Beware the sweaty swamp monster
Last weekend, I found myself looking at kids’ inflatable swimming pools online and wondering if I could safely type on my laptop while the rest of me was under a cold shower.
Once upon a time, I loved the heat. Give me a temperature above 30 any day, I would think. I can handle it. These days, I am just a slow, clammy swamp monster watching the mercury rise.
Last weekend, I found myself looking at kids’ inflatable swimming pools online and wondering if I could safely type on my laptop while the rest of me was under a cold shower.
It’s probably early onset menopause. Maybe it’s not even early onset. Maybe it’s just menopause.
Either way, I have found one good use for it. I use the sweaty back of my neck a punishment for my friend’s children. So, if they’re not nice to Mrs Lady (me) they have to touch the drenched neck. It’s a threat that has never failed to reign in any misdemeanour.
I’m hoping there is an end to this clammy period of life. My Grandma, who is 98, is often very cold. I suppose that’s because she is mainly skin and bones and I’m a long way from that, but no matter the outside temperature, it always feels as if her tootises are on loan from Jack Frost.
What a disaster zone we were in her bathroom the other day. She’s fresh out of the shower in a steamy bathroom with the heated towel rail and the blow heater on full. I am red-faced and wilting, opening the door every other minute, gasping for some cool air, before returning to help.
I’m also still recovering from a badly broken ankle. The bone is healed but the tissue around it is still doing its thing, which means the ankle is still swollen and becomes especially elephantine on hot days.
I mostly wear jandals, because of the heat and because of my ankle. This means I am on target to stub my toes on a trolley at least twice with every supermarket trip.
I’m also at a stage where I’m only confident on hot days if I’m carrying 3B thigh rub cream around in my handbag.
And of course, with summer comes the inevitable articles about how to get ‘‘beach body ready’’ and a new deluge of body parts women end up feeling ashamed about.
The latest is the ‘‘armpit vagina’’ – a throwaway comment actress Jennifer Lawrence once made at the Screen Actors Guild Awards. Now it’s the latest headache in the armpit for women wearing singlets or anything sleeveless which may reveal the area where a totally normal arm attaches to a totally normal body. It’s hard to keep up, I know. If you are in any way concerned, please try to get your armpit to do sit-ups.
Night time is the worst. I’ve seen a lot of fellow clammy insomniacs posting about their sleepless nights at odd hours on social media during those hot nights. I’ve tried leaving my heat pump on air con but only the last gasps of it reach my bedroom.
I sleep on one side of the bed until that gets too warm, when I roll to the other. I don’t feel comfortable sleeping with nothing on me, so I throw off the duvet and am left with a sheet.
At this point, it’s not the heat that stops me sleeping, it’s that I live with three pesky cats who see any twitch of my be-sheeted toes as a call to arms, or paws, well, actually, claws.
At this point, the only thing left to do is evict them all from my room and shut the door.
This leaves me sweating in an airless room while my cats claim all the benefit of the air conditioner. Hey! Now that I write it down in black and white, this seems like their plan all along. I hope cats get menopause.