Oh, joy! The Humidity is back.  We’ve had a really wonderful Spring…. unlike most years. It’s been fairly cool but even better than that: we’ve had low humidity. My hair has looked good. I’ve been able to breathe. I haven’t started sweating at 7 in the morning. It’s comfortable to sleep at night. But all that is over now because my enemy Humidity has returned to taunt me for another summer. It’s currently 91% humidity.

Instead of  just spending the next several months cursing Humidity and trying to avoid him, I’ve decided to make an attempt to understand him a little better and maybe come to a truce. Here are my findings:

Humidity is the amount of water in the air.

Doesn’t sound that ominous, does it? But I’ve learned that Humidity is a sneaky little bugger.

As the relative humidity increases, hair becomes longer, and as the humidity drops it becomes shorter. On very humid days, your hair actually becomes longer and this extra length causes the frizziness that gives us bad hair days.

So my hair is getting longer when Humidity comes to visit and that’s why it is frizzy? All I know is that I have curly hair and it doesn’t get longer, it gets bigger. I guess maybe it is getting longer but not vertically. It’s getting longer horizontally and I can promise you that it is not a pretty site.

This is not me but does demonstrate my hair nicely when Humidity is attacking it.

Asthma and humidity should not be put together. For medical reasons, these two things can really damage your body.

As an asthma sufferer, I can personally vouch for this.  Humidity makes it difficult to breathe … period. Your lungs feel heavy. Your nose feels stuffy. It’s like breathing underwater and that is not fun.

Heat and humidity causes acne flare-ups because the skin “swells” from the cardiovascular system kicking in. When you get hot or exercise, two things happen at once. Your skin swells from the freshly oxygenated blood sent to the surface to feed the muscles that are “working” and then you start to perspire producing acids and salts to “cool” the body off. This combination of swelling skin with acids and salts irritates and dries the skin and can cause ZITS to get worse and become larger.

Big, fuzzy hair and zits. Just perfect….

Okay… I have spent a lot of time searching the internet for good things about humidity. It’s seems to be futile. I know some people love summer. I am not one of them. I hate being sweaty. No one looks good sweaty. Well, maybe Jon Bon Jovi or Hugh Jackman but only if it’s a good sweat and not a stinky sweat. No one smells good sweaty which is a real problem for me in the summer because I have a very good sense of smell. My husband says I should work for the DEA sniffing out people’s luggage at the airport. I have a lot of friends that just love to hang out at the pool and watch their children swim. Yuck. Sitting in the stifling heat, sweating, and counting the hours until I can go home is not my idea of a good time. It’s total misery.

So I’ll be waiting for Fall and for a phone call from Magnolia. I just remembered that “sweat” is not a word I’m allowed to use. It’s “perspiring”. Sorry!