Here in New York we’ve officially taken a left turn from “Is it spring yet?” into “Should I put the air conditioner in the window now?” territory. In just a few weeks we’ve entered the world of not needing to wear a jacket at night and leaving the ceiling fans on at all times. God forbid I fall asleep under my quilt, because I willwake up sweaty and uncomfortable.

This is my problem with springtime: it’s too short. If I’m going to have to deal with seasonal allergies and sporadic rainfall, can’t I at least get a month where the high temperature is seventy-five and the low is sixty? We’ve already left that high temp in the dust, and we’re only halfway into May! And as you might remember, winter dragged things out for an obscenely long time.  

I don’t mean to be ungrateful – I’ve already had some really beautiful days outside, and sitting on the terrace at my office during lunch is one of my greatest summertime pleasures – but I’m just not built for warm weather. I get sluggish and crabby. I like choosingto wear shorts, not feeling I have to do it or overheat when wearing jeans. I’d also prefer to never again sit down on a bench in shorts and burn my legs, but we can’t get everything we want.
On Tuesday I had some friends over and one of them helped me put my air conditioner in the window. Yes, I gave in. It was, as always, a harrowing ordeal, and I live in fear that it will somehow fall out of the window and onto someone. It’s a mostly irrational fear (I’m resisting looking up statistics about how often it happens) and if it did fall, it’d hit the garbage cans, not the sidewalk, but try telling me that when we were maneuvering it around on the sill.
Anyway, it’s now successfully installed and I can use it to keep the air circulating through my apartment. Of course, today it was cooler, so I might not even need to turn the AC on. NYC weather, I officially give up on you.

In other news, my first piece for the Toast is up here! It’s about some of my favorite Louisa May Alcott characters, from the books Eight Cousins and Rose in Bloom.

Edited to add: I hit publish on this, and then looked at the weather forecast for the next week. Temps no higher than 72 and no lower than 58. So maybe we’re going to get some spring weather after all. Guess I could’ve waited a little longer on the whole air conditioner rant…