Grandpa and Darla shared a humorous story about adjusting from pounds to kilos, which resulted in the delivery of far too many sweet potatoes. Today I share a humorous anecdote about adjusting from Fahrenheit to Celsius...
This one involves Alexander and an air conditioner. Here's a picture of the kids waiting to eat the Oreo (adjacent) moon cycle they made as part of their science lesson:
Briefly—and tangentially—I will remind you that in the northern hemisphere the moon waxes from right to left. In my head I always say "loads" rather than "waxes." I don't know why. But I do know that I remember this because Arabic is written from right to left and the crescent moon is a symbol of Islam and so it makes sense for the moon to load from right to left.
Except that in the southern hemisphere it loads from right to left.
That picture has nothing to do with this post, neither does anything I said about the moon. But I think the kids look cute.
Anyway...
Air conditioners are rather standard here.
I grew up entirely without air conditioning. When those summer days started rolling in before school let out, we'd turn off the lights in our classrooms, open up the windows, and turn on a fan. There was no air conditioning in our schools. I'm not even sure that our church buildings had air conditioning. They definitely had heaters.
They don't really have heaters here—only air conditioners.
Each room has its own air conditioner with its own control panel. And the control panels are in Celsius.
Now, I do admit that the air conditioning is a bit much for me.
I have this thing with fans blowing, specifically on me, but also just generally. I don't like air blowing on me. And I don't like white noise because it's too...much. The noise of the bathroom fan being on drives me crazy. The sound of the heating/cooling system likewise just...ugh... Buzzing lights are bad but perhaps what's even worse are USB chargers. I hate vacuuming and mowing the lawn and using a weed whacker or those air blower thingies. Blenders freak me out. Sewing machines. Washing machines. Anything that adds to the noise that's already going on in the world just sets me on edge.
When we had tree service people come around our neighbourhood and chop trees down all day (or trim branches for power line safety or whatever), I would be so tense by the end of the day just because of the background noise.
My brother Patrick gave me a set of Loop headphones, which surely would help with this. And I wear them sometimes, but also I don't always love wearing headphones, either.
Anyway, that's not really part of this story either. It's just a fact about me.
It's also a fact that while we're used to heaters/air conditioners clicking on and off (I used to wait for the air system to click off before falling asleep because I loved the silence of it not being on so much)...they're kind of just perpetually on here. They never click off.
I'm hoping that maybe by November? Maybe they'll turn off in November?
But for now they're just perpetually on.
They are effective at cooling...but they don't really seem to measure the ambient air.
So they just sit on the wall blowing cold air forever and ever and sometimes we get really cold...which feels ridiculous considering where we live. Like...why should we feel cold in Qatar?
We have turned up the temperature in several (all?) of the rooms to make the air conditioners blow less cold air but...they still are blowing cold air constantly.
The floors are marble, so we find our selves seeking socks or slippers to keep our toes warm (because the floors get very cold). They kids are always looking for sweaters. It's a whole thing here.
Last week, Alexander decided he would take matters into his own hands and turned the temperature up in his room...without telling anyone.
Apparently I can't tell this story straight, so are you ready for another tangent?
We have largely raised living room kids, meaning our children don't hang out in their rooms much, preferring to hang out in the common living areas of the house. And that's totally fine, I dare say it's even lovely a lot of the time.
However...it is less fine when your Fahrenheit-fluent son wakes up cold and adjusts the Celsius-thermostat to a nice temperature...and then everyone spends the entire day not in that room, which is at the furthest end of the hallway, around a bend...and down another hallway.
Because then when you finally go into that room in the evening to put your four-year-old to bed, you walk in to find that it is sitting at a balmy sweltery 33°C!
That's 91.4°F!!
That's...hot.
Luckily, as I mentioned, these air conditioners are very efficient. We turned down the thermostat to a decent temperature, the room cooled down, and the children were able to go to bed. Besides, we only went back there to get her ready for bed, so the air conditioner had some time to work before it was truly time to tuck her in.
It was fine.
But it sure was funny!
See, Alexander had been cold, looked at the thermostat (which said something like 22°C) and thought to himself, "Of course I'm cold! That's freezing!" He had wanted to set the heat to 70°(F) but the thermostat maxed out at 35°(C) so he figured that would simply have to do.
To be fair, 35°(F) is at least no longer freezing.
He just didn't realize that 35°(C) was actually 95°(F) and he had given the hot summer sun an open invitation to pour through the floor-to-ceiling windows and heat that room up like an oven (because the air conditioning really did turn off for a while).
Too bad—had I been in there I could have enjoyed the silence...
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