I had to cave in this evening. I had to go ahead and close up the house and turn on the air conditioner. It's earlier in the year than I would have liked, but since it's not supposed to get lower than the mid-60s at night until late next week, I had two choices: refrigerated air or a week without sleep. Fingers crossed that the a/c isn't already on straight through until October.
Yesterday I told a story that had a glancing mention of the giant van we used to drive when our girls were little bitty. Maybe that's why it was on my mind so much today. We used to refer to it as The Living Room, because it was huge: it had two couches, two recliners, and a stereo. Behind the third row bench, there was a four foot deep storage area, that came in very handy on long drives to those group campouts we enjoyed so much back then. One year we went on a very long drive, from where we all lived in Colorado, through the heart of Texas. To make the trip all in one shot, as broke college (or fresh from) kids do, we piled all of our suitcases, sleeping bags, and soft equipment up to make a rather comfortable sleeping berth for the next driver in the rotation. Trying to sleep in a moving car has always been a tricky proposition for me, because I'm either upright and letting my head flop around, killing my neck, or I'm trying to stretch out in the back seat, and finding that I'm just too tall to be able to sleep in motion like I could when I was a kid. (And of course there are the issues of bouncing, bad roads, loud music to keep the driver awake, and a lack of control over cab temperature.) But on this Princess and the Pea tower of mattresses and (down alternative) feather beds was the best I ever slept in a moving car. I will never miss the gas mileage of that old Royal Barge, nor do I miss trying to park it, but it sure made cross country trips comfortable. Someday maybe I'll drag out the rest of the story of that drive through Texas, of going in circles trying to find an open gas station in Abilene at 2 am, and creepy weirdness that gave rise to the legend of the Zombie Cops of Abilene (at least 10 years before zombies were "cool").
I had an MRI this afternoon. I think I handled it pretty well. One of our best friends, a man of great intelligence and reason, admitted a few years ago that the close quarters of the machine freaked him out far more than he expected. I had no such reaction. In fact, I had a hard time staying awake. They put big over-ear headphones on me, and tuned the music that piped through them to a radio station of my choice, and wedged me in tightly so I couldn't fidget. Honestly, what with the loud music and vibration of the machine, it was like sleeping on that luggage berth in the old van. Halfway through, they stopped, pushed contrast through the IV, and started the machine up again. The radiology tech, a super nice guy, forgot to turn the music back on for the first minute or two, and the whirring, clacking, and vibrating was worse than the first half of the scan. It was more like trying to sleep when a car is driving over a textured highway that is awaiting a fresh coat of asphalt. Now I just have to wait for next week, when I can call my doc and ask for an evaluation of the scan and the new blood test results. I'm sure I can find a way to relax this weekend, to make the time pass more quickly. I'll find some kind of diversion.
No comments:
Post a Comment