First Day of School! Continued...

Sorry guys, it's been an eventful week which in turn has made my evenings very, very sleepy. Anyway, I'll pick up where I left off to the best of my abilities.

So apparently it was Thursday. This was a fact that I found baffling. God only knows why. Throughout the remainder of the day I kept making references to the fact that I clearly had no idea what day of the week it was.

Why does everybody have to put in orders on FRIDAYS? I know they know how swamped we get on FRIDAYS. Why are FRIDAYS always so dang busy. Why does the system have to break on a FRIDAY? FRIDAYFRIDAYFRIDAY.

Nobody corrects me.

They all just stand around listening me to me babble on about how it was Friday and not even one person asked me what the heck I was talking about.

*le sigh*

So by the time the work day ends I am thoroughly beat. Having to process an entire hospital worth of orders manually is beyond tedious, and tends to make even the happiest LittleFoot slightly disgruntled.

I got dressed, clocked out, retrieved my trusty bicycle and walked to the back door.

My coworker asked me, as I was leaving, where I was going.

SCHOOL!! I responded triumphantly, my excitement for the new semester returning.

He says, you have school today? Again?

Uh, duh! R can't keep track of my school schedule even when it's written down in plain sight, there's NO WAY he has any idea what I should and should not be doing. So I throw open the back doors and step out.

into.
the.
worst.
summer.
day.
ever.

Now, I'm sure you're looking at this and thinking, you live in Arizona love. It's miserable all summer. And to a degree you're right. But this particular day really heaped the gross factor onto an already icky summer day.

I always despise people who complain about how gross the summers are where ever it is that they're from, and then remind me that at least here it's a dry heat.

DRY HEAT? Who the heck cares if it's a dry heat when it's 120+ degrees outside? You know why it's a dry heat? Because it's too dang hot for any moisture to survive here! It's like living on the surface of the sun!

And then days like Thursday show up. It's bright, and it's sunny. It's only 106 but it feels like 130. There's a storm somewhere, way out of view at this point, but the air is heavy, and the humidity continues to climb, and you can feel it coming.

I would say, if I had to guess, that it was about six million percent humidity at this point. I would be willing to argue that there wasn't even any air left, that it was all just water vapor in the place where the air should have been, filling my lungs. Mocking my desert existence.

I should mention that in my haste to leave the house that day I had not planned my wardrobe appropriately. I was wearing possibly the worst pair of jeans imaginable (given the weather). They are super thick. They have absolutely no give to them. And they are tight. They're pseudo-skinny jeans...that's the best way I know to describe them. They're super slim, but they flare back out at the bottom just enough to fit over a bulky pair of boots and you know, actually look nice...like you're wearing real jeans and not body paint or some bastardized leggings with denim painted on them.

It felt like I was wrapped in a sleeping bag. And covered in duct tape. Pedaling my bike through some water-air hybrid. Somehow I was both soaking wet and bone dry.

I hadn't noticed how poorly I'd chosen my wardrobe on the way to class in the morning. This may have been due to the nearly euphoric state of excitement I was in, or the fact that it was only 8 am, it's hard to say. But now at 3:30 pm, under the late summer sun, it was awful. My class was also ridiculously far away.

I pedaled like my life depended on it. Permanent sweat mustache perched on my lip. My elbow pits dripping with sweat. I hadn't even been aware that my elbow pits could sweat before this day. Apparently they can. A LOT.

At some point I made a mental note to call Goose and tell her to make sure she came to pick me up extra early just in case we didn't have a full day of class today. If I had to stand for even one minute in that heat at the end of the day I was pretty sure I was going to die. Or cry. One of the two. Possibly both.

Well I made it to class 40 minutes early and sat down in the hallway. This is an evolutionary primatology class and I thought it was a little odd that it was in the Family Resources building so I pulled out my computer to verify that I was in the right place. Do not want a repeat of the earlier wrong class fiasco.

Well my computer, for whatever reason refused to link up to the internet in that building so I trudged back out into the heat to try to get a better connection. Nothing. I wandered back inside and sat down.

THE MAP! I knew I had made that map for a reason! I began frantically digging though my bag trying to find it. Then, there it was, neatly folded in the front pocket, with all the answers I needed.

I unfolded it and there, in large pink highlighter letters were the words 'Map for first day of school, THURSDAY August 18.

Thursday.

Damnit.

I don't have class on Thurday evenings! Well, I mean I do, but not until much later, and not this week because they're labs. Why on earth was I sitting outside my Friday class, totally, utterly convinced that it was Friday? Lord only knows.

Defeated I called Goose and in a whisper (still inside the building) told her to come get me now, not to ask any questions, and to run over anyone who would slow her down. I walked back out into the heat and unlocked my bike.

I rode for about, oh, maybe 20 feet before I couldn't take the heat anymore. I rode back to the bike rack, relocked my bike, found a bathroom and began the process of extricating my self from those terrible jeans. Thank God I wear scrubs at work. Beautiful, baggy, light weight scrubs. There they were, shining out from inside my backpack, totally self illuminating, glowing bright white with the knowledge that they had saved me from a fate worse than death - having to spend even one more second in the pants-o-doom.

You're probably wondering why I didn't just wear my scrubs in the first place. Well for starters, I'd worn them all over the hospital all day, but really, they're just so thin I would have been totally soaked with sweat by the time I got there. Gross. Real clothes afford me the small dignity of at least masking whatever sweaty marks are left by my backpack, my bike seat, and whatever other part of me decides to start producing sweat. Totally gross, I know.

Anyway, I stuffed my clothes back into my bag and marched triumphantly back to my bike, rode back to the pick up spot, and waited for Goose.

I cannot describe to you in words how glad I was to be inside the air conditioned car, safe with the knowledge that I was headed home. Back to my comfy couch. And food. And water. Sweet, sweet, perfect water.

It was blissful. Totally, completely blissful...


(Part III later)