Our friends Don and Yan are in town for business and birthday. We just got back from an outing with them. First at Flute, because Don is one of Rob’s wine buddies, and then at La Bonne Soup. It was so nice to see them. We have plans to get together this weekend again and–lord help me–they want to visit the apartment. It is not, I repeat, not ready to receive guests.

They have been warned.

And we are cleaning.

I went to pick up my dry cleaning. As I was standing there, a butterfly flew in and landed on my computer bag. It sat there, fanning its wings as if it were the most natural thing in the world. I froze, afraid to scare it.

“Look!” I caught the drycleaning lady’s eye. “A butterfly. On my bag”

She looked at me like I was daft, but leaned over the counter. Her eyes widened and her mouth formed a silent oh. She crept around the counter, beckoning to one of the other workers. We all stood there, staring at the butterfly–which looks just brown in the photo, but had brilliant orange spots whenever it opened its wings–as if we were watching a miracle. Which, I guess, when you come down to it, we were.

The drycleaning lady said, “I can’t remember when I saw a butterfly last. It’s been years. Years.”

Under our attention, the butterfly preened and showed us teasing glimpses of its orange spots. Finally, since it didn’t seem to have any intention of leaving, I picked up my cleaning and left. The butterfly rode out on my bag. Not until I reached our corner did it fly away.

I’m here to report on the first couple of weeks of life without a/c. It’s fine. There were two days when the outside temperature was in the mid-90s that were rough, but honestly, otherwise it’s not noticeable. We can keep the apartment about ten degrees cooler than the outside air and with a fan to circulate, it stays comfortable inside. Granted, I’m using the stove very, very little, but that’s a pretty small thing.

The nice thing–and no, this isn’t me trying to convince myself that this is a good idea–is that because I’m only rarely going from cold to hot, my body is doing a better job of regulating. When I come out of a heavily air-conditioned building onto the hot sidewalk, the temperature outside feels hotter than it is and I start to sweat immediately. It still feels hotter, coming out of my apartment, but not as much. Less sweat, too.

So, when I ran across this list of 23 Ways to Beat the Heat, I thought that I would share it.