Three Itsy Bitsy Miracles. Maybe Four.

The oppressive heat and humidity have finally broken - for now, anyway - and life seems bearable again.

Three weeks of daytime highs in the mid 30s C (90s F) and the humidity making it feel like high 30s (over 100F), with the humidity continuing overnight and making it hard to cool the house naturally, and, well, I wasn't doing much beyond surviving.

I realize those temperatures sound very tolerable to folks living in southern USA, Australia, or southern Asia, but I am prone to overheating and fainting when it gets that hot. It was that way even before I gained weight. I can remember "laying out" in the sun to get a tan when I was 17 years old and 90 pounds soaking wet, before we knew about skin cancer, and after fifteen or twenty minutes I had had enough. As I got up to go inside the house, I became very dizzy and my vision went dim. I didn't black out, but it was close. I have also been close to fainting at work after just walking from the car to the office. If I had not lain down on the dusty floor in my office clothes with a cold wet towel on my head, I'd have been a goner. (I say this as someone who has fainted on other occasions. I know the progression, and this was a close one.)

As my husband used to tease me, I am clearly "a delicate flower".

Ha.

Ha.

Ha.  

Thank you for all your comments on my last post. I needed very much to vent, and you all kindly listened/read and I appreciate it.

But just to prove that I am more than my constant complaining would suggest, I have three things to tell you - little tiny uplifting miracles on days when I felt that one more glitch would send me over the edge. The first two happened when I was still hands-on caregiver to my mom, and my stress level was constantly off the charts. The third was a few days ago. To be honest, many days I still feel like one more "thing" will exceed my ability to cope. I think I am still in burnout, but I'm hoping time will help.

The caregiver brain. I can attest this is very accurate. I have experienced everything here, to some degree or another, except the baby locks, bed sores, incontinence, and changing adult diapers. And I wasn't even a live-in caregiver, as many caregivers are. Did you know that being a caregiver puts you at higher risk of death? The National Institute of Health in the United States says the risk is 63% higher. (Link HERE.)

But I've gotten off the track, into the weeds. Again.

Here goes.

Miracle One:

Way back in winter, on a very cold evening, I was on my way to my mother's and stopped to pick up a few groceries for her. When I returned to my vehicle, it wouldn't start. I sat and thought about what to do. Time was ticking, and I had to get to my mom's place fairly quickly, and then go to work. I still have two vehicles, my late husband's SUV, which I was driving, and my own car, which was at home. I checked with the store manager to make sure I could leave the SUV there overnight. Then I called a taxi to take me home to get my car, and sat in the SUV to wait. I looked out the side window and - boom! - caught the fall of a bright meteor in the sky. I like to watch the Perseids meteor shower each August and have seen a fair number of them, but this was far bigger and brighter than any I have seen. If I hadn't been there at that moment, with nothing to do but look out the window at the sky, I would never have witnessed it.

Side note: Shortly before that, I had read that if a meteor gets brighter and larger it means it's coming straight toward you, which is not really a good thing. This meteor did not do that, thankfully. But you can bet that micro-thought crossed my mind as soon as it registered how bright this one was.

Miracle Two:

I dropped an earring in my kitchen one evening and absolutely could not find it. I checked the floor over and over. I looked under the appliances with a flashlight (lots of dust but no earring), and then dusted under the appliances because I couldn't un-see the dust. I checked the countertop in case the earring, being small, had somehow defied gravity and leaped sideways as it fell. I checked the top of my sneaker in case it had bounced back up and was tangled in my laces. No luck.

Then I tried a trick I read about when I was a kid: drop another thing just like the first thing, and watch it carefully to see where it lands. Believe it or not, this often works. I've found needles and pins and other tiny things using this method.

However, this time it failed me. The second earring just ker-plunked beside my foot.

I sat down (because it's easier to think when I don't have to stand up at the same time. Don't judge me.). I couldn't believe that the earring could just disappear into thin air, so I got up to check the floor again. Still nothing. Quelle surprise. Yes, I know the definition of insanity - doing the same thing repeatedly, expecting a different result. But what would you have done if you were me?

Finally, finally, it occurred to me to check the bottom of my sneaker . . . and there was the missing earring, stuck in the tread, which was so deep the earring had no affect on my walking and didn't clickety-click on the floor, either of which would have alerted me to its presence. 

Miracle Three:

My basement is very full of things I have not yet parted with after moving into one level of my home while my son lives in the upper level. There are dozens of cardboard boxes and a box spring and mattress in one area of the basement, where coincidentally I've had a dehumidifier running since June. It is the kind that has a container which must be emptied when full. There is a sensor suspended just inside the lip of the container that shuts off the dehumidifier when it needs to be emptied.

Somehow, some dang way, something didn't work, and the container overflowed. I didn't notice right away, not until I spotted a soggy cardboard box about six feet away from the dehumidifier. With a heavy heart I started cleanup.

People, the pool of water stopped right before it reached the edge of the mattress. A half hour of work took care of the mess. None of the contents of the boxes were ruined, even though they contained old photo albums, paperwork, and books. I could hardly believe my good luck.

***

And now for one more minor miracle, this one for you: we have almost got to the end of this post!

Except for a few funnies which I hope is a somewhat acceptable exchange for your patience in reading my extremely detailed descriptions of the other three miracles.

That's a wrap. Almost.

I hope your week is going fricking fine, my friends 😁

Tell me how you're doing in the comments if you wish. I'm a-waiting.

Heat Stress

Hello, I'm back, I really didn't think I'd take this long to write another post, I will fill you in.

Immediately after my previous post, I had to have work done on my house. First it was the removal of my chimney due to long-term (as it turned out) leaking, then the wall abutting the chimney had to be repaired, outside and inside, and hardwood flooring had to be repaired, and then while the contractor was here, I had a half a dozen windows replaced (a job I had booked a year ago).

All of that took three weeks and the last of my reserves.

And in the middle of that, my mother suffered two compression fractures in her back, I resumed visiting (which felt like walking through an emotional minefield), I had to prepare for and attend a care conference at her nursing home (standard for new residents), and the hell of summer descended upon us in all its hot and humid glory.

Ah. Now we are getting to the point of the title.

I'm stressed by the actual heat and humidity. My new vinyl windows do not "take" the window air conditioners I have been relying on for many summers. They are not as robust as wood windows, and the air conditioners are large units. I do plan to have heat pumps installed, which will allow cooling in summer, but that is a few months away.

I am also stressed by worrying about how my mother is coping in this weather. It turns out the care home has enough cooling technology that Mom is not in danger of overheating; in fact, she doesn't realize it's summer because she is cool all the time. That does help my worried brain, but I didn't find out the home was cool until yesterday because I hadn't visited since the start of the heat wave.

I'm also stressed by the fact that a couple of streets away, on a route I drive every day, a family owns a Samoyed husky, who is tied at the front of the house almost all the time. There is a tree, so he does have shade, but the heat and humidity we get are beyond what he should and perhaps can tolerate. (I don't know. Any guesses from dog owners out there?) The dog has lived there for over a decade, but I think the owners of the house are different people now (I'm guessing a second generation of family that have taken ownership of both house and dog), and the dog doesn't seem to be cared for like he used to be. He always used to be pristine white whereas he is now stained and yellow; I never used to see him outside in the heat, and I often saw him out for walks with his people. It's rare to see the family walking him now. His age, maybe? Or the family being busy with two young children, perhaps.

The second day of the current heat wave, I was so disturbed I made a call to the SPCA, where I had to leave a message due to the volume of calls. Not fully trusting the messages to be monitored, I also left the same information on their online complaint page. In Nova Scotia, animal welfare officers are legally required to follow up within 24 hours of receiving a complaint. 

The next day the husky was not in the front yard of his house. The day after that, he was not in the front yard of his house. Yesterday, he was again tied out front. It was early evening when I drove past and it was starting to cool a bit but it was still 30C out (with a humidex of 37C). I didn't know what to do. So I did what I always do when I hit a wall, worry-wise: I came home and fretted until I could go to bed and escape into sleep-time oblivion.

I should follow up with the SPCA; there is provision for complainants to do that. I just feel so stressed by everything, I can barely function. I am trying to keep my two elderly cats cool using a portable air condition; they both have health problems including kidney disease and due to one's aggressive personality they can't be in the same room, so I have rigged up a sort of "half-door" between rooms and must use a fan to move the cool air into the second room. I am trying to keep myself reasonably cool, staying up late to keep the house opened up. I worry about my son who lives on the second floor of the house, where it's even hotter, and his two cats (although he tells me they are all fine). I am trying to find a new schedule of visiting my mother, which is a delicate balance of considering her loneliness versus my mental health caused by feeling like I have been at her beck and call for the last three years. 

So . . . heat stress. It's partly about the heat, but it's a LOT MORE about the stress.

I feel like a huge Whiney McWhiney Pants. I know there are lots of folks worse off than I am. I know there are lots of animals worse off than the husky on the next street. I know there are people who have no house and no portable air conditioner and no means to get one, and who also don't know where their next meal is coming from.

I am grateful for everything I do have, and especially grateful that I don't have the worry of my mother's daily care anymore. (I do worry about her daily, but about different things.)

But I wish there was a button on my forehead I could hit to turn my brain off now and then. Just for a little rest, you know? Just for a few hours while I am awake and conscious. Just to stop my mind from fretting over things, and allow me to get other things done.

Are you a worrier too? How do you cope when the worry hits the danger zone? Do you worry about animals you see under poor conditions? How do you handle that?

I hope you have a worry-free week ahead.

And if it can't be entirely worry-free, I hope it is a "worry-lite" version of your usual life. I hope you have found the magic solution that lets you park your worries for a bit, and relax deeply.

I wish that for us all, whatever our troubles may be.

THIS.
 THIS IS WHAT I NEED ON MY FOREHEAD.