I didn’t properly write about the heatwave, did I…? Let’s chalk that up to heat exhaustion and get it out the way now. (You think I’m joking about heat exhaustion; I’m not.)
I’ve been hot before; I’ve even suffered from dehydration so badly that I almost passed out, although I strongly suspect that’s not anything I should boast about as any kind of evidence that anything I have to say should be taken seriously. That said, take it at the very least as proof that I know what I’m talking about when I say that I’m familiar with heat that people should perhaps not be hanging around in, and then use that as the basis for my telling you that the heatwave in Portland was perhaps the hottest I can remember being in my entire life — and that it lasted for three whole days.
Sure, it got colder at night… but only colder, not necessarily “cold.” Instead, the lowest it managed was the temperature of a relatively hot day, and even that was in the middle of the night as I lay inside a house that never quite managed to get its own temperature below “you’re lying in a pool of your own sweat, sleep is an impossibility.” (At one point, the temperature outside was close to 115C, and inside, it was a “cool” 98C.)
The entire period was an exercise in patience, and in will power. You had to keep remembering that the forecast promised just three days of this particular hell, and you had to tell yourself that you weren’t actually as hot as you really were, while ensuring that you stayed hydrated and kept drinking all the water and ice cubes possible even though both the desire to never move ever again and the need to piss at almost all times were simultaneously overwhelming.
It was three days of barely eating, barely moving, and barely sleeping, all while the air felt so thick you should have been able to slice it with a bread knife. It was an endurance test, and one that I still feel has every chance of repeating whenever the air feels even the least bit warm.