Cabin Fever Hits

For use of photo, please attribute to Lori and her blog.

Nothing like summer cabin fever in Florida. The good news is, only three more months until I can open a window!

I know it’s been hot all around the country this year. Here in Florida though, we don’t get any breaks from the heat, and it can last through October. The temperature stays between 90 and 95, with a heat index of 105 for months. No breaks down to 80 for a few days. No breaks in humidity for a few days.

We do get rain showers in the summer. They used to come every afternoon like clockwork around 4pm. Lately, it’s been more hit or miss. Stepping outside feels like someone is smothering my entire body, including my face, with a blanket. The contrast from stepping inside out of the heat makes the indoors feel like an iceberg! Even if the a/c is set at 80 degrees. So, we’re cooped up inside with the drone of the air conditioning unit and an icy breeze blowing out of vents. Or, we can go outside and sweat buckets within seconds.

Okay, enough complaining.

When I first moved here from up north, I found the tropical environment fascinating. Not only did storms come like clockwork at the same time ever day, but it could be raining in my front yard and not in the back. The storms lasted anywhere from ten minutes to two hours. It was a culture shock in many ways, the biggest being such a huge shift in weather patterns. Weather usually traveled from west to east up north. In Florida it comes from any direction. Don’t even get me started on my fear of being hit by a hurricane.

On Wednesday, instead of the usual quote, I’m going to share a poem I wrote when I first moved here. I wrote my first impressions on the rainy season in Florida. Then, on Friday, I’ll share another poem with my impression of those storms after twenty years of living here.