Paradigm Farms Horse Retirement: Sweating Through My . . . Phone?

Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Sweating Through My . . . Phone?

Summer in the south is always hot, it's the one season of the year where we can reliably predict what the weather will be. However, even by southern standards, the last couple of weeks were ridiculously hot. The actual temperatures didn't look horrible on many days, but the humidity levels were so high it made the "real feel" quite awful. It is no secret that I can't stand cold weather, live for warmth, and don't sweat easily.

The last couple of weeks I was sweating easily, much too easily. We always start crazy early in the summer and are usually out the door by about 5am, or if we're "sleeping in" we're out the door at about 5:15am. That usually lets us accomplish morning chores when it is still somewhat pleasant. Thus, I wasn't super happy when I had sweated through my jeans and shirt by about 5:45am each morning. Jason perpetually looked like he had just gotten out of a swimming pool or stepped out of the shower. Buckets of water were rolling out of his much suffering Canadian pores.

I knew it had gotten bad when I heard my phone ding one morning at about 7:30. I was assuming it was a text from one of our farriers who was due to arrive any minute. Instead it was an alert from my phone that I had literally never seen before. It said, "moisture detected in your charging point, do not charge your phone until dry." I was momentarily confused. It wasn't raining, which is another thing it has done incessantly this month (we're at 10 inches and counting in our electronic rain gauge for July which is significantly higher than normal), so that wasn't the problem. Finally my overheated brain realized that I had sweated so much, my phone had gotten wet in the back pocket of my jeans. This might be a common occurrence for some people in the summer, but it was a first time experience for me. I clicked on the message and read further instructions, and when I made it into the house a few hours later I dutifully dried the charging port on my phone with cold air from my hair dryer.

We must have finally decided to live right because both the temperatures and the humidity took a dramatic plunge a couple of days ago. I saw a meme on social media that described this weather change perfectly: "Temperature went from 95 to 65 like it saw a state trooper." I actually started out in a sweatshirt at 5am this morning. I rode my horse Flower, smashing her hopes that she was finally getting to live like the other horses on the farm. I hope everyone who was suffering the last couple of weeks has had the same weather reprieve.

Apollo and Thomas