Summer polar vortex. These words are just wrong.

So yesterday this BS came across my feed:

The words from my mouth would have made a sailor blush. Yes, the temps are only dipping down into the upper 60s (40s at night), but it.is.July. Supposed to be the hottest month of the year. I’ve only sweat through my underwear once this season, and that’s because I worked out and then gardened for a few hours. I want heat that causes me to sit on my porch with a dripping cold drink in one hand and a fan in the other, muttering “mercy, it’s warm,” as I listen to the buzz of cicadas in the trees above. I finally heard cicadas for the first time this season yesterday; if this cold chases them off I’m going to be pissed.

Yet people are telling us midwesterners (we midwesterners? I need more coffee…) that it’s only a little dip, that it’s only a few days, not to worry. I put these people in two categories. Non-midwesterners and bless-their-little-white-socks-idiots.

They don’t seem to grasp why we (ok, I) view next week’s Summer Polar Vortex with fear and loathing. Chicago has a hefty case of Cold Weather PTSD. First snowfall this winter and we’re gonna dive under the bed and shake like a dog on the 4th of July. A cold snap in mid-July does not do good things to our collective psyche. I know my own weather psyche is still pretty battered, and it’s been needing large doses of sunlight and heat to soothe it. Too many hours of shoveling, too many days of not seeing my lawn, too many weeks of temperatures that froze your liver right when you needed it.

By the way, west coast? I’m sorry you’re suffering through the excessive heat and drought.

It’s not just that the weather last winter was so cold and so snowy. It’s that there was no break to it. It was like Ma Nature (by the way, the pharmacy called, your prescription is ready, you might want to pick it up…[crazy bitch]) pushed our heads under water and held us there, just to watch us kick and flail. Maybe she’d let up a tiny bit, and we’d be hopeful that we could break the water’s surface and take a deep breath, but no, psych!, back down we’d go. Eventually she got bored with our desperate antics and moved on. With next week’s expected temperature plunge, it’s as though we’re being stalked. Oh, we thought we were free of the cold, but no…

<movie man voice> In a world that thought it had finally thawed (images of happy kids playing on a playground, half naked bodies on a beach)…an evil stranger returns (quick, dark shadows)…

Tuesday and Wednesday of next week I’ll crank on the oven and bake as much as possible to stash in the freezer. It’ll be Jen’s Allergen-Free Bakery around here. I’ll wear layers and socks and make the best of it. We’ll play Christmas in July, just for shits and giggles.

But I know we’re being stalked.