Creek
Originally uploaded by rowdyman.

To cool me off in the slightest, I've posted a couple of pics of our more comfortable vacation.

It's funny, I did a similar posting last year - but this year is much worse:

Temp : 35.5°C
Partly Cloudy
Humidex: 46.4° C - that's 10° C hotter than last year.
Relative Humidity: 50.0% (although at home, both hygrometers read closer to 90%)
Visibility: 24.1 km - this is obviously a number from outside Toronto. I'd say you can't see beyond 10km (I can just make out the CN Tower in the haze).

Hopefully the heat will break before I do. I decided to get out of the house and seek a little TLAC - Tender and Lovely Air Conditioning. So I headed to a local coffee shop, Tinto, that advertises its creature comforts on their sandwich board. It's cooler in here but not cool - just comfortable - and they have internet access so it's a win win. It seems I'm not the only one who fell under their considerable marketing charm. The place is busy today. Lots of people who are probably, normally at home have decided to seek a cooler refuge. Including Cameron Bailey (Alert alert - minor T.O. Celeb spotting - hmm that's a little pathetic, no?). Who knew such people of import, took refuge in our humble part of HogTown. Yet, I digress, Dear Reader. I think the sleep depravation, lack of solid food and the heat have combined into a foul, Mutiny-on-the-Bounty-type madness. "We take the ship at dawn, arrrggh (that's me gargling salt water, by the way)."

As to my current state of mind, it is clear, that I am not clear (more of an outlaw state than say a peaceful state, like Vermont for instance). As for my health, it can be summed up thusly:
hand improving steadily,
tongue swelling decreasing slowing,
pain in tongue, severely incessantly persisting...

With that typed (for speaking is something I'd rather not do) - I've been kind of bitching to my doctor so he wants to see me tomorrow... I want Tylenol 6's - if there is such a thing! He'll probably not prescribe anything... - he'll probably say "tough it out for another week" or in his par layance "ye ye ye ye ye - but we see much worse - and they don't complain, why just yesterday a little girl..." he's always comparing me to a little girl. This little girl must've survived the Battle of the Somme, Viet Nam and the Gulf War without a tear...anyways like i said, i think it's the combination of not sleeping + not eating + pain + this heat that has combined to wear me down.

Still, in the last 10 months - I've almost lost the tip of my index finger (7 stitches), had a broken collar bone (3 weeks in a sling - 8 weeks physio) and now have a tongue that looks like something David Cronenberg would have shown talking to William S. Borroughs ("Rub a little powder on my lips, Bill") and I've never gotten more than a Tylenol 3? I mean, where have all the good drugs gone? Where's the morphine, the Demerol, the Vicodin, the Percocet, the Percodan? When I was 13 I had an angiogram done, and after I barfed up my supper, and writhed around with one of the worst headaches this side of Lebanon, some kind soul, whipped up a Demerol and a Gravol - crushed it in sugar and let it dissolve on my tongue. Actually, I think it was added to my intravenous - but who can remember the details? And yet, here I am today, in the grips of a pain that does not permit swallowing without the sensation that my tongue is being filletted and what do I get? Oh, take an Advil. Man. I am really tired of being so stoic. Okay, okay, writing a journal entry describing your pain to everyone you know may not fall into Socrates' definition of stoicism, but hey, he took the easy way out (well - I mean, after the extremely painful stomach spasms of drinking the hemlock, he died - he wasn't prescribed a smoothie).

And through it all, Angela has continued to put up with me, despite her troubles, she is still willing to whip up a smoothie, heat some soup or simply say, "I know, I know" to my madman whining. There's a lesson here - no wait, there's a lesion - and it's on my tongue and I want to be drugged up, put down, and comatose until it's done it's course.

On the bright side, I've lost 5lbs! I'm reminded of the only funny Saturday Night Live sketch in 20 years where Ana Gasteyer impersonates the whip-thin, octogenarian Helen Gurley Brown saying, "I've never felt better. I died two weeks ago, and I've finally reached my target weight."

All is vanity.
Peter