It's Fucking Cold (And the Peasants Rejoice, Sorta)

Truly, we have reached the end of Shit To Complain About at the Academy (topics include: our fellow fellows; kitchen hygiene; relative crappiness of beds, pillows, showers, etc.; fetishization of non-Italian foodstuffs; Italian societal norms; the phrase colpo d'aria) when our main thread of complaint at dinner tonight was "Holy shit it's so fucking cold! Why is it so windy? Ahhhhhh my napkin is blowing away down the table and that guy's empty wine glass just fell over," etc.

It's been above 90 degrees for weeks, hitting an unpleasant high of 97 on Monday, only to cool as we approached the weekend. Yesterday was the first day in a long time when I walked through the city without being unpleasantly sweaty, and I found myself thinking "oh right, I like Rome!" Yesterday the high was maybe 86, but today the high was only 72, about 20 degrees from what our bodies were trained to expect as of just a few days ago. There was brief rejoicing which turned to "oh god, we've been weakened" as it got colder.

Things I enjoyed:

• being able to actually sleep in our room last night, as opposed to our office couch, where I've been sleeping since it got unbearably hot
• being able to exist in our bedroom without needing to keep the door propped open for a chance at a cross-breeze (and zero chance at privacy)
• being able to turn off the overhead fan, the only break that poor bastard has gotten in months
• being able to work in my office with the windows closed this morning, thereby (nearly) silencing the cacophony of those tiny fucking sparrows who nest in the cortile
• being able to walk around without feeling like a sweaty mass of fat
• crunching through dry lives on the Lungotevere and feeling like it was September
• needing to put a blanket on top of the bed in addition to the single sheet

Things I did Not

• needing a sweater to sit in the cortile for lunch
• feeling like an aged Italian grandma for needing a sweater in mid-July
• feeling like I was walking through a hurricane to head downtown (reality check: 18 mph wind)
• pine needle fragments directly to the eyeball on the Lungotevere
• shivering through dinner, despite sweater
• asking quickly if anyone had anything planned for post-dinner (Wednesday night we watched Predator, which I enjoyed; last night others watched Devil's Advocate, which I declined), learning several people planned to get directly into bed, and realizing this was a good option

It's going up to 81 tomorrow. But never fear! We'll be back to our regularly-scheduled 95-and-up temps as of Monday.