Feeling the heat

We're in the middle of a pre-summer heat wave out here in Maryland. Not just hot, but oh so humid. Right now at 8:21pm, it is 92 degrees with 47% humidity, according to weather.com. That makes for a heat index of 96 degrees. At almost 8:30pm. Almost 2 weeks before summer even officially starts.

Every year as summer approaches, I try to hold off on turning on the air conditioning. It's just a huge electricity guzzler. Our electricity bill can easily double just by trying to keep the indoor temperature comfortable. I figure that if I wait to turn the A/C on, my body will get more used to the hotter temperatures, and then two things will happen: I will feel slightly more comfortable outdoors in the heat, and I won't need the A/C to be on quite so much. But it's so hard to resist the A/C when it's so humid! The air gets so moist that it feels hard to breath. Every single piece of your clothing sticks to your skin. And carrying around a 14+ pound baby to try to get him to sleep is nearly like walking into a sauna.

And yet, we've managed to keep the air conditioning off so far. (Well, except on one evening, when Jesse came home from the air-conditioned work office, to me using a stovetop burner and the oven at the same time, with nothing more than a fan running.) Today we've mostly avoided cooking hot food, or turning on the lights, and we've kept the blinds closed and the fans turned on, and cold water readily available. And at about 5pm, I remarked to Jesse how surprised I was that I felt fairly comfortable in our 80+ degree, humid apartment.

Now it almost feels like a challenge - when everyone else in the surrounding area has their A/C running full blast, how long can I keep mine off?? How well can I avoid that huge jump in my electricity bill?

At times like this, I seriously miss the Colorado heat. Sure, it'd get to 100 degrees in the summer, but it was dry heat. You don't stick to yourself in dry heat, you only feel like you're baking. That's a lot different from melting! (And, arguably, more comfortable?) Also, the very best part, it actually cools off after the sun goes down. Once it's dark, you can set up fans in your windows to circulate the air through the house, sucking out all the hot air and letting in all the cool air. If you do it all night, you'll actually need your blankets, because it gets down in the 60's, consistently! But here in Maryland? Tonight, we can look forward to a lovely 75 degrees with 67% humidity.... which is bad enough, but that won't happen until 4:00am!!! It's still going to be in the 80's through the 3 o'clock hour. Yikes. Not much potential for cooling off, there. I'm learning to sleep without covers, and with a fan blowing directly on me. Both would otherwise normally really bother me.

I know, I know, I *could* turn on the air conditioning to be comfortable at night. But that would just set up a pattern. If I get used to cool, dry air, I'll need it that much more! If a fan works, use it, I say!

As for my other goal of avoiding sweets, well, I've done really well, I think. I didn't freeze the birthday cake, though, and I've allowed myself to eat a piece every day since my birthday so far. Maybe I'll go ahead and send the rest of it with Jesse to work tomorrow, huh? But avoiding the sugar has really helped. I'm feeling much more strong against my cravings, now, and I'm feeling the cravings much less frequently already! So I didn't have a perfect week of no sweets, but I'm feeling much better about where I'm at. I lasted all the way from last Sunday until my birthday on Friday, and I've moderated myself since then. And I've snacked on a lot more fruits and veggies, yay! I'll try and keep up the pattern this week. Jesse's requested a pie instead of a cake for his birthday, so that'll be a lot less temptation in the house this week, too. I feel like I deserve a small pat on the back, at least, don't you? :)

Defining Sweets

I feel like I've done pretty well for the last couple days, regarding my goal of no sweet snacks for a week. I didn't snack on anything at all on Sunday (mostly because the house was almost empty of any non-sugary snacks!!). On Monday (after grocery shopping, lol), I snacked on a whole bunch of sugar snap peas, 2 plain graham crackers, and a large handful of plain baby carrots. In the evening, I pulled out some tapioca pudding. Jesse gave me a really hard time about that one. He argued that it's almost exactly like ice cream, with the milk and sugar ingredients being at the very top of the list.

Sure, technically, I guess he's right. It does have sugar in it. But my argument was that it wasn't the same mentally to me. Tapioca pudding isn't something I start craving, it's not something I see and just HAVE to have, or something I think of and instantly covet. In fact, I bought it at the store as a replacement for other sugary things, it's something I haven't had in several years. Tapioca pudding is something I can only eat so much of before I don't want any more. I decided to swear off sugary treats for a week because I was having so much trouble with my self-control...it seems appropriate enough to me to have something on hand like pudding that doesn't trigger my self-control issues. What do you think, do you agree? Or is Jesse right to look at the more technical aspect of my goal?

Project Blue

I came across a photography-based "Project Blue" while reading another blog. The point is to take a picture of something blue and share it. If I were a little more ambitious with photography, I might run out and try and take a picture of something new, in order to challenge myself, but the immediate thought in my mind was the picture of a peacock I snapped on our strawberry picking day. I am still struck by how very blue he is! So please forgive me if you've already seen this, but I wanted to post it in its own topic for the purpose of sharing with Project Blue.

Also, to give this post a bit more substance, I wanted to share something with you. I decided last night that I was going to swear off sweet treats for a whole week. I've found myself just practically unable to resist the temptation to eat a huge handful of candies instead of just one, or just walk away from the bag of chocolate chips, or eat only a small serving of ice cream.

1) It's absolutely no good for my body to eat so much sugar.
2) I feel pretty disgusted with my lack of self-control, especially when I know darn well that I want to lose some weight.

So I thought I'd give myself a real challenge, and not have *any* sugary treats for a whole week. That goes for regular candy, ice cream, chocolate, and even cinnamon & sugar toast. I'll allow myself to have other types of snacks, like crackers, or toast with jam, but it's the sugary stuff that I have a really hard (impossible?) time resisting.

The only problem is, I realized most of the way through today that my birthday is this week. Should I postpone the celebratory cake for 2 days, or make an exception and then have far too much cake on hand for the amount of people in our house? (And of course, Jesse's birthday is only 6 days after mine. And Father's Day 3 days after that....) Any suggestions? I didn't have any sweets last night, and felt pretty proud of myself. But a birthday just isn't a birthday without cake, or at least something like cake. It's a quandary, I need help!