It's Vegas, Baby

The entire month of May we had very lovely weather here. In fact, a couple of days, it was a little chilly. (By that I mean it got down into the low 50's at night.) (But in May, that is chilly here.) I got back from Portland, Oregon, at 11:00 P.M. Tuesday, and walked out of the airport into a real Las Vegas night. It was warm. The next day was the last day of school (!!!) and it was hot. It has been hot every day since, too. What a nice thing it was to simply put all my things away into a closet instead of packing it into boxes. In five of the last six "last day of school" I have packed it all into boxes. (I moved to a new state, had to change classrooms, and then I changed schools, and finally we were remodeling at my current school.)

Yesterday I went into the pool. My plan was to scrub a little algae off the sides that had grown while we were out of town. The water didn't even make me gasp. Summer is here! I also discovered that all that exercise I haven't been doing takes a toll. I could barely kick across the pool twice...So, today, after I spend the super hot hours indoors, vacuuming and dusting, I'll go back out in the late afternoon and do some more swimming.

However...it has been two days now since I last took any ibuprofen products, at the request of my surgeon, so I won't have blood thinners in my system on Wednesday. Oh. Who knew that so many parts of me depended on that anti-inflammatory coursing through my bloodstream? Actually, the internist I saw on Thursday, after checking my pulse by clasping her hand around the wrist that hurts so much from the arthritis, exclaimed that my swollen thumb joint was hot. "That doesn't sound like arthritis to me. Gout creates swelling and heat." She added a gout blood test to the list of things the surgeon wanted checked out before the surgery. So...we'll see.

Whatever it is, it likes to be medicated with NSAI products. So, I'll just keep powering through the vacuuming and dusting, because no one else is going to do it and it will bug me to look at it while I lie around convalescing. I'm not taking classes or going on a long trip this summer. It will be actually pretty nice to stay home. Even if I have to prop up my foot for three weeks.