Current status: 96% humidity.
I'm sure the percentage of water inhaled has been higher than that too from time to time. I intellectually knew it gets humid out here, but hadn't quite mentally adjusted to the tropicalness of it all until it really happened in full force this summer. Thankfully, I kinda liked Hawaii and Roatan, so I'm doing just fine. Though the kitties seem to have moments of the wet heat buggin them, and when I pet them they seem kind of wet.
Everything seems kind of wet. The pages in books, freshly dried sheets, the wood floors, a spoon. I keep the windows open, and with a nice fan breeze going, it feels like camping without, you know, the camping part of it. Anything removed from the fridge immediately grows condensation. If you think about it too much, you'll become slightly air-o-phobic -- feels like you're breathing in the Connecticut River, and you suspect there's a tributary in your lungs that hasn't been exhaled properly. Solution: don't think.
Rainfall is constant throughout the year here, so it's going to stay green all summer. So while I begged the trees to grow green in April FASTER (why take so long to recover from winter already!?!), late summer months do not yield the typical brown lawns or expensive water bills of the west. Yesterday morning, thunder cracked the sky so loud, I actually woke up (though not for long :-). Today we had an inch and a half of rain, though it's the kind of rain most Cascadians aren't as familiar with. Warm rain. Rather comforting. As long as you don't think too long on the tornado that touched down fourteen miles away in Wendell yesterday. Again: enough with the thinking. Tomorrow's adventure may include getting an air conditioner ... it appears to be a compelling incentive for kitty sitters in these parts ...
This has been your Western Mass weather report, brought to you by Compare & Contrast -- because the East ain't like the West. And by Half Sprite -- because lord knows what would happen to you if you drank a whole one.
Note the condensation madness:
And another Compare & Contrast factoid: I bought new tires on Monday, and instead of receiving free beef from the likes of Les Schwab in the west, I was handed a pink carnation at Tire Warehouse in Greenfield, a small New England tire chain. Caught off guard, I giggled and asked without thinking what I was supposed to do with it. "Well, you could put it in between your teeth and dance ..."
