LiL’deviL’s LittLe famiLy

Between Christmas of 2005 and New Year of 2006 

I remembered that I was pregnant with Ethan, around the 6th month. It was the hottest summer that I’ve ever experienced. The first year of summer that I was here in 2003 I’ve experienced a temperature of 40°C and that was real bad. I remember my roommate and I were having such hard time studying for our finals for our summer course.

If you think 40°C was bad, imagine this: I was pregnant (when you’re pregnant your body tends to be warmer than normal people because of all the hormones), and the temperature went up to 44°C! Still not bad enough? Well, the temperature was above the 40s°C for FOUR days! I believe I was in hell for four whole days. We have a ceiling fan outside in our living/dining/kitchen, and table fan in our room, we were using two that time. Nope, that didn’t solve the heat problem, so it got worse. We couldn’t sleep on our bed because it was really warm. So we tried to sleep outside on our sofa bed and that was warm too. Then we slept on the floor, actually Eddie did, I tried, but it was too hard and do I have to remind you that I was pregnant? So I kinda slept on the sofa bed, just half of me anyway, I put my legs down to get as much air circulation as possible.

So what did I do on those four days I was in hell? NOTHING! It was real hot outside, and our house was like an oven. Really, I couldn’t even watch dvd or read a book. I took showers several times a day and then would soak myself in the bathtub of cold water. That was real refreshing, didn’t want to come up, I would’ve slept in there, but I didn’t. On the last day of the heatwave (we didn’t know it was the last day then), my landlord came to his office, turned on the air-conditioner and let me in. On that night itself, the temperature went back to normal, so it was really cooling again, outside, our house was still an oven. It took a while before it cooled down again.

That was what happened to me. I remembered there was a huge part of Adelaide metro area, I think east of the CBD, had their powers cut off. So they didn’t get their air-con, well tough luck, join the club! That was not the bad thing, it was the supermarkets that had all their cold food rotten because no power to keep them cool. Many of them filed complaints to the power company, ETSA I believe it was, and they had to cover all those who was affected with reimbursements, cash.

Now that is a summer I WILL NOT FORGET!