Overlap

Chapter 22: Rampancy

<10/09/2010 - 15:49 | 44 Greivar Trail, Marietta, GA, USA>

As with most weekends, I took the opportunity to visit my father's house for the day. It's about 30 minutes out of the way by car, and since I'm in middle school, my dad has to drive to and from my mom's house when we do such an exchange.

I may not have mentioned it yet, but my parents divorced by the time I was in the third grade, creating chaos for some time, though nothing between them got too heated. As a result, paying child support was left out of the process entirely, with both of them obtaining joint custody of me and my brother. With that came a permanent deal between them. I would live with my mom, but be allowed to visit my dad on the weekends. Sometimes it was a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Other weeks, it varied between going only on Saturdays, skipping only Sundays, or whatever we were in the mood for.

So today, I went to my dad's. The home there is cozy enough. I used to live here after all. This was the primary house I used to live in until their breakup. Ever since then, my mom is the one who moved out and we jumped around schools a little until things settled down. So coming here on any weekend day felt very routine. I of course was broken up about it for a while, but have since settled down about the whole issue. There is nothing I can do about it anyway if I wanted to.

Still, there was one thing I wasn't fond of each time I had to ride to the house. It's only been this way for a few months, but my dad seems to have a habit of buying cars that have breaking or broken air conditioners. They work when he buys them, then they break several months later. One could say that's what he gets for buying them used, but honestly I don't know a single person that this has happened to, not this often anyway. With a broken AC and a late warm front pushing the air past 90oF, just waiting in the car ride was enough to meltdown.

Not that it is any surprise, but I don't do well in heat. I dehydrate too fast and fail to keep myself regulated in a blaze if I'm out there for too long. It's one of the reasons aside from the asthma that I don't typically go outside. Even when I'm ill dressed for the weather, I do much better in the cold than in the heat. If I'm not careful, it can make me physically ill.

When I got home today, it was a terrible drag. My metabolism took a big hit from being out there. When I settled into the door and bathed in the cooling air conditioned house, I still felt far away from normal again. Whatever energy I had before coming here really was melted away by the intense blaze of the sun. Pretty uncalled for in October, but that's Georgia for me.

Tired as I was however, I knew I needed a drink. There was no way I would be okay for much longer without one. Luckily, my dad always makes sure to buy one of those large 32-case bottled waters wrapped in the plastic. Even if they were not cold, I had to have something to drink immediately. So, that's the first thing I went for.

I opened the cap on the bottle, letting it fall to the floor since I knew where all of this fluid was going. Slamming the end of the bottle to my lips, I proceeded to slowly and carefully chug it all, breathing with my nose while my throat was busy tunneling my remedy. Sure enough, I drank the whole 16 ounce bottle in one go, ignoring the others as they unpacked everything from the car before I could.

But even though all of that water felt good to drink, I knew I needed a lot more. So, I opened another bottle of water, and chugged it down too. Only a minute passed, allowing me to rest on the kitchen chair, still feeling so sick from the heat outdoors, but once I had enough motivation to get up again, I went for the third bottle.

You might be thinking by now that I'm overdoing it a little, but I'm not trying to prove anything. I really am as thirsty as I feel right now. A third bottle won't hurt me. Plus, I don't care if I have to go to the bathroom in cycles in a few minutes from now. I just need to stop feeling so firkin thirsty.