My body temperature has always been 96.8.

I’ve long suspected that those last two switched digits were the reason that I’ve never been uncomfortably hot.*

I’m hardly weatherproof; I’m cold when it’s much under 80 degrees and downright miserable when it’s under 70. But when it gets up over 100? Bliss. My ideal day would be dry, about 110, with a nice hot wind blowing.

As you can imagine, this is my very favorite time of year.

There’s a small catch, though. The kind of weather that makes me deeply happy makes pretty much everyone around me completely miserable.

I’m a people person. I can’t just completely ignore this. (I know. I’ve tried.)

A few years back, we had record-setting heat or some such nonsense, and we had to meet my brother-in-law in the Valley. (LA people will know the Valley averages temperatures approximately 50 degrees than the rest of the area. 50, 20 – something like that.) So much of my extended family was standing on a corner discussing – actually, I don’t know what they were doing. I was busy. With my face tilted up to the sun and my arms stretched wide, I was glorying in the hot sun and the gritty, burning wind and pretending I was in the middle of the desert. As you do.

Until I noticed it had gotten… quiet. My god, the looks I was getting. What? I’m happy! DON’T YOU WANT ME TO BE HAPPY?

Although that was probably my finest moment in annoying actual loved ones, my best for sheer volume had to be when I was working in a record store. All day long, transaction after transaction would go more or less like this:

“grumblemumblegrumbleweatherblahblahblah.”

“Actually, I love this weather!”

“Fuck off.”

(Mostly they said that last part with their eyes.)

Oh, I could have lied. I could have nodded sympathetically and kept it to myself. But you try to keep stuff to yourself when you’re brimming over with joy. It’s hard.

When I was pregnant, everybody promised me my body would turn into a furnace. My third trimester was during the hottest part of the year, and I was assured that the heat would, for the first time in my life, make me a miserable wreck. WELL. Not only did I not overheat at any point, I was still freezing the whole time.

Apparently my system is stubborn when it decides to be peculiar.

Here’s a thing I feel guilty about: I have a long history of health problems. When these heatwaves strike and I’m the only ebullient person for miles around, I kind of relish the feeling of being the person with the coping skills for once.

Tangentially, today my acupuncturist speculated that I might have False Heat – True Cold. I nodded thoughtfully and Googled it later, as you do. I’m not sure; the descriptions I read made me think I’d look more like a creepy doll if I had it (which would be A LOT like a creepy doll) – but it’d be interesting if acupuncture averaged me out.

*Because no cliche is without truth, it sometimes is too humid for me.

PS – this is an exercise in writing something and publishing it, because I have become the True Queen of Unpublished Drafts this last year or so.