STRANGER THAN FICTION: DOG DAYS OF SUMMER ARE HITTING HARD

It's almost July.

I hate July. If there's any good argument that hell is on Earth, it's summer in the Mississippi River Valley.

The Other Half loves summer because it gives him a chance to show off his legs in shorts. Winter is more my kind of season. Bulky sweaters and coats are great equalizers, figure-wise.

Summer forces people to bare all. I hang on to those long-sleeved shirts and blue jeans as long as I can, but they're a little uncomfortable when the mercury starts rising to about 80 or so.

The season is even more hellish because of my little perspiration problem. Sure, companies make antiperspirant for your underarms, but nothing for the rest of your body. If they did, I'd be the first in line for that facial antiperspirant.

It's terrible to take all that time putting on make-up only to produce sweat that makes everything run, smear and shine. After a make-up session, I run from the apartment to the car as quickly as possible, jump inside and hit the air conditioning.

But nobody can escape the car heat-wave. You know -- that wave of heat that comes out when you open your car door after the car has been sitting in the sun with the windows rolled up. You can literally SEE the heat roll out.

My current Toyota is white with an off-black, vinyl interior. The last one had a light brown, fabric seats, so I settled into them with some amount of comfort. With dark vinyl and shorts -- ouch!

A friend suggested I buy some nice seatcovers, not making the mental connection that if I had money for nice seat covers, I wouldn't be driving a minuscule, used Toyota.

So I bought tacky seatcovers, then rode around with them in my trunk for no less than two months, hoping The Other Half would notice and say something masculine, like, "Here, little woman, let ME put those seatcovers on for you."

No such luck. Finally I had to ask.

"Heidi, it wouldn't take five minutes for you to put those on," he replied. "Just quit being lazy."

So much for the weak female routine.

What should have been a five-minute task turned into a half-hour ordeal played out in the mid-June sun. By the time I figured out how to put Hook A into Slot B, I was nothing but a blob of sweat on the back of humanity.

I staggered into the apartment, looking for comfort -- or at least a glass of water -- from The Other Half.

"Quit faking," he said. "That is not sweat. You dumped water on yourself."

Yep, he caught me. I attended the Houdini School of Heatstroke so I could trick people into thinking I was actually dehydrated.

But here we are at the end of June, with the hot and humid months of July, August and September looming ahead. Months of looking like doo-doo with flat hair, sweaty foreheads and ham hock arms hanging out of sleeveless shirts.

The fat-tanning efforts continue down at our community pool. The only way anyone would know that I was tan would be if they saw the parts of me that WEREN'T tan and were struck blind.

In closing, everyone should know that the most stupid thing to be said all year is, "Hot enough for you?"

I'm warning you, just don't say it.

~Heidi Nieland is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.