4:16 Friday afternoon. I don’t dare move, because the slightest shift in even a limb seems to increase the temperature inside my tin can.

I felt incredibly lucky this winter, no snow tires on my car, watching as the white stuff caused all sorts of bullshit for friends and family up north whilst I sat out the artic drift between a bunch o’ mountains.

But alas, I am now on the receiving end of what I knew in my forcibly-Catholic-school-girl heart was coming sooner or later: punishment.

And hell. Hot, sticky hell. With bugs. Lots and lots of bugs.

Which fully sucks as I am, apparently, allergic to 99.9 percent of said winged demons, forced to carry my unwieldy EpiPen with me wherever I go in case I should, what, puff up – all anaphylactic-like – and die?

Somehow that doesn’t sound so bad right now, on a Friday afternoon when I should be doing something more constructive.

Well, except for the “and die” part, I guess.

It seems we have come to a part of the camping experience that challenges even the most hardcore enthusiast: 100-plus degree heat hitting the flat, white 29-foot long expanse of metal for hours on end, turning our humble abode into a real tin can – y’know, the kind they seal up and cook the food in before sending it to the supermarket?

Yeah, we are tuna, we are formerly green veggies swimming in our own broth, gone soft and mushy in the head from the effects of our enclosed cooking environment.

We’ve lost our luster, would lie limp on a plate, looking pale compared to our garden fresh counterparts, were we actually food.

Even the dog’s too hot to play – she just dropped her backyard-found turtle next to me, looking at me with her Beagle-brown eyes pleading, “Um, can you just move that for me? Maybe put it in my mouth – I’ll just kinda’ gum it til even that becomes a chore. Thanks.”

(Usually the play-maniac, she’s actually given up by this point, and is flat on her side, sighing heavily.)

From outside, our rooftop AC unit sounds like a pool filter. Sigh… If only I’d known that all the pools I had unfettered access to in the past would be far, far away when I needed them most, I would have loved them more, treated them better, told them how much I loved them all the time with more cannonballs and Marco Polo. Oh the humanity!

Oh the humidity! Sheesh!