The Summer Heat Burns My Soul

The other day I did something completely out of character for myself. I took off my shirt while outside. Now it was in my back yard, however I did stay topless as I pushed my lawnmower around to the front of the house and in the garage. What’s the big deal you say? People take their shirts off all the time so what’s my problem? To start let me paint you a picture of what I look like. I’m 6’1” tall and go about 240 pounds on my leaner days. I am light skinned (my Irish, Scottish and English bloodlines win out over everything else for me), have freckles and am hairy. Add to that a lifelong image issue with my body (Americans seems to have this problem more than others) and there you have my reluctance to be seen shirtless even if it’s in my own yard. At least my body issues aren’t as bad as Kevin Smith’s who suffers from a much larger (pun intended) problem than I do. Please note this isn’t a dig on Smith at all, I terribly admire what he has accomplished in life and he has inspired me to start my own creative endeavors at long last. He has stated before that he doesn’t like taking off his shirt at the doctor’s office or even in front of his wife. At least I'm not that bad.

Basically what has led to this change in behavior is that my wife wants us to take a vacation to the beach but the only time available between our schedules and before our son goes back to school is towards the end of July. The closest beach for us to do this is in Galveston, Tx, about a nine hour drive away. So given my natural pale state plopping me into Galveston in late July means I will literally be red, sunburned to a crisp, unless I slaver zinc oxide on and wear long sleeved shirts and pants with a floppy sun hat at all times. Of course that endangers me to overheating myself on the beach and constantly sweating throughout the day so neither of those appear to be ideal working situations. My only other option now seems for me to go into the yard doing whatever work I can without wearing a shirt for about 30 minutes a day. Currently in Tulsa we are having 100 Plus degrees of weather and so far this week each and every day has been an Ozone Alert Day so I have to be very careful that I don’t overdo it. Today I even went over to a friend’s house and sat shirtless while our kids were in the pool. Very abnormal behavior for me but I do seem to be going through some life changes all for the better in the last year.

Perhaps by the time our vacation starts I will have been so sufficiently exposed to the sun that I won’t have many issues as long as I’m smart about what I’m doing. My wife won’t have any troubles at all. She is from Lima, Peru and has darker skin than I do. Thankfully our son is a mix of the two of us and while he’s not very dark skinned he’s not pale like his dear old dad and the more he gets outside the more tanned he seems to get. Being from Lima, my wife grew up going to the beach all through the summer but hasn’t been to one since she visited Atlantic City in the fall of 2002 when she was a freshly arrived vacationer to these shores. She ended up staying in the country but moved to Tulsa the following year where we met. Ten years is long enough and although it will be stretch financially and given my natural aversion to the sun, I’m willing to do it for the sake of our family. A family vacation has been long overdue and besides, I could stand having another go at some crawfish or alligator. That's one of the other changes I’ve undergone in the past year or so, I’m trying and enjoying food that I never would have touched in the past. Let’s just hope I make it back from all of this in one piece without too much burning.
 
Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.

Next Time Just Kick Me And I'll Take The Clue

Saturday I did something that I haven't done in quite a few years, I washed my truck. If you want to get technical about it I washed my wife's car as well. Now don't take that the wrong way, it's not as if either vehicle has been neglected and were filthy eyesores. I have taken them to the car wash and done it there, although not very frequently. I'm referring to actually washing them by hand in our driveway which turned out to take more time than I initially thought it would. My wife's car was done fairly easily as it is a small four cylinder car (Dodge Caliber) however my big pickup (GMC extended cab) proved to be more difficult.

At one point I had a step ladder out so that I could reach every place on it. If felt good to be out in the sun sweating, doing something somewhat physical, I just wish my son had come outside so that I could have soaked him down, purely accidentally of course. Once I finished I came inside for some well deserved lunch before playing a few rounds of Super Mario Brothers with my son and then followed that with a quick shower. Saying my goodbyes I dashed off to work where I thankfully had been given six hours of overtime. Hey, we need the money, even more so since we are trying to take a trip to the beach. The closest one is in Galveston, Tx which is a mere nine hour drive from Tulsa. Hopefully gas prices won't go up too much.

Work consisted of QCing medical records (kind of a quality check if you will) and while doing so I started noticing that my hands were starting to cramp. As I sat in front of the computer I also started noticing that my shoulders were aching a bit too. Still, for some unknown reason I took nothing for the pain and instead chose to tough it out. I can't really explain why. Later I had to get some cover sheets and bent over to retrieve them and as I stood up while counting them I banged my head on one of the shelves. Not too hard but still enough that I immediately started feeling the effects of it.
At this point I gave in and took some ibuprofen. Apparently it takes getting hit in the head for me to decide that there's no sense in making things more difficult than they need to be.

I'm not sure if it was stubbornness or machismo or what but it took that many hints for me to get it. Maybe it's just part of being a man. We know that we can do something that will make us feel better and still we resist, insisting that we can "tough it out." Regardless, work was productive and the money will be well used and just in time. I just wish after returning home that my son hadn't backhanded me in the testicles while I was trying to brush his teeth. It was the capper on a tiring, achy, painful day, a capper that I could have done without.

Written and Published by Don Leach. May not be used without permission from the author.