Melting

I don't know that the average human mind can grasp how mind-bogglingly sweltering it has been the past few days. I use the world 'sweltering' rather than 'hot', because where I live in Georgia is far enough from the interior of the continent that we don't often see the three-digit temperatures that grace those god-forsaken areas. We deal with the relatively balmy nineties.

Balmy probably isn't the right word. Relatively is more on the money. They would be balmy, if the dew point wasn't in the freaking seventies. This is where that handy word 'sweltering' comes in. Because there's ninety-six when you go outside and the sun is all you deal with, and then there's ninety-six when you walk outside and immediately the heaviness of the air collapses upon you and makes it near impossible to breathe. Tommorrow the forecast says ninety-three, but beneath it in tiny letters is the heat index, that lovely little heat index saying "feels like 103". And that's a huge difference in temperature. That is the kind of heat that works its way into the air itself, so that even the shade gives you no comfort. All you can do is turn on the AC and lay on the floor of the kitchen because it's tiled and the carpet in the living room is too hot. Everything is too hot. Cooking is out of the question. Everything is out of the question until the sun starts going down and the heat index drops into the low nineties. Then you can go outside and watch how the moisture that has soaked from the air into the soil releases itself back to the air again in great gasps of mist rising out of the dark green mountains. The haze and fading sunlight turns everything a deep golden color that fades quickly into blue; dark blue sky and indigo clouds and damp, misting air and cicadas. The moisture makes your hair curl, makes your clothes stick to your body, makes your skin clammy and tight. It settles into your bones and muscles, making you lethargic, drawing it all out into the misting hills. Then, turning in for the night with the AC on full and the blankets kicked down, you finally sleep and awake to a rainstorm, and realize all that precipitation will be back in the air again by noon.