How do YOU handle a heat wave?

I turn on the AC, stay indoors and drink hot coffee.

When I worked outside during intense heat, I always had spray bottles full of water, 5 gallons of ice cold Gatorade for the guys and I always ate a light lunch.

Your house must be insulated, so if you have no power, open all the windows at night, and about 8 or 9 in the morning close them all, and close any curtains on the sunny side of the house. The house will warm as the day progresses, but no as hot as outdoors.  Oh yeah, you don't need a bunch of blankets when you go to sleep

Watersports. Lots of iced beverages. Hammock time.

My husband and had moved the Kansas City area and bought a house. On moving in day it was over 100 degrees and it stayed that way for the better part of a week. Our a/c was not working. I called my realtor who called the previous owners and to see if it needed to be reset or something. No. It was broke. The unit was still under warranty so we called the company to come out. They came out and the compressor was shot and they didn't have a replacement. They called around looking for one and the soonest they could get us one was approximately 3 months as it would have to come by boat from China.

All of that happened over about a week's time. Thankfully we had a finished basement and it was much cooler down there. I kept my dogs down there for a day or two until I could buy a window a/c unit. They were few and far between because there was a heat wave. I put the window unit in the guest room because it was not big enough to cool the master bedroom and slept in there and kept the dogs in there. And I took lots of showers.

I grew up in Florida and didn't have a/c. My summers were spent on the lake. Or at the springs or the beach. You just had to be around water to cool off.

Lots of water didge we have heat waves every summer here in texas 110f for two weeks drink lots of water pour water over your head and body

We had air conditioning when I grew up but my dad hated the indoor air, so we very seldom had it on and we lived in the panhandle of Texas. Very hot in the summer months.

So we got adept at putting a hand towel in cold water and clipping that to a fan where it would blow cool air on us. Cool or tepid showers helped. Close all blinds if you had them open. Essentially make the inside of your house like a cave. Sometimes you just have to sweat your way through it, knowing that it won't be this hot all the time.