No Garbage, No Pools, No A/C: Summer Days, Baby

I was all set to write the long-awaited, much-anticipated, well-past-due follow up to last month’s scoop on the Liberal government of Ontario’s failure to implement full-day kindergarten by 2010. Especially since all the buzz lately is about how the gov has announced that it will begin to unfold a full-day program starting in 2010 after all. So either my sources were completely wrong (possible) or the government has just managed to put a very nice spin on being well behind on the original 2010 promise. I even pulled up the Pascal report and planned to sift through it to let you know what I think.

But you know what I think? I can’t believe how hot it is in here!? Full-day learning, or whatever they’re calling it now, will have to wait because all I can muster up right now is a tirade against the weather. The weather and the other forces that have conspired to make my life one big punch line.

First, a bit of background. We moved into this second (and top) floor apartment about a year and a half ago, at the beginning of October. It didn’t have air conditioning, but who thinks about that in October, right? It did have a huge and beautiful maple tree that cast lots of shade over the building and on our deck. Last year was cool and rainy and we were all out of the house during the day anyway.  It wasn’t bad at all. Still, when the restaurant that was opening downstairs replaced all the heating ducts and threw up clouds of dust into my little boy’s bedroom and moved the thermostat for the building from our living room to downstairs and we were either boiling or freezing all winter, I held onto the promise of central air. All of this was being done to accomodate central air conditioning and we would be get to partake.

Fast forward to this spring when the tree had to come down because it was encroaching on the basement. The restaurant didn’t wind up opening, either, and the a/c never got put in. And now, at the first sign of real Toronto summer heat — oh, it will get much worse — our apartment is a heat-filled, crazy-making sweat box. I am not so good in the heat, to put it lightly. I get cranky and testy and impatient. I can’t concentrate and I sure as hell can’t multi-task.

Couple this heat with a city workers’ strike that means no garbage and no pools and let carnage begin. I’m now sitting in a hazy hot house that is filling up with rotting garbage — including a steaming pile of dirty diapers — and I can’t even bring the kids to the wading pool. This would be bad enough if I was just trying to cope with keeping the kiddies well-hydrated, but I have a certain amount of other writing-type work that needs to get done, too.

So, yesterday, when I was all disoriented by the mounting heat and L’il I’s departure from her normal sleep patterns I found myself still sitting at the computer at 1pm when Young C started complaining of hunger. Right. Lunch. And that’s when my sanity started to slip away entirely. The last slices of bread had gone moldy and while there was lots of food, without bread I would need to cook to produce a proper meal. I thought about going out for lunch but we were probably about an hour away from being able to walk out into the world in any sort of presentable fashion. I decided to just quickly boil some pasta (oh the heat) and then came face to face with a full garbage and started throwing things. How can I be the only person who can change the garbage! And the outside garbage can was half full of stagnant rain water and rotting trash from the last time the racoons got into it. What was I  going to do? And weren’t we supposed to have air conditioning? I was in tears. For real.

We got through lunch and we made it to a nice shady park. Then, when my in-laws dropped by for their usual Tuesday night visit, I hightailed it to Home Depot to get a locking garbage can and a window unit a/c. On the way out the door I glanced at the living room window. “Those bottom panes will come out, right?” I asked my mother-in-law. “Oh yeah, they’ll come out.” Guess what? They don’t. So Now I have to return this a/c and grapple with the prospect of spending TWICE as much on a portable unit. Weren’t we supposed to have air conidtioning, I beseech the gods. But I will spend what I have to because I need to get through this summer with some sanity to spare. (We’re supposed to be saving up for a down payment on a house … but I keep needing stuff.)

In the meantime, the brand new suits I got for the kids will mock us until the pools open and I guess I’ll finally start using those cloth diapers again to off-set the mound of crap-filled diapers that nobody will pick up. There’s no shade on the deck, so I bet I can even hang dry them. Oh wait. The clothes line had been tied to the tree.

Now excuse me while I try to stay calm enough to get lunch made today.

(Image courtesy of jbcuro at Flickr.)