Night One in the Sauna.... and hopefully the last!

Yesterday was the hottest day of the summer (so far). The heat index was over 100 yesterday, and the weather people issued a heat advisory (because we needed them to tell us it's hot....). Fortunately today is supposed to be worse. Um... hooray?

Anyway, yesterday was the day our air conditioner decided to crap out (we think it actually stopped working Monday evening, but it just had enough cool air left that we didn't notice it until yesterday evening). Our thermostat downstairs only reads up to 90 degrees, and the little red arrow thing was way beyond 90. So downstairs, it was over 90, which means upstairs was even worse (because heat rises), and our bedroom was even more terrible, because of the sun beating down and super-heating the room. It was terrible. We ended up spending our evening at the lake in the nice water for a few hours and then at McDonalds in the air conditioning. I think we got back home around 10, and we were hoping that since it had cooled down outside, it would be cooler inside, too.... and no such luck. Upstairs was still swelteringly hot, and downstairs was only barely tolerable (I have no idea how people who don't have a/c can do it.... especially pregnant women with no a/c, because it's terrible!). So instead of risking melting to death upstairs, Zach and I set up camp downstairs in the living room- Zach slept on the air mattress, I was on the couch (it was too hot to be close to each other), and we were surrounded by a box fan, oscillating fan, ceiling fan, and a surprisingly powerful personal fan. It was still terribly hot, but it was ok for the night.

We ended up not going to bed until 12:30, because it was just too hot to even think about feeling tired.  Then we woke up at 3:30, hearing this absolutely horrid yowling from Mali- she was on the windowsill in the living room, all poofed up, and kind of jumping and screaming and hissing at something outside. Scared me half to death, and I'm pretty sure I teleported across the living room, because I was laying on the couch one second and the next I had grabbed my glasses and flung myself across the room and I was holding Mali (it didn't occur to me until later that you really shouldn't pick up a cat who is obviously terrified like that). We're not exactly sure what happened (I didn't see anything outside) but we think it was some animal outside that got Mali riled up. We're thinking a raccoon (there's been one around) or something just got curious about Mali, since she was hanging out in the window, and either got too close for Mali's comfort or it startled her (she might have been sleeping on the sill). It was a horrible noise, though, it seriously sounded like she was being stabbed- definitely made my heart start racing and my hands shake. It may have been a cat, too, I think there's been a stray around, but Mali usually only hisses at new cats, and this was a hugely dramatic reaction for whatever creature to just be a cat.

But whatever it was disappeared, and we checked Mali over for cuts or bites or something, even though the screen in the window was still in tact- she just had such a violent reaction that we were afraid there was something wrong with her. We didn't find anything, thankfully, and she's been acting fine, but it was definitely scary (then again, I'm extremely attached to our cat).

So that was our night. I've been drinking loads of water, doing my best to stay cool, and Sea Monkey is helpfully kicking away to remind me s/he's ok so I have one less thing to stress about. And someone is on their way to fix our a/c. Thank God.

I'm sure I sound like a complete wimp about the lack of air conditioning, since some people don't have it at all, but dangit, it's hot, I'm pregnant, and I've never handled heat well. I told Zach we now have to move to the beach (ocean beach, not lake beach) where the weather is pretty much perfect all year long (oh, Pismo), and then we just won't have to worry about it. So.... we're going to work on that.