Fat on a Hot Tin Roof

The house we live in is essentially a DIY project. My mother-in-law built it herself with the help of friends and relatives who may or may not have had construction know-how. For this reason, the house has a cobbled-together appearance and various eccentricities that give it character. For example, the electricity occasionally short circuits, leaving the house dark and smelling of singed arm hair. Carmen tries to reset the fuses by randomly flipping switches, which usually results in small explosions and lots of swearing. By scurrying through the house and unplugging things, we can generally get the lights back on, but sometimes it takes a few hours.

The room Ruyman and I call ours is more incomplete than the rest of the house. It was constructed two years ago on the patio that also doubles as the house’s roof. Main features include: a window that rests loosely in its frame; a sagging, sometimes-leaky roof; a metal door that expands and contracts with the ambient temperature; and a total lack of insulation. 

Ruyman, Lord love him, has been doing all he can to improve things since we got here, puttying over the worst parts of the cracked plaster and replacing the naked swinging lightbulb with a proper fixture. He’s also been trying to sort out the roof, but it’s a two-man job and good help (not to mention help skinny enough to scale the roof without falling through it) is hard to find. 

For the most part, I’ve gotten used to our accommodations. I cease to notice the black streaks of mold in the leaky corner and I’m not tall enough for the ceiling to bother me. The door, though, is a different matter. On hot days, it swells shut at completely inconvenient times (usually right when I have to leave for work) and it’s only with a lot of jimmying and the infrequent climb out the second story window that I can escape. (No worries, folks. I haven’t exited through the window since I’ve been pregnant. I’m not THAT irresponsible.)

The heat has been causing other problems recently. I’m not sure why this didn’t occur to me sooner, but since Tenerife is off the coast of Morocco, our weather patterns are affected by a little thing we like to call the SAHARA DESERT. Recently, there’s a high front coming off mainland Africa that’s made things hotter than the hinges of hell. We’re seeing temperatures of more than 40 degrees! (That would be 40 degrees C, which translates to about 105 degrees Fahrenheit.) 

At 70% humidity, the weather is not a laughing matter since this is a place where people A) don’t have air conditioning and B) often don’t wear deodorant. (Admittedly, I’m no longer in a position to judge. My carefully hoarded cache of super-strength American “don’t even think about it, sweat glands!” antiperspirant dried up two days before the heat wave hit. How’s that for bad timing?) 

Generally, I’m never hot, but the growing human being inside me plus resulting extra poundage messes with my internal thermostat. So for the last few days, I’ve spent my free time in my undies, moaning and wallowing on our bed in my own stench, gulping down tepid water and fantasizing about the huge piles of snow we left behind in Utah. (What was so bad about being cold, again?) 

Four days into the heat wave, Ruyman, who loves this weather and is happier than a pig in poop, had enough of my cranky whininess. He sat on the bed, held my hand, and gazed deeply into my eyes. Then he told me the sexiest thing I have ever heard. Clearing his throat, he said gently, “Sweetheart, this has to stop. I’m going to buy an air conditioner.”

And he did. It’s across from me now, quietly breathing cold gasps of air on my feet while the heat from my laptop cauterizes my leg hair and the sun beats down on the roof with both fists. Did I, or did I not, marry the best man in the universe?