am I dying? (9:44PM Sunday)

“Omigod, you’re so hot,” she scoffed. It wasn’t the compliment my sleepy mind might have imagined. I looked at my watch: 9:44PM. I might have already been asleep for an hour or so.

“Are you OK?” she asked. “You’re grey, and sweating so much.”

“I’m hot,” I confirmed.

“Well, you are in the unhealthy weight range,” she reminded me.

I had been hot all day, despite the temperature only reaching a top of 28•C.

“Maybe you’re having a heart attack,” she said. “Can you feel your left hand?”

“It’s tingling,” I said.

“Omigod,” she laughed again, maybe a little nervously. “And just when you’re starting to get your life right,” she added.

“I think it’s more because I’ve been sleeping on my arm. I was enjoying sleeping,” I replied, and shook out the tingles in my hand.

That was it. Today’s forecast top is 43•C. I have this idea about walking to work, using the time to exercise, but I’m stuck on the idea of changing clothes before work. I start my work day hot enough already, without adding the effects of a seven kilometre walk into the mix. Then there’s the approximate 90 minute travel time Google maps suggests for the journey by foot. And we already know I’m time-poor as it is…

It all adds up to make a conveniently insurmountable obstacle for exercise-phobic me, I’m the first to admit.

Cussing under my breath in the bathroom as I waste precious seconds getting my contact lenses in, I hear the doves cooing outside, and the house is so quiet, with the girls still sleeping. I find myself thinking of that line from Depeche Mode’s Blasphemous Rumours:

“That summer’s day, as she passed away / birds were singing in the summer sky”

I don’t want to die today. I hope to catch you on the flipside. If I don’t make it through, remember me well, as I’ll remember you.

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