we had the ideal summers here on the coast of Rhode Island-usually no higher than 85*F(25*C), and often a cool breeze, especially in the mornings. I would sip hot tea, sometimes with a sweater on, outside in the evenings. But there hasn't really been any of that kind of weather all summer, so far.

Today, at least, we were able to keep the windows open and not run that thing. I hear birds. And kids screaming as they whizz past our house on their bikes--there is a hill they coast on and it bottoms out right in front of our house.

There is a fan whirring away in the other room. I like that gentler noise better. It makes me think of summers past, especially when I was a kid. All we had were fans. And supper outdoors. Sometimes, in a heat wave, we slept down in the cellar, or outside, even. I don't really remember too many air-conditioned places growing up. Maybe the movie theatres were air conditioned. But even stores had these enormous fans , instead of air conditioning. There were open doors and windows in businesses. Now there are sealed up Big Box stores and malls with windows that don't open. So, air conditioning has to be used. And again, guiltily, but truthfully, I have to admit I love that frosty blast I feel as I walk into a business these days.

I wonder how it's been up in Camden, Maine lately. I'll always remember a week in July when I stayed near there (about seven years ago) and the town's grocery store with it's front door wide open, and the cold breeze off the harbor coming in the place. There was absolutely no need for even a fan in that place!

I am heading up north to the White Mountains in a few days. The weather report is suggesting we may get temps in the low 80's during the day and nights in the 50's(10*C). I really hope its true.