An incomplete and privileged, a/c-owning point of view.
1. Stay inside with the air conditioning. This basically translates into do nothing when you have three kids. We have had to walk to and from the local Ontario Early Years Centre because some genius thought it would be “fun” and “a break” to enroll Irene in a drop-off kindergarten readiness program. If walking through 40+ degree Celsius with the humidex weather mid-day is your idea of fun and folding half a basket of laundry while running after a baby is your idea of a break, well then I was right.
2. Try not to cook. Much. Obviously you don’t want to be roasting turkeys in a heat wave, but it can be a challenge to avoid using the stove altogether. Our barbecue is leaking propane, for example, so that’s not an option. (And, really, standing outside over a hot barbecue is about as appealing as crawling into an oven these days.) Cold meats and cereals and salads can get you part of the way, but mama’s on a budget and the family pack of chicken breasts at the local supermarket was too good a deal to pass on. So I roasted them all late one night and then had cooked chicken for sandwiches and salads for two days. Totally worth turning on the oven. Also, microwaves and slow cookers are your friends.
3. Bribe kids with popsicles. Everyone’s hot and tired and pent up, so the kids are going to act out. My own patience is especially short when I’m hot and it’s not the time to worry about teaching new behaviours. A freezer full of cold treats (home made or otherwise) will be the perfect prize for getting the kids to clean up or sit down or shut up or GET OFF YOUR BROTHER, how many times do I have to tell you?!
4. Do go out in the evenings, if you can. The kids do still need to run around and get some exercise. I need a break from looking at the mess and stressing over emails. Letting them loose at a park (bonus points if there’s a wading pool or splash pad that’s still open or if it’s near a body of water) will do wonder for everybody’s sanity. It will also help them sleep. Clutch! Alas, yesterday was too much of a pressure cooker to even do that so we just went out for ice cream in an air conditioned environment and then came home for bed.
5. Pray it will end. All heat waves do come to an end, eventually. It looks like we’ll be getting a break in the next couple days, for example, not that I can even enjoy it looking at the never-ending long-term forecast of temperatures over 30 Celsius. I may have to add a few more points to this list in the coming days. Hang at the mall is a gimme, if only that didn’t require getting there. Wonder how long they’ll let us dawdle in the frozen food section of the supermarket? Six, seven, eight hours? I didn’t think so.
Any pointers, dear readers?
6 replies on “How to Survive A Heat Wave”
You forgot shopping malls!Totally a/c’d and great long stretches for kids to run. Most have a Chapters too where my kids are thrilled to spend sometime.
Yes, of course malls! I thought about them at the end. Our only problem with malls is that we’d have to drive our non-air conditioned car through slow moving city traffic to get to one. Either that or brave transit. But they’re certainly an option we’ll probably end up using at some point.
I’m with you on the popsicles. Breakfast, lunch and dinner!
Am in the market for a mister bottle with a fan.
A bottle that mists! Yes! (I’m not gonna admit to how long I was puzzling over a mister bottle as opposed to a missus bottle.)
We like to put the sprinkler under the trampoline. This is just a spectator sport for me but the kids love it…icy water and all. It cools them off and gives me a break from the inevitable ‘we’ve been trapped indoors in each other’s company for much too long’ squabbling.
We also freeze yogurt tubes…is an (almost) guiltless (for mom) frozen snack. Not that we don’t consume copious amounts of other frozen treats during the summer months. It’s important to keep their fluids up, right?
Water sports of all kinds are great. That’s a new one, though!
I also love frozen yogurt tubes for team snacks.