Last summer I snuck into my job at the gas station.
I brought in several large plastic buckets, and took them into the walk-in cooler we have in the back.
There is an industrial sized ice machine there that can make a thousand pounds of ice a day. I loaded up all the buckets with as much ice as I could carry, and then drove back to my house. I have a small swimming pool, but the weather has been so hot the water felt like a lukewarm bath! I dumped a hundred pounds of ice into the end of the pool, then jumped in to start cooling myself off. These are the lengths I go when I don’t have sufficient air conditioning, because the heat makes me crazy! As much fun as swimming in ice was, the pool started heating back up after just a few minutes, and I knew it wasn’t a sustainable solution. Because I didn’t have enough money for the substantial HVAC repairs I needed, I decided to find a better stopgap measure. I started to hunt through the local flea markets and swap meets until I found someone with an old but functional A/C unit for sale. The air conditioner was ugly and it was old, but by golly it actually worked! For fifty bucks I got a window mounted air conditioner that was powerful enough to cool down one whole room of my house. That may not sound like much, but when you are living with no air conditioning at all, it is a welcome relief.