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My Blog, July 12, 2020,

Tempers rise when temperatures rise

     When you’re hot you’re hot!  Or in other words, I just about melted away today.  My car registered 114 today, it stayed a steady 112 degrees here most of the day, oh boy, it’s summer! Ugh!  I’ve lived here most all of my life, I know all about this kind of heat and I have developed methods to get through it.  Not always very gracefully.

     When temperatures rise, tempers rise.  This is a known fact. I can become a little more grumpy, disagreeable, cranky and down right short tempered.  Today I had a struggle with a product I bought and I needed a lot of patience in dealing with the clerks at the store, the agents on the phone and so on.  I sat in my car when it was 111 degrees and tried talking to an agent on the phone.  Connections were awful and accents were difficult to understand on staticky lines.

     Yet, even in the excessive heat, with difficult people to deal with, I had to kick my program into high gear.  I lost count of how many times I said the Serenity Prayer. Lol.  Or just simply said “God”?  At a certain point, I just came home and pulled HALT (Hungry, angry, lonely, tired) into action, which, really means no action.  Ha.  I just shut down, I quit worrying with the problem, I laid on my sofa with the cooler on and fans hitting me, put on an old movie I had recorded and just chilled with a big mug of ice water. I chilled so good I fell asleep, so did my husband in his chair.  It was just too hot to move.

     Later, when the sun was setting and it cooled down to about 105 degrees, I was able to get up, snack a little (too hot to cook dinner or make big meals) and talked with my husband about the whole ordeal.  So, I made a call and ended up getting everything resolved, yay!  We continued to take it easy and just snack now and then.  No big deals!  

     This time my temper was prevented from losing control and getting away from me.  But there have been times when that wasn’t the case.  I would let things get to me. Mixed with the heat, dealing with incompetent, mean or rude people and no solutions in sight I would become so irritated that I’d lose my temper. But nowadays, I am so grateful to have a program.  To know when to HALT and Let go and Let God.  Say the Serenity Prayer and let people just roll. 

     Heaven forbid if I was coming down, them days were the worst.  My mouth and temper could be horrible.  I am embarrassed to think of them days.  As I said, I am so grateful to be clean and in recovery.  To know when to say when is a gift. And if I listen to that inner voice and follow my gut and my body signals (my head was buzzing and heart pounding) I can avert a lot of heartaches and headaches. When my body says, “you’re done girl”, then I need to stop, chill and just let it all go.  So, laying on the sofa, watching an old movie that I can fall asleep to with fans blowing on me, that’s the best I could do at that moment. 

    Some deep breaths, Serenity Prayer and just let it go are in order.  Some days, that’s all I got.  I don’t want to struggle, fuss or fight.  I don’t like tussling with them agents and clerks to begin with, but on such a hot day, I really had to keep my temper in check. 

Question of the Week:    Does the heat ever get to you?  What do you do when you’re ready to snap?