Teetering On The Cliff
After three days over one-hundred degrees Fahrenheit, today’s forecast was 91° and the morning seems overcast. For whatever reason, I was awake at 5:30 in the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep until after feeding the cat at eight.
The plan for the day mostly was to hope that I could leave the windows open instead of running the air conditioner for the third day straight, but otherwise to keep things low impact. When I saw the overcast skies, though, while it was still in the 70s, I decided to try going to read over coffee.
By the time I’d gotten up, cleaned up, got dressed, had a bowl of cereal, and scooped the litter, I already was dragging, but my brain had been locked onto this need to get the fuck out of the house for something normal that I’d been blocked from having because of the heat. At least twice, my coordination was so off that I hit my heel with a folding step stool and my head on the side of the closet.
I pushed against my depleting resources to get laundry in, because I hate the sound of the machine and having it run while I’m out makes the most sense.
Within minutes of stepping out the door, the sun broke through and proceeded to burn off the cloud cover. I pushed on. It was around 79°. I ate an oatmeal crumble bar on the way.
Being not even noon, the storefront of my usual coffeeshop was not yet in the shade, so rather than the comfort of the table, I had to take a chair into the shade of a tree at curbside, and lean my head against a sign pole.
After maybe twenty minutes, the sun had moved enough for the storefront to be back in the shade, so I moved to the table. Despite this, I lasted maybe another ten minutes and then decided it was time to get home.
The six(?)-block walk alternated between shade and direct sunlight. I felt like I hadn’t slept for three days. I tried to focus on making one block at a time. Halfway home, my neck and shoulders started to burn with ache. One block away, I almost dropped into a sobbing fit.
By the time I got home, less than an hour since I’d left, it was 85° and sunny, and anything else that might come up today likely will have to wait. That I found the wherewithal just to think and type this out is a miracle, and it took me three times as long as it would usually.
Every part of my body feels both like gravity is turned up and like it’s moving through gelatin.