the heat is on

So if you know me, you know that I have an EXTREME aversion to heat. And I get hot much easier than most people. Most people can tolerate it - I can't. I freak out. I literally like start pulling at my clothes (common decency prevents me from ripping them off), fanning my face.

When I was "interviewing" cake designers for my wedding cake, Jodi (my mother-in-law) and I went to visit this ultra hippie lady who bakes cakes out of her home. That has no a/c. Jodi was literally blowing on me to keep me cool. When I go to the fitness center, I take my own fan (and tear open the windows). In SLC at the SLC Sports Complex, I fought the old foges for their fans (it was just me and them at that hour). And I vehemently refuse to get in Jess' car (which has a busted a/c unit) when the barometer reads anything over 60 (hey, cars are like ovens - even if it's not hot outside, a vehicle in the sun is a potential sweaty prison).

Now I've had a theory about this heat problem of mine for quite a while - as the first child of poor college students, my crib was in the front room. In the winter, Eric and Lichelle cranked up the heat, naturally - Logan is freezing. However, when I developed a strange RASH, they realized that as the heat started in the front room before it ever made it to them, I was getting the bulk of the blowing. I'm pretty sure all that overheating as a small, helpless thing pretty much did me in. My body is done needing heat - I received enough warmth by my first year. Thus, any excess heat I experience now causes major problems.

But I was listening to the radio this morning on the way into work, and heard something fascinating. Listeners were calling in to tell of their strange medical conditions. I tuned in just as this girl was explaining her actual medically diagnosed aversion to heat. She takes cold showers. She can't use blow dryers or curling irons. She can't go outside in the dead of summer for more than a minute or she will pass out, break out in a freakish rash pretty immediately. In high school, her P.E. teacher thought she was making excuses when she said she couldn't run the mile outside as it was too hot. She remembers getting about halfway around the track. Spicy foods even cause her body temperature to rise too much.

So I've decided that I have a physical urticarias, of the cholinergic variety. (Yes, I often medically self-diagnose myself.) But my aversion isn't such that I actually have to avoid the sun and spicy foods. It's just enough for me to periodically throw totally irrational fits.

And by the way, just WHY is a sauna so appealing? Welcome to a sweaty box that smells of moldy wood. Enjoy your slow death.

NOTE: Above photo taken in April 2006, after 26.2 long miles. I ran the Ogden Marathon (as opposed to the St. George, as everyone assumes) because it was nice and cool. Freezing really for the first 10-15 miles. But still, as you can see, wiping it away.