I am learning that I become a different person when I am hot. How about you? And, no, I’m not talking about how wonderfully sexy you are. That is understood, obviously. No, I’m talking about the weather.

Many of us are living through unusually high temperatures and finding ways to adjust. We are finding places to park our cars in the shade, wearing hats if we walk anywhere, buying big bags of ice, and taking the children to the pool, or the city fountains, or the sprinkler in the front yard, or giving them an occasional short bathroom shower. For some of us, water is now in short supply, so it’s hard to find wet relief.

One solution is to sleep during the day and get out and about in the evenings and early mornings instead. I have noticed many families with small children walking past my place at 10:00 at night, long after the little ones are usually put to bed. I also see more people than I used to see jogging at 5:00 in the morning. Clearly, we are adjusting to 30+ Celsius days.

Something else I have noticed is that my energy and creativity disappear when I am too hot. I try not to turn on my portable air conditioner until it is absolutely necessary because I want to keep the power bill down. So, in the mornings I open all the doors and windows to take advantage of the breeze to keep my living space bearable.

The trouble with my system is that the breeze is an unreliable cooling source. Early in the day it is usually fine, and wafts through my apartment in pleasing gusts. As the morning progresses, though, the decline in its effectiveness is so subtle that I don’t always realize it is failing me. By noon I am wondering why I haven’t done anything useful yet.

I usually start my day by making coffee and catching up on email and the news, then I do my favourite word puzzles until I get showered and dressed. After that I usually do some housework, or run errands, or try to read some of the documents related to my upcoming condo purchase, or do some of the reading for my role as a tutor. Lately, though, in hot weather, I’m lucky if I get past making coffee and reading the news. After that I become stodge.

To explain, my mother regularly made one-pot meals that my siblings and I called slosh and large heavy fruitcakes that we called stodge. They were perfectly healthy foods, and we were not very kind in our characterizations of them, but my sense of how they were experienced has stuck with me. When I get too hot, I feel like mum’s stodge in both density and wit. As it gets hotter, I become slosh.

It is only when I realize how far I have sunk into my furniture cushions that I decide to turn on my portable air conditioner. Very quickly, in less than an hour, I find myself up and about preparing food, writing, working on a painting, doing housework, balancing the budget. Suddenly I am energetic, effective, worthwhile!

I always thought that I could take some pride in my intelligence and creativity because I attributed those characteristics to my own wherewithal. Now I realize that they are entirely weather-related. When the temperature is closest to that of the rainy London where I grew up, the more productive I become. It is humbling to realize that who I am is location and climate dependent.

Today, reliving my lost youth has more to do with turning on the AC than any naughtiness you might imagine.