August Update

Well, where were we?

It's now August and really, really hot outside. Very humid, very muggy. When I go outside around noon, the air seems wavy with the heat. It's like hitting a wall. It's also making it hard to dress for work because my instinct is to wear something for very hot weather but then the air conditioning in my part of the office seems to always be in full-blast mode. Yes, these are petty complaints, I know. Just giving you the details.

I finally finished reading "Infinite Jest". Fantastic book but I'm left wanting more, incredibly. It's very long and it took longer than usual (for me) to get through. Partly because the book is so huge that the only place I could comfortably read it was at the kitchen table. So, I read it in spurts for most of the summer. I've also been following Infinite Summer and was keeping ahead of the schedule. It's great to read other interpretations of the chapters. I've decided that I wanted the book to be infinite itself. I could follow these characters for a much longer time. It almost feels unfinished.

In other news, Sophie's daycare is on vacation this week. And since Aaron's classes don't start until after Labor Day, he's got the girl all week. My mom offered to have Sophie stay overnight last night and Sophie was beyond thrilled at the idea of a sleepover. So, Aaron and I went out to eat at a really yummy restaurant in a nearby town. I was craving mussels, so I looked up restaurants that were actually open on a Monday night until I found one with guaranteed mussels on the menu. I also had lobster corn chowder (yum!) and a meslun salad (not as yum) and a huge bowl of mussels with tomatoes and garlic. It was supposed to be an appetizer, but it was enormous! The seats at the restaurant were a bit uncomfortable. We got there around 5:30 and they kind of packed all the people into one corner. It was odd. There were empty tables nearby, but everyone at the restaurant at the time was all in one section. We were right across from two older men who were very loud eaters. Sloppy, burpy, slurpy. Ugh. One of them had a hearing aid, so maybe he couldn't hear how gross he was. Thankfully they left partway through our meal. The aisles were fairly narrow, so it was almost like we were sharing a table with them. Not great planning on the part of the restaurant. The seats were sort of like church pews with very straight wooden backs and I felt like I was constantly adjusting how I was sitting and didn't know where to put my feet. The table was also narrow and the legs of the table were right underfoot. Awkward. BUT, the food was yummy and that redeemed things.

We then got some movies and started to watch "Watchmen" but both of us started to fall asleep in the heat.

It was very strange to be home without Sophie.

And I overslept this morning because I'm so conditioned to her waking us up before 6:30 so I can get ready for work.

In other news, my new thyroid medication - Nature-Throid - seems to be working wonderfully. My blood pressure is actually down to normal after years of it being high and pre-hypertensive and "um, you need to get on blood pressure medication for the rest of your life". Without doing the research myself, I would never have known that it could very well be the levothyroxine I've been on for about 10 years now. And when my blood pressure kept going up when I was pregnant with Sophie? And I was having ultrasounds very frequently to check for preeclampsia? They were also raising my dose of levothyroxine. Hmm. Coinkidink? All signs are pointing to NOT. My eyebrows are starting to grow back slowly. I realized that I haven't had to pluck my eyebrows in at least 6 months or more. Hard to tell with my hair but it doesn't seem to be falling out in such extreme amounts. My endocrinologist was very reluctant to write a prescription for a natural thyroid medication. And after my initial pushing to change to Armour Thyroid earlier this year - now I wanted to change to something else. After reading about Armour's reformulation and patients having issues with the new Armour, the recommendation was to use Nature-Throid instead. But I guess so many people switched from Armour to Nature-Throid that Nature-Throid is now backordered...this seems to plague the industry. Why is this so hard? Something actually works for thyroid patients and it is so hard to get. Luckily, my pharmacy ordered enough (I'm assuming) to last until their supplies are back up. As long as my prescription doesn't change... I have an appointment with my endo again next week, so we shall see. My conspiracy theory is that the makers of Synthroid are buying up the dessicated thyroid hormone so that the makers of Nature-Throid can't find any more. They want those companies to go out of business. Frustrating.

Anyhoo, I hope you have a lovely month. Stay cool.