Good God the heat – the HEAT!!!

Yes.

I used to placate my mother when, in her 40s and 50s, she would say “Is it hot in here?”  Our whole family would.  My father, brother and I would say “PHEW!! Yes, MAN is it HOT!  Steaming!!!”  She was not amused, and she always said to me, “It’ll come back to haunt you, you know.”  And it has.

Holy Crap I am BURNING from the inside out.  I am SPONTANEOUSLY COMBUSTING!!!  I started flashing when I was 36.  (Hot flashing.  The regular flashing I’d been doing from way earlier than that.)   36!   Hot flashes and torrential periods all at the same time – you’d figure that if there were any justice in the universe it’d be one or the other.    So I’m sitting here at the computer and I have a jet engine through my freaking torso, but this time the jet engine has some blow-back down my arms and up to my neck and head.  Seriously??  I could take off every item of clothing that I’m wearing and it wouldn’t make a difference.  If I had a candy thermometer handy and put it under my breasts, I’d be way past the soft ball stage – I’d be at caramelized sugar stage –  I’m THAT HOT.  Maybe I’ll submerge myself in a cool bath.  Oh God, I just started salivating at the thought. 

My mother has said a lot of things will come back to haunt me.  “I hope that you have 6 daughters – all like you!!”  Then I had Rissa.  My mother will freely admit that Rissa… is enough. Rissa is awesome and deliciously off-centre and is almost never quiet.  I remember calling my mom when Rissa was about 4.  I was beside myself. “She NEVER stops talking!!!”  From my mother’s end of the phone all I could hear was maniacal cackling and the phrase “REVENGE IS MINE!!”  In her wallet, my mother has a piece of paper.  It says, “When my daughter is 16, I will let her do whatever she wants.”  It is signed by the 16 year-old version of me.    When I am 48 – oh GOD,  that’s only 4 years from now –  I will have that 16 year-old daughter and my mother will be gleefully flapping that piece of paper at me, dancing around singing “Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-HAH!  Ha-ha-ha-ha-HAH!”

Tomorrow I have signed on to be one of several chaperones on a Grade 6 trip to a camp in the Kawarthas.  A 36 hour overnight trip where there will be 8 girls in my cabin with another chaperone and apparently they discourage the wearing of ear plugs, you know in case something might happen to one of the little darlings. Come on, throw a mother a bone here!

I am NOT an outdoorsy person.  Camping for me is not having 4 inch baseboards.  It’s still buggy and when looking at the weather forecast they are expecting THUNDER STORMS!!!  And apparently I have to be happy for all 36 hours.  All of them.  Happy.  David says so, because he’s going as well and is chaperoning the boys, so he’ll know if I’m crabby.  I have not been on a field trip since the disastrous Jiggi Jump Jive trip in Grade One which sucked IQ points out of my brain.  (shudder) You may witness below what I had to endure.

So I just haven’t been.  I have  a lot of time to make up for.  And who knows?  Maybe spending 36 hours with my kid and her friends in the freaking wilderness will be a good thing…  I will coat myself in bug spray and smile for 36 hours.  I can and will do this and I will be magnificent!!