Blistering hot today…

Blistering hot today – house thermometer says 34°C outside now at 2 PM. Very happy to have a central heat pump installed, which cools the inside of the house in the summer.

Yet I remember days like this back in Winnipeg, when we didn’t hesitate to go outside and run through the sprinkler when I was younger or go to the outdoor pool at Kildonan Park when I was a teen and could ride my bike there, a little over 6 km away. No sunscreen, no hesitation, no problem.

When I was really young – when we still lived on Salter Street in Winnipeg until I was 5 – my mother would take me to the wading pool at St. John’s Park or sometimes to the one at Peanut Park. Things are different now, though, in terms of how harsh the weather can get and what parents know to do in terms of protecting their kids from the elements.

I remember coming home on Sundays from one of Grand Beach, Victoria Beach, or Patricia Beach and being as sunburned as a person could be. Then, when we were teens, you couldn’t wait to hit the beach at Ukrainian Park, just north of Camp Morton, to start that season’s tanning process by applying tanning lotion to get that bronzed look.

Not quite the way things work anymore.

But maybe it’s because we grew up like this that hot weather days like today don’t affect me or concern me personally like they do other people (I’m well aware that people with certain types of health conditions don’t have that flexibility and I’m also well aware that an extended period of hot weather is detrimental to the environment in many other ways).

Everyone is erring on the side of caution with this stuff now and I do understand why. But I’m OK with a few days of this heat now and then, perhaps precisely because it makes me think of those times when I was young.

Now, where is that inflatable pool?