It's been HOT for the past 3 days in the north of the Netherlands. Weatherforecast said 25 to 27 °C, the pole alternatively showing time, date and temperature in the next village said 30 °C at around 2 PM today.
On a hot steel ship in the sun it's hotter, as in it burns your feet and legs if you walk/sit on it.
On monday I worked for 3 hours, giving up shortly after noon.
Yesterday I had my weekly aqua jogging thing late morning, so I called my boss at around noon to ask if it was even worth coming over. Nope.
Today I was smart and decided on an alternative work schedule, so I had my alarm set for something very much in the middle of the night for me, and started painting at 6:30 AM, which allowed me to keep going until 1 PM.
Tomorrow will most likely be a shorter day unless the weather changes, today was painting on the semi shaded starboard side, tomorrow will be portside in the full sun, no way I'll keep that up until 1 AM. I will see if I can wake up to a 'middle of the night' alarm again though to make the best of it.
The boss doesn't care when I work: as a rule of thumb I work around 4 hours a day, which can be 3 or 7, or the occasional none, and I simply tell him how much he owes me at the end of the week, all fine. Although I received a very surprised text message when he saw my post on Facebook with a picture of his ship showing I was starting work at 6:30.
Aqua jogging was fun yesterday!
A good lesson allowing me to have something of a real workout (not a given, as most of the small group are at least 20 years my senior). We're allowed to hang out in the warm bubbly bath thing for 10-15 minutes after the lesson, and this time our instructor waited until everyone but my friend and I had left to approach us.
We started to apologise and tell her "yes, yes, we're leaving", but it turned out she wanted to ask me if I'd be willing to join her for a swim in the outdoor pool!
No swimming solo without supervision in any of the pools even for employees, and because the pool is closed after our lesson, she wasn't allowed to go for a cooling swim after her hot work. So she figured that in swimming together, she'd technically be the pool guard because I were swimming, and we spent a nice additional 15 minutes in the cool outside pool.
At 47, getting a special treatment from the teacher still does its thing to make you feel special, which is completely ridiculous but lovely at the same time!
Let's hope we'll make a habit of it. the cool outdoor pool water feels lovely after working out in the stuffy atmosphere of the indoor pool.