I’m at war.
Wait, no…
I’m being pursued… by the Indominus rex, while running in heels, while trying to talk on the phone, while carrying a dozen eggs.
I’m exhausted. I’m trapped. I try evasive maneuvers, but my enemy is stronger, smarter, far more powerful. It has ruled completely unopposed and I know that I have no real way to win. And the worst part is that the enemy is so potent that its reign of torture lasts for months at a time. And the number one way it wins this psychological war? Sleep deprivation.
What. a. bastard!
My enemy is, of course, the sun. And the fact that it never really seems to go down in the summer out here in the Pacific Northwest.
When I planned on moving here, I didn’t really take into account the latitudinal differences between Seattle and Indianapolis. When you look on a map, we’re pretty far north here in the PNW. And that position on the globe means that the sun stays up longer. At 10:15pm, the last rays of the sun are almost finally gone, but they’re back again starting a little after 4am in the morning. By 5am, the sun is bright. By 6am, it’s so bright that it feels like noon. How is anyone supposed to sleep with that mess going on?
I toss and turn until around 11p, and I’m usually awake by 4:45a. I finally gave in and hung up blackout curtains in the bedroom, resurrecting them from my days of working night shift, and I did manage to stay asleep until 6am this morning. That’s the latest I’ve slept in about three months.
We’re also having record temperatures out here. We’ll be hitting the 90s and nearly reaching 100 for the next two weeks, and our house doesn’t have air conditioning because home builders out here are clearly OUT OF THEIR MINDS. We bought one of those $350 12,000 btu room air conditioners and I spend nearly all my time in the bedroom, thanking God for the person that invented this thing. Outside of my cool, meat locker-like oasis, our house is about 88 degrees right now.
The sun sucks. Summer sucks. I cannot wait for the soaking fall rains return. My happy place right now is imagining myself in my favorite sweater and Uggs, standing at the bus stop while I listen to the rain landing on my slicker. We’ll be dealing with 16+ hours of darkness a day then, too. I crave it. Normal Pacific Northwest weather, please come back!
Life on Wild Hare Farm 
Wow, you are no longer a transplant! You have become a native of Seattle! Welcome to the extremes: we complain about the rain until the seasons turn, then we complain about the sun. Yup, this is Seattle.
MAKE THE SUN GO AWAY, Valerie!!! PLEASE!?!?!!?!! I hate it. I want to cry. I haven’t slept very well in months.
So sorry….praying hard enough to dislodge the sun, exceeds my powers but I can still pray for you to sleep despite the sun.
Wow. I never thought about that. Our sun goes down around 9:00 in the summer and I love it, but I’m not sure how I’d feel about 10-16
The days here are a tiny bit over an hour longer than they are back home in Indiana. But the sun starts coming up well before 5am, and I’m apparently a sensitive sleeper now, after years of sleeping through anything.
I remember dealing with all of this when we lived in Canada. I actually liked it, but that’s because the long, dark winters brought about ‘winter blues’. And the whole no AC when we were there was pretty brutal, too, when they were having one of their warmest summers. Only a couple more months until your cooler temps and longer days come back!
You lived in Canada? I never knew that! That’s awesome! I just need rain and darkness. It’s actually supposed to rain a tiny bit tonight, and I’m SO hopeful. I miss my gentle PNW rain fall. *sigh*
I’m with you, Rachel. I’m completely heat intolerant and look forward to Fall and the day the snow flies. We don’t have air conditioning here in central Idaho, either. Hardly anyone has it. Today it’s supposed to hit 99 and I can already feel my body burning up. Great post and rant. Misery loves company!
Oh, gosh, I was just reading about what temperatures Idaho was going to see today! You’re blowing us out of the water with the high temps. It’s supposed to be 91 degrees here today. I want to go into Mount Rainier National Park and up to Sunrise, where the breeze is so cold coming off the mountain glaciers, but I can’t leave our dog in her crate in an un-air conditioned house. Blargh! C’mon Fall!!!!