Although I live in New York – the temperature so far this month has been so hot that I feel as if I live in Nevada. With temperatures in the high nineties and a heat index that makes it feel like well over one hundred, the “hazy, lazy, crazy days of Summer” have arrived – and are apparently here to stay because the end to this heat wave is nowhere in sight.

If I didn’t have air conditioning at home and an air conditioned car to take me to and from work – I don’t know how I would survive. It has been so hot lately that as soon as I come home from work, the first thing I do before I even take my bag off of my shoulders is turn all the air conditioners in the house on – which explains my “one hundred and something dollar” electric bill. And when I sleep – I have the bedroom air on high cool and make the room so cold that I wake up freezing – because I would rather wake up freezing then wake up sweating.

But while I may have the luxuries of air conditioning in my home and my car – what about those people that don’t? Just a few minutes in this heat is too much for me – so I have no idea how people that have no access to air conditioning survive. Sure, the City does provide cooling centers in all five boroughs – but to go to a cooling center and then go home and sleep in a bed under the covers with temperatures in the nineties and no air conditioning has got to be the worst.

When it comes to heat waves, it’s the homeless people that I feel the worst for. Having to carry all of their possessions around with no place to keep cool, take a cold shower – or escape from the heat – they have no choice but to endure the Summer heat with not one moment of respite – while watching everyone else heading home to keep cool.

My personal remedy for the scorching Summer heat is a shower both in the morning and when I get home, lots of cold water during the day – and avoiding the outside as much as possible until the temperature drops to a more tolerant level.

The funny thing is that when the winter comes – I will be begging for weather like this.