2007-07-17

Here

I've been in this mood for such a long time that I can't even apologize for it.
It's like holding your breath for a second too long and then not being sure if you're okay when you let it out.

Or maybe more like I would imagine an amputee having a phantom itch.
Something is REALLY bothering me but there's really nothing there, nothing to scratch or pick or work on.

There's no boy trouble, no real financial trouble and nothing is significantly out of place except that I feel like everything is a few degrees off of where everything should be and I can't find the right settings to tune myself in and relax.

Since I can't find what's missing, I don't know how to fill the hole.

Maybe it's just because it's so hot everyday and there haven't really been any significant rains anywhere near where I live or work.
It rained last night while I was running but not enough to be a cooling downpour, only enough to mix with the sweat and get in my eyes and make me go home a few blocks ahead of my usual turns.
I got home hotter for having been rained on and that felt like an injustice of the highest order.

I can't sleep, either, which I think is a seasonal thing for me.
I can't seem to find the right comfort level with the humidity.
Everything feels heavy and clammy - neither comforting nor cooling to my itchy sensitivity.

I don't want to touch anything because the sweat will make any trace of pet hair or dust stick to me.

I had to cook some ground chicken last night, when I got home from running and after I had cooled off in my shower.
The 20 minutes it took to chop an onion and a potato and brown the meat made me so miserably sweaty that I had to put a towel around the back of my neck and have it there to wipe the sweat off of my face before it could drip onto the counter.

There's just no relief until it's the dead of the night, 3 AM and the temperature drops down to 80.
That's when I can fall asleep, when I become really tired.

And at 5:30, when both the dog and the cat are twitching to go outside, I can barely see to stumble over to the back door and open it.
When I do, and full, unexpected and unwelcome sunlight blasts me in the face, I feel like a vampire.
I stand at the kitchen sink to drink a full glass of water while I wait for the dog to come back and ask to be let in, beginning to process thoughts a little, groaning under the prospect of another day where the amount of water I drink will become painful to my bladder and my stomach.
But knowing that it's worse if I don't drink that water because I will never be able to get through a work-out at the end of the day without it, that if I don't have all that water so early in the day, I will dehydrate into a pounding headache and nausea and weakened muscles.

I am a slave to the monotony of the dank of summer.
There are limited choices to how I can spend each day, how I can put things together to get them done efficiently.
I am driven a nervous system that isn't designed for extremes - one need only look at my rosacea-splattered face or the heat rash that erupts painfully most days on my left shoulder and knee and on my right forearm.

And I guess that maybe I do know the problem and it is this monsoon season that everyone loves so much.

Why do people love it?
For the power of the storms?
For the fact of being able to say that you live in a place where there are monsoon-driven storms?

No.
They love it because it's an archetypical allegory of a war between good and evil.

Monsoon rain and humidity blow in and soak a town that is teetering on the edge of certain death due to the sun trying to use its power to kill us all, slowly and on purpose.
So we wait and we hide.
Monsoon arrives and there is an epic battle where the weapons are sweat and sleep-deprivation and lightening strikes.

And when it's done, the sun retreats for at time, gives us a break to go outside and look around at the new vegetation and the new landscape in the wake of flooding, cancellations, and long periods of edgy anxious irritability.

Sadly, that time remains a ways away and for now.... we are here.
You are here.

I AM HERE.

arizonasarah at 11:20 a.m.

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