This week, I’m down. Over the last couple of years, I’ve been able to better notice my mood cycles, and this summer it has become a little easier to step back and (almost) (sort of) look at them from the outside. No, there really isn’t anything significant that has changed this week to make it worse than last week. I’m not getting any less done. A little more time has gone by without getting school work done, but a little more time has gone by without ordering pizza, too, or having piles of dirty laundry in the hallway. In fact, I can definitely say that I haven’t had to clean up as much misplaced cat excrement this week, either.
The weather has not been kind this week. It has been hot (for Michigan) and extremely humid. This level of humidity, with dew points in the 70’s, when the temperatures are in the 80’s…I think this is worse than the 100-degree dry August heat of central Texas. There is no evaporative cooling, so you just drip sweat constantly and never feel any better. Everything is sticky and misty and foggy and moldy…and everybody with chronic pain has their pain dials cranked up to 20. That means that Liam and I are snapping at everybody over everything, and neither of us wants to move and get things done. It never lasts long around here, but this week has been bad while it has lasted.
Next week, Brenden starts high school. So many things are coming up in the next few weeks, so many field trips and events and deadlines, oh my gosh the deadlines! I still would like that weekend alone, some time to pay attention to nobody at all, just for a day or two. At the end of even a standard day like yesterday, when we didn’t have to go anywhere, I still felt drained by the end of the day, tired of people talking to me and interrupting me and jumping on me and and and. I just have to remember that regardless of how I feel, or how I hurt this week, this week is better than last week, and it keeps getting better, and one of these days I’ll be back to the level I want, and then I’ll pass it…and won’t that be nice?