The World Has Turned and Left Me Here

Photo: MontyPython, Flickr Creative Commons

I feel moist. Today is one of those days when you take out a piece of notebook paper and it instantly goes limp and damp in your hands. We're more than a week into December. It shouldn't be this way. This is the kind of thing that happens in May through September around here. The excessive humidity pairs with the excessive heat to create an environment that reminds one of the image of hell painted by a Southern Baptist preacher intent on saving a few souls during a tent revival. It's ironic that the Deep South is a part of the Bible Belt. Burning in hell shouldn't be so scary after living through a few of our summers. This is why I flee my home for the north every summer and why I spend way to much time and money vacationing. This is part of why I hate the entire state of Florida. It's why I teach, so I can escape this place during the summer.

The late fall, winter, and early spring, on the other hand, are usually quite nice. I'd rather be cold than hot and cold here is a day with highs in the fifties and nights in the thirties. Nights that dip below the freezing point are extremely rare. Many Christmases I've been able to walk around in short sleeves and even shorts because of clear skies and highs in the 70s. I like this place in the winter. We may miss out on the explosion of fall color experienced by the rest of the East Coast, but we get the greens of summer year round. Even our oaks here are evergreens. The five- to six-hundred-year-old live oak in my parents' front yard is just as green today as it was in June. Only the pecans and cypress drop their leaves.

Today sucks though. I woke up to find that the temperature was already at 70 degrees. My front porch was slick with condensation despite being fully closed in from the elements. My clothes felt sticky and uncomfortable as soon as I stepped out of my door. Worse, the air conditioners in my school don't handle this weather too well. The temperature outside is too mild for the A/C to lurch on and dry the air inside, so the climate in the rooms gradually becomes just as humid and gross as the climate outside. To compensate, I'm forced to bump the thermostat down. I normally keep my rooms warmer than I like, but I can't on days like today. I'm not really a claustrophobic person, but on days like today, the walls seem a little closer together. Hopefully this warm humid front will pass quickly and I'll be able to get back to the crisp cool weather of a South Georgia winter.