That’ll teach me to be smug.

A little more than a week ago, I was vacationing in northern coastal California, where the average high temperature was 65 degrees, and the low was 48.

Every day, I’d wake up, turn on The Weather Channel, and grin unabashedly as the meteorologist would say, “It’s another day of TRIPLE DIGIT HEAT for the poor folks in the Midwest” or “Looks like TRIPLE DIGIT HEAT for the grain belt with heat indices upwards of 105 degrees!”

“Listen to that,” I’d say, my voice dripping with bogus compassion. “TRIPLE DIGIT HEAT. Tee hee hee.”

Oh, I was smug all right.

Then, just to compound my smugness, I’d open my laptop, log on to weather.com and read the local forecast.

“Wow,” I’d say to my husband, who was standing out on the balcony, sporting a fleece jacket to ward off the chill. “It’s going to hit 101 today at home.”

“Bummer for them,” he’d reply.

“Yeah. Bummer!!” I’d giggle, pour myself another cup of coffee, and hop back in bed to warm my toes.

Forget smug. I was positively gloating. (Now, don’t get all huffy. Let he who is not guilty of vacation gloating cast the first stone.)

For eight glorious days, I smirked with superiority every time I walked outside without breaking a sweat. I’d moan with delight whenever I’d roll down the rental car window and breathe the cool, pine-tinged air. In the evening after the sun went down, I’d jump up and down, crying, “Look! I’m putting on a sweater! It’s sweater weather in August! This is so cool! Get it? Cool!? Hahahaha! Here’s to sweaters! Sweaters all around!!” (I’ll admit my delirium might have had something to do with a wine tasting earlier in the day.)

“Did we pick the perfect time to get away or what?” my husband asked at lunch one day.

“I know!” I replied, giddily. “And the best part is, when we get back, the worst of the heat will be over, and fall will be right around the corner!”

That’s the bad thing about vacations. They transport you to Fantasy Land with no preparation for re-entry.

We touched down at KCI last Saturday night. Exiting the jetway, my husband headed to baggage claim (there were heavy suitcases full of sweaters and a very large box of wine to retrieve.) I went for the car.

Stepping out of the terminal, the humidity instantly fogged my glasses. I gasped for air. After a 10-minute wait, I joined the clammy sardines in the blue shuttle bus (that I SWEAR had the heater turned on), rode an agonizing 15 minutes to my stop in the economy lot, and trudged to the car like a dehydrated prisoner on an Alabama chain gang.

The engine started right up (does anyone else clap and cheer wildly at that moment, or is it just me?) and I quickly set the A/C to “high.” As the cool air slowly filtered through the car’s stuffy interior, I backed out of my stall and switched on the radio.

“: Sunday’s forecast calls for more misery. Expect a high of 101 degrees with a heat index of 109, followed by several days of TRIPLE DIGIT HEAT. And there’s no end in sight.”

Vacation over. Lesson about to be learned.

I spent the next seven days becoming all too familiar with the ubiquitous and unrelenting TRIPLE DIGIT HEAT. As I lugged boxes into my daughter’s new rental house, slogged across steaming asphalt to the grocery store or sprayed my shriveling flowers with tepid water from the hose, I thought about the lucky so-and-so’s who were enjoying their vacation THIS week in a cool, temperate place.

“They’re probably feeling SO smug,” I thought to myself. “Watching the Weather Channel and laughing at all of us poor suckers back home. Gloaters, all of them! Dirty, rotten gloaters!!”

And then it hit me. What goes around really does come around. To take haughty satisfaction in somebody else’s misfortune simply invites bad karma back into your life, in spades.

So I swore off gloating and chose to do something positive and constructive (in the air-conditioned comfort of my home, of course.) I decided to plan my next vacation. To someplace warm like the Florida Keys, perhaps. Say, in January, when the wind chill at home is hovering around 10 below :

Tee hee hee.