Summer

Last Friday:

Visit to the pulmonologist this morning. Same as it ever was. Testing coming up.

Home via Starbucks for a grande soy latte for me and a matcha latte for Dave.

I've lost three pounds. It's only eleven days since I started Weight Watchers, so I'm okay with that number. Slow and steady.

I need to lose myself again.

I was nervous about the doctor's appointment, so I did not sleep well last night. I am still sleeping on the sofa because getting into bed makes me anxious. 

One of the nurses I used to work with at the children's psych hospital texted yesterday. When I left, she had been there eleven years. She lasted another two years after I left, but then it got to be too much for her. 

Talking to her reminded me of the shift reports that I used to read prior to going to work. I have a couple downloaded on my computer. One reminds me that before I left, I had a group of five patients, one suicidal transgender boy, one aggressive girl, one girl with psychosis with auditory and visual hallucinations and disorganized speech, one girl suicidal after years of being raped by her father, one "frequent flyer" whose brother had committed suicide the week before she was admitted. This was not an atypical group. (And I was fine with having only five patients. Sometimes it was many more. Plus, I worked--I chose to work--in the unit with the most acute patients (the most aggressive, the most suicidal, the most traumatized, all teenagers), so that was added stress.)

I don't miss that job. I liked it, but I don't miss it at all.

This morning:

Visit to the cardiologist the morning. He thinks it's nothing, not my heart certainly. More tests. Just in case.

I did not sleep well last night. I'm tired but propped up by a bit of caffeine. I had to get up at 6 a.m. I did not get to sleep until almost 1 a.m. Then I kept waking up in the night.

We came home via Starbucks. I had a grande soy latte. Dave had a London fog.

It's hot outside. This week, temperatures will cross over 100F (38C) and will likely stay that way until fall comes around again.

I remember the first 100 degree day I ever experienced. I was a kid, maybe six or seven years old. I was at the community center, playing board games inside with some of the other kids. I went to the water fountain and as I was drinking, I heard the DJ on the radio say that it was 100 degrees. Just hearing it made me feel hotter.

That was forty-four or forty-five years ago. 

What is time anyway?

Summer is here.