Wow, hard to buck that much encouragement! I did, in fact, call my kid, and maybe now I will not be so wussy about doing so in the future. My mother, you know, called me a minimum of four times a day, usually at the same times each day. When the phone rang in the library at 8:30 every morning, kids there would say "Mrs. Chai, it's your mom!" So, I've got issues. Anyway, it was good advice and I took it. Thanks.Here's an SCM tale for today. I imagine there will be fewer of them over the next year, given our circumstances. Anyway, there are a few teachers who have 3rd period as their free period and who spend it in the library, all of us doing work while we all chat. One of these goes back a very long way with me; among other things, we were pregnant together 25 years ago. This morning, she commented on how hot it was in the library today. I said it had been very cold when we came in, and that I would appreciate it if the fluctuating temperatures in the library would at least coincide with my own, because it would be easier for me that way.
At which point, the SCM chimed in, saying how his body thermostat just isn't the same as it used to be when he was younger. (He'll be 60 next month.) And he's going on about how when he exercises, it's so hard to cool down, etc. etc.
Now folks, as you know, I've been living in Hot Flash Hell full-time for the last couple of weeks. And there are times that he just provokes me into making me want to shut him up. So I said to him, "Listen. Unless you have malaria, you cannot even begin to imagine what I'm talking about. If anything like a hot flash happened to you once, you would go to the hospital."
Flippant as that was, I seriously think that if anyone experienced this sensation and did not know that it was menopausal (or otherwise have some clue what it was) it would scare the shit out of you. If you felt perfectly fine one moment, and a moment later you were hotter than any fever you have ever had, and had soaked all your clothes with perspiration, well ... I know that malaria is the first thing I would think of, and if I thought I had malaria in New Jersey, man, I would get to a hospital as fast as my sweaty little legs could carry me.
I was telling my sister this tale on the phone before, and we got the giggles and I could hardly get it out. I also had to tell her what I did to deal with the situation last night to help me sleep -- you don't want to know -- and then we both went insane again, realizing that this is something that Shirl did, too. Then the Sibs said I had to remind her to tell me something on Sunday, while we're each getting a pedi, something about her SIL being an incubus. So now I have this post-it on my desk with the word INCUBUS written on it.
I went back to Sears this afternoon, to return the Land's End jeans I ordered over the phone last week -- they were horrible -- and while I was there, to look at another item or two that I saw in the catalog that came with the jeans that didn't fit. I was trying on a pair of shoes, sitting on a bench, and when I stood up and turned around, my Chum, who is my best pal at work, was standing right behind me, looking at shoes, too. She hadn't seen me sitting there, either. So I said "Hello", and we got very silly right there in the store. I made her help me decide which color shoes to get. (I got gray.) Funny, I had been driving behind her, too, on the road out of town, but I turned off to go to the mall and figured she was just on her way home, but she had just taken a different route to get to the same place.
It's Boo Boo's birthday.
He's 15. That's roughly two years past when the Bad Vet said he would certainly live. I'm just saying.
(Oooh, entry #1066. Maybe I'll go invade something.)
