Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Havin' a heat wave...

It’s really very hot these days.  Yesterday it hit 31 degrees (88 F) and today it’s supposed to get up to 33 degrees (92 F).  We have a bit more breeze out here in the ‘burbs than we did back in the 15th (Paris).  But it’s still certainly stuffy, hot and heavy.

My doctors all told me, more than once, that I have to avoid the sun for a year.  I can actually understand why (this time).  Every time I get out in the sun my skin around my neck, especially where it was radiated, feels like it’s crinkling up.  It tightens and pulls from the sides towards the centre and literally fells like someone’s stretching it.  It’s not enjoyable.  I will not even begin to describe the pleasures of direct sunlight shining upon my scar.  I tend to run and find shade when that happens or walk around with my hand over my scar.  Even without the sun however the simple increase in temperature makes my scar heat up and lately it fells like it’s burning.  It’s like a Y-shaped iron in my neck.  The other apparent side-effect of the heat is that my saliva, or the very tiny amount of that which is left, seems to get thicker.  It sometimes accumulates in to a ball in my throat which makes me cough like back in the old days of post-treatment trauma.

As you can see I am truly enjoying the heat and the beginnings of summer.  I dream of dark, grey, wintery days of hiding underneath my bedcovers…

Summer this year, for me, is just yet another stage to get through…

 

3 comments:

Jerry said...

Thats why God invented air conditioning, however the French, and apparently most of the rest of Europe, have not yet adopted the habit of becoming comfortable by flicking a switch, when the temperature hovers at the 90 degree mark. In my case I start the cooling process at about 80 degrees, but then I am decadent. We have had copious abounts of rain here in the NE of the US, in the past couple of weeks, so much that the ground was no longer able to absorb it and it decided to migrate to my basement, where all of the boxes that have been moved from house to house ove the last couple of moves, were sitting. I have remarked on more than one occasion, when looking at this stored stuff, that I need to get it off the floor and onto some sort of racks in case of a flood. I no longer have to worry about it. Ths mildew ridden, soggy boxes were brought to the dump yesterday, in our current 90 degree heat wave. I too look forward to the cool autumn and cold winter evenings in frot of a fire place and then I remember it is only July. Oh Well! Hope you feel better, keep the scar in shade.
Love and Kisses
Uncle Jerry

Derek Erb said...

It's true that out here in the rest of the world we prefer to breathe air. Not conditioned air which has been manufactured by sucking in the current air, with all of its ambient germs and bacteria, and then filtering it through nonrecyclable materials and chemicals and then spewing it back out as chilled artificial air. We tend to have less respiratory illnesses, colds and flus as well...

Reading your comment however made me realise why it is that America can actually believe there is no such thing as global warming. As y'all live in an air-conditioned bubble all across the country you have no idea what the real globally-warmed air actually feels like.

The book story is really depressing. I can remember a really bad flood we went through when I was a kid in Topanga Canyon (California) which wiped out a really big portion of Arlene's and my record (vinyl) collection. I can remember crying over the album covers which already looked like Dali had gone through them and made the images all sort of drip from a certain level down...

Hopefully you were able to salvage some books out of the flood-rubble.

Jerry said...

That only goes to prove our assertion that God is an American and why he gave us the uncanny ability to deny with conviction that global warming exists and is possibly caused by man. How inconvenient life would be without that kind of denial. I was able to salvage some of the books, but a great deal of them, some downright irreplaceable, were lost. On the bright side it did force us to discard some stuff that should have been discarded long agl. Now if you will excuse me, I have to get a sweatshirt as it is too cold in here for just my t-shirt, and then I must get some tissues as I believe I am coming down with some bacteria related respiratory illness, but boy am I comfortable.