Long Hot Summers

Summer in Adelaide used to be lazy and laid back. A time to slow down and laugh a lot because it was just too hot. Some days were intolerable , some weeks were intolerable, but the overall feeling was you could get into your tank tops and shorts, do some serious lolling at home or on the beach and just wait for the rain and the change. Now summer is tense and stressful and one minute we are boiled and hot as hell and the next minute we are frozen. Air conditoners mean we lose track of the rhythm of summer but most people want that relief. Some will run air conditioners and fans all night. I remember, as a teenager,  restless nights in bed because it was too hot and you just had no air and didn't know which part of the bed would let you sleep. There is no sense of that now. I manage the heat really well and summer is my favourite time of year because I feel warm. I wouldn't go out in it and I wouldn't want to be one of the poor sods who actually have to work outside in the current heat. The sun bites now. It scorches plants like never before. The lack of water makes us and thel and feel parched and so with the cooler weather there is this depression rather than relief.Everyone hates the heat and is glad of the cool but the relief isn't there. People are down, angry, stressed to the max and yet the weather has cooled down and we are comfortable. I'm not. I'm cold again and I feel like we really haven't had summer. We needed the rain. We need water. We are fixated on that and our dying gardens for the second year in the row. It is disurbing. And yet, as a teenager, I remember going out the back and the garden would have huge cracks, there'd be giant ants and three corner jacks. It really was uninviting and a bit of a wasteland. Yet, once cool, we were overjoyed. There was a sense of celebration...the Facebook feel of  "I survived and Adelaide summer". Not now. We are all depressed and can't take any more of this. I am wondering which part of our psychology is up the creek...no, not up the creek, the creeks have dried up. Up the spout. Somehow we don't have that  optimism in weather and its changes. It's not flouncy , hissy fit behaviour. It is a belief we just can't do this. Psychologically this climate change is doing us damage and we need to counter act that as much as our lack of water.