Friday, September 11, 2020

Fall Fatigue, But More Severe This Time

If the Minnesota State Fair were still happening, we would be complaining that the end of the fair coincides with the death of summer, and that sentiment would be buttressed as, like clockwork, Labor Day would feel a lot colder than the previous days, a signal that fall would be settling in very soon, and very hard.

Even without the State Fair, the abrupt and brutal change in season happened on Monday.  It was cloudy and clammy, and it rained.  It's my type of weather.  Well, it should be.  But with it comes changes to my body that I'm not used to.  I should be used to it; with the first sign of autumn my body has, like, a weekend where it basically shuts down in order to fully integrate into "winter mode."  It's kind of like a rental car company sending all its employees off in their cars to drop off in southern destinations because those cars will be used down there by vacationers over the winter.

The weather since Monday has hit me differently.  For one thing, I think the clamminess is aggravating the pain in my left hip and the left side of my neck, which I alluded to in the previous blog post.  For another, I have felt really, really cold these past few days.  My parents have not turned on the heat, but in years past I wouldn't have minded because I would not have felt the cold so much upon fall's first advent.  But it's knocked me on my ass this week.  Temperatures have been in the fifties during the day and the forties at night, but it might as well be below freezing.  That's how cold my body feels.

But the big change in me I notice now is that I am really, really tired.  The cloudy weather naturally does that to me, as it does other, normal people.  But I think sunset creeping up in the evening seemingly by ten minutes every day has made it seem like summer was a century ago.  It gets dark early, and that is a, if not the, predominant factor in me feeling quite fatigued early in the evening compared to even a week ago.  I want to go to sleep right after I get done with this, and not only is that a change from where I would stay up until 3, I don't really need to turn in this "early."  I am subbing for someone today, and her shift is 9-5:30.  I could get a good five, even four hours of sleep in if I wanted to stay up -- which I would normally want to.  But what I crave now more than anything is to just bleepin' pass out.  I blame the weather for that.

If my body is changing on the fly due to the weather, it'll have to change back.  Starting Sunday, it'll get hot and sunny again.  In fact, next week the highs should reach across 80.  Back to summer and not feeling any joint pain and not shivering and feeling like I could stay up as long as a meth addict does!

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