A Dog’s Life is No Sweat

 I hate to sweat. I’m sure that it causes at least 11 percent of the world’s problems.

People in hot, sweaty places, such as the Middle East, are crankier, especially when expected to share their stuff, such as oil, with others. And sweaty people get more confused. Consider Florida and the hanging chads. But people in places that don’t sweat much don’t generally cause problems for others, except for Sarah Palin, and I’m sure she’s an outlier.

Given the choice, I would have preferred the ventilation system God saw fit to give dogs. Panting is a whole lot more convenient and less messy than sweating. You don’t have to shower after a nice brisk walk around the neighborhood or the occasional cat chase if you’re a dog. All you have to do when you get overheated is stick your tongue out and do some heavy breathing for a few minutes. That, and a nice dish of water, and you’re set.

I could probably have engineered some alternate systems, if God had asked, such as little fans in the armpits that activate when the temp rises due to over-exertion or hot weather. But I wasn’t asked.

Not only is May the month of flowers, it’s also the month that sweating gets into full swing. Bugs –- Mayflies, gnats, sweat bees and mosquitoes –- adore human sweating, which is as attractive to them as steaks on the barbie are to us. And my sweat is a virtual flight plan to the most delicious morsel of human tissue and blood on the planet. Even with the house sealed tighter than a Mason jar and blankets duck taped to my chin, I wake up with a fresh crop of mosquito bites every morning between the last freeze of spring and Halloween.

Then there’s the problem of never getting dry in the summer. Take yesterday, for example. I’m visiting my Mom in North Carolina, where she lives in an assisted living facility. While I stay with my brother’s family at night, I hang out with her during the day as much as possible. I decided to exercise down the hall in the “wellness room,” which consists of one treadmill, one exercise bike and a small stack of light hand-weights. Believe it or not, there was no line of 80-year-old to use the equipment – I had it all to myself.

After my treadmill run, I went back to Mom’s room to change out of my sweaty clothes, but my brother had shown up, so I went into her adjoining bathroom to do so. After stripping, giving myself a quick wet-washcloth-rubdown (the rooms don’t have their own showers) and towel drying, I tried to quickly dress, but I couldn’t stop sweating from the workout. The stuffy air didn’t help. My husband and Mom are the only two people I know who are cold when the temperature is set at 80 degrees.

I finally got my Hanes All Unders on, but that’s when I realized that the dang bra I had put in my bag was the one I had bought by accident –- the one with a t-strap and no hooks in the back. It has to go on over the head, with the arms then slipping between the straps. I’d get it over my head and pulled down over the boobs in front, and the back would be rolled up like a sausage. I’d try to reach behind and unroll it, and it would fly up over the boobs like a window shade, seeing as there isn’t a whole lot of resistance to stop it. 

By then I was sweating like a pig and it was sticking even more, so I tried to pull it off to start over. But when I eased it up to my chin, it had flipped over several times and was wound tight around the underwire in the cups, making the opening so small it wouldn’t go over my head. I was convinced I was going to hang myself in the bathroom on my bra. Wouldn’t that have made a lovely obituary? “Naked Woman Found Hanged on Wonderbra in Assisted Living Facility Bathroom –- Police Say She Needed Padded Bra Because She Couldn’t Afford Boob Job, But Extra Fiberfill Made Bra Too Small to Go Over Head When Sweaty.”

This is the sort of thing that a girl asks her Mom to help with, but since Mom is in a wheelchair, that wasn’t an option. And not wanting to have to stick my head out the door and ask my brother for help, I considered pushing the nurse call button on the wall. Maybe I could feign a fall: “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up! And bring scissors!”

But I didn’t. Using Mom’s towel, I dried off again and finally got the noose off without calling for the Jaws of Life. After another similar attempt at getting it on over my head, I gave up and stepped into it, worked it over my hips like a girdle until it reached its final resting places.

Not being expected to wear a bra is the other good thing about being a dog.

Photo:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/themacinator/ / CC BY 2.0