I was sitting in my bedroom this afternoon, wasting time on the internet because DH lost his keys and had to take my car to work, leaving me with transportation only if *I* could find his keys, which is like, SO not happening because A) I’m lazy and B) DH is dang good at losing his keys, which means they could be anywhere between his office and, like, Alaska right now, when I thought, “Huh. Why is it so hot up here?”

Let me first say that since coming back from Haiti, I have an extreme love of airconditioning. I mean, I didn’t always have such a devotion, in fact, I found it kind of annoying to be cold, in that sort of metallically cold way, all summer long. What I really need is just for fall to COME ON ALREADY, but that’s another post entirely.

But, as I blogged previously, the very hardest thing for me in Haiti was, ironically, the nights. I know, I know, you’d THINK it would be the emotional drain of seeing families and children in desperate need all the time, or walking through rubble all day, or trying to get blood from a stone.

(Ok, we never did that. But trying to get a Diet Coke in Haiti sort of feels like the same thing.)

But it was trying to sleep in the extreme heat (nights don’t cool down in Haiti much) and the noise and the dust and the haze of smoke from burning trash that made me desperate, desperate for relief, for a cool breeze, for some bit of quiet. I probably averaged less than 4 hours of (fitful at best) sleep a night for 2 weeks, which probably explains why, when I got back, I slept for an entire day, ignoring my children entirely, and felt like I had been run over by a freight train. Even a month out, I think I am still feeling the effects of prolonged sleep deprivation and dehydration, as on Saturday, I took a solid 3 hour nap in the middle of the day. (Well, either that, or I have malaria. Or I’m just lazy. See A above.)

So when I was sitting wasting time, and it felt a little hot, I thought, “Crap”. And sure enough, although the thermostat is set to cool to 70 degrees, the temperature in the house read 85. And while the vents in the house are blowing, the air is lukewarm at best. Again, I thought, ‘Crap’, only this time, it was “oh CRAP!”

You’d think that spending 2 weeks without A/C in a third world country would make me a stoic hero of awesomeness, where I can handle anything. And it’s true I can handle a lot (as could most of the people in my group. Seriously, it was a hard core hardy crew.) But if there is one thing I learned about myself in Haiti, it’s that I DON’T DO WELL WHEN IT’S HOT AT NIGHT.

Call me a wuss. Call me a weakling. Call me a spoiled American princess, I don’t care. Just please call me an a/c repair man, because the thought of sleeping through one more night that averages 90 degrees makes me want to weep.

Everybody has their weird thing, right? For DH, it’s having certain books out of place (I’m not making that up.) For the Wiz, it’s cilantro. For Tracy, it’s peanut butter. For one volunteer in Haiti, it was mops. (I’m not making that up, either.) For me, it’s having a quiet place to sleep (no white noise crap or insanity inducing music for me, no sir, and it’s a sign of how bad things were in Haiti that I used my IPOD every night to fall asleep) and having it be a certain temperature.

What can I say, most of us are just a bunch of freaks.

What’s YOUR weird thing?