nitpick 1: humidity
I’m not going to lie – a couple of weeks ago, I bought a humidifier. The northeast was still in the throes of late winter, with low temperatures chilling the grass into ice in the early mornings, and layers being necessary for even the smallest walks to go pick up my mail. But the most egregious part of late winter, for me at least, was the dryness. Coming from the desert environment of Los Angeles, I thought I knew dryness. And, having survived most of the northeast winter, I thought I knew how to survive the cold. What I wasn’t prepared for were the effects of both the cold and the dry over the course of several months – by the time it hit early April, I was desperate for a fix. My lips were cracking and my soul was saltine. I had an indoor humidity detector, and there was a frowny face telling me I had to do something. So, I went online and bit the bullet. And it arrived a couple weeks later.
By then, it was late April, and it was getting slightly warmer. But still, I thought it was a useful purchase, and I set it up and it was good to go. I woke up the next morning to a sweaty and confused hell. Overnight, Massachusetts had decided it was summer. The humidity detector went from 20% to 52%. The humidifier was, obviously, no longer needed. I went outside and realized with fear that I’d never had to survive northeast humidity before. A new beast of weather had arrived, and I was woefully unprepared.
In the week since then, humidity has come to dominate my life. I check the weather app like how some people check horoscopes - it creates my day, from what I’ll wear to how far I can walk without becoming a bog witch. Late spring storms have caused me to question whether or not it’s the humidity or the rain that is causing my bangs to stick to my forehead (it’s both). I began to greatly regret bringing all of my shorts home over spring break – I’d naively thought, having not worn them since September, that there would be no occasion in which I’d need them on this side of the country. Oh how wrong I was.
I’ve swapped my puffer jacket for a tank top and umbrella. Any and all attempts have been made to both keep cool and keep dry. I have become irrationally angry at the weather, and I feel crazy for it, but it now takes more than 3 hours for my hair to dry completely and that’s just ridiculous. COME ON.
Needless to say, the weather has been a sore spot for me since the picturesque autumn left us behind in October. I’d thought spring would bring about some change, but, unfortunately, I have found myself dotingly nitpicking every aspect of the weather that the northeast has to offer. Though I love going to college here and would not exchange it for any other place, I nonetheless am becoming ever more grateful for the uniquely perfect weather I grew up with in Los Angeles.
There’s a positive and negative outlook to every situation; I suppose coming here and being forced to deal with real seasons is at last forcing me to reckon with more realistic environments, where the temperature actually changes outside of a 20-degree span throughout the year. I’ve come to see the beauty in watching the world around me die and revive over the course of the months, experiencing the cozy snow activities and fresh spring picnics. I was never so grateful for a day without rain, that’s for sure. Maybe this is growth. Maybe this is necessary character building.
There’s something oddly beautiful about emerging from snow drifts just to be punched in the face with a gust of pollen and humidity. I’ve become a character in a Russian novel—but hotter and stickier.
