Buoyant with the notion that it was going to get cooler yesterday, I spent the late morning tackling some of the jobs I had been ‘leaving ’til after’. I heaved over water troughs and scrubbed the green out of them, refilling them with clear cold water and a little cider vinegar. I got the tractor out and cleaned the Shush Sisters’ Pigsty, scooping all the muck and straw into the tractor bucket. I picked and chopped everyones lunch. The animals lunch that is. I pulled down another few bales of hay, loaded up the wheelbarrow and fed the cows under the trees. I added a clip to my step pushing just a little harder. Starting job after job. Around the middle of the day it became apparent that it was not cooling down at all in fact it was hotting up, and half way through a task I realised that the light was not sparkly – I was seeing stars. The shovel was not heavy – it was my chest that was heavy. The thermometer was reading 104 and I was feeling a bit unwell. The air I was dragging into my lungs was hot. Really hot.
But I was sick of it. I had had it with the heat. I had put off too many jobs for too long because of the heat and that was that. I was going to get this finished. 
By the time I finally let myself go inside I was having trouble walking, I had stopped sweating and my head was pounding. I felt too nauseous even to drink. I lay down in front of a fan and fell completely and immediately asleep. I never thought this would happen to me. I do not succumb to the weather.
When John got home a few hours later he got such a fright to find me lying down in the middle of the afternoon that he poked me to see if I was alive.
I had narrowly avoided sunstroke I think. My body had started to boil. I told you that heat is a great weight loss program. The heat sat at 104 all the rest of the day. It was another very hot day. 
Awake now, I decided to sit down for a wee while to recover and cruise some of my favourite blogs and see what was what. That is when I discovered that I have become invisible. I looked at my weeks numbers. Hundreds of my readers have dissappeared and most of the comments I had been making throughout the week on your pages were not showing. And most of the blogs I am following are no longer showing on the reader or in my email. Am I in your spam folder? Have I dropped off your reader? Have you dropped off mine? Am I really here? Hullo!! Has there been a catastrophe, should I listen to the news? What is happening? Has WordPress got sunstroke too? Ah well. I will find you.
Good morning. I blame my narrow excape from sunstroke on being brought up at the beach. I forget how insidious the humid heat on the prairies really is. Yes, I was wearing my wide brimmed wedding hat. Yes, I had been drinking water. No, I had not gone back inside out of the heat. You know what they say about mad dogs and Englishmen going out in the midday sun. Ah well.
In New Zealand, just outside of a town called Rotorua, is a secret hot pool. Rotorua is known for its geothermal activity, its hot water, mud pools and tourism. This hot pool is not commercial or fancied up, it looks like a big clear deep puddle. It belongs to the locals. To find it you have to drive down some side roads and under bridges, park, then walk a wee way back into the bush. It is a wide warm pool of water. Fed by two streams. One hot and one cold. I used to visit it often when I was driving and I never once saw another person there. I would hang my dress in a tree, leave my sandals on the bank and just walk straight into the water. Early Autumn was the best time for this. At the far end of the pool the two streams enter very close to each other and I discovered that if you floated in the warm water close to where the streams flowed into the pool, holding onto this big rock, that an arm of cold water would curl around your body as you lay floating in the heat.
The sensation of the cold stream moving through the hot stream, delaying its passage for just a moment as it washed over your shoulders and down to your waist and away, is so hard to describe. I have tried for years to find the right words. The water became animate in a way. If you were able to colour the streams then you would watch a transparent deep teal column of colour swirl in. Flicking its bluegreen tail like a fat eel, mixing the colours for a moment. I used to say it was a welcome chill from the embrace of a long dead lover. Someone you miss terribly and always will. Their touch makes you flinch it is so cold and so incongruous and from another world but you want to feel it just a little longer. My skin shivers at the memory.
Yesterday in the evening I felt a cool stream of air, just like this cold water. It sliced cleanly in through the heat, brushing up against my overheated body, then moving past, followed by more and then more. The stream of cool air widened as it gathered confidence. I stood on the verandah in the dark and breathed in the blessed coolness like a starving woman. Then I walked around the house opening all the windows and doors and positioning the fans to suck more of this glorious bluegreen air into the house.
Today I will finish those tasks I started yesterday. You have a lovely day. You can Leave your Hat on, but come in out of the beating sun if it is still at your place.
Please check your spam folder and see if I am in there. Set me free.
celi
Today.. a year ago.. the bees swarm. This was my second post ever. Not destined for the book I think. But well worth checking out if you are interested in capturing a swarm of bees.
The Kitchen's Garden 
148 responses to “I never thought it would happen to me”
Hi from Porirua, New Zealand, where it is definitely winter. I found your blog via the lovely Juliet Batten’s Seasonal Inspiration blog. I read your daily post as I eat my breakfast. It is wonderful knowing that your latest post will be there waiting for me when I get up. Thank you.
I’ve had the WP wobblies too – reader numbers right down and finding some bona fide commenters in with the spam.
I know very little about farming but I am learning heaps about it from your blog. Reading about GM stuff makes me realise that we MUST stay anti that here in NZ!
Sending you great waves of our cold, clean air. Lynley
Good morning Lynley and hullo Porirua! You DO get some rough weather down there.. I have two sons in wellington who laugh at me when i say it is a windy day out here.. well lets hope whatever WP glitch there is gets sorted out but in the meantime i shall pop in and visit you. I adore having NZers reading. I miss you guys! c
Thanks for your visit to my blog and the encouraging comment you left. I did have to rescue you from the spam box but I have been emphatic with WP that you are not to be relegated to the oddities in the spam box.
My reader numbers have revived today so perhaps WP is gradually getting its act together again.
We might handle gales here but I doubt we could cope with your heat. Take care.
I know a hot pool just out of Taupo and it’s like the one you describe. What a fright you got. Do take care in that extreme heat!
I haven’t had a comment from you in a long time, but they wouldn’t have gone to spam without my knowing.I wish you streams of blue-green coolness. You describe it so beautifully.
Hi Celi,
I quit commenting here because your blog can never remember who I am, and I have to log in every time. And then I get warnings from my browser about cross-site scripting. I log in anyhow, but get redirected to my dashboard. But I will try again.
But I still come here every day and enjoy the read.
Hi Celi,
I quit commenting here because your blog can never remember who I am, and I have to log in every time. And then I get warnings from my browser about cross-site scripting. I log in anyhow, but get redirected to my dashboard. But I will try again (with shields down).
But I still come here every day and enjoy the read.
Good morning and long time no see! how strange that you are having trouble commenting, i am having all kinds of trouble myself lately, i just got asked on two other sites to log in first! Ah well i know you are there. how do i resolve this problem i wonder! c
No clue! The other that happens is that there is no indication the message “took” – so last night I reposted (and as you can see, added a bit more). Nice to see it made it through.
it sounds to me like you are having the same problem as i am with leaving comments.. hmm
I was thinking of you and your critters last night, as I was watching a news story about your corner of the world…
Take care Celi – we can’t do without you
XO
CELI!! Silly girl – got out of that heat and cool your body down after an hour !! You can always go back out, you know. And spray yourself too! This heat is brutal, more brutal than ever – it’s not the same as even just 20 years ago. Take care of yourself – we NEED you!!
Yikes! I am glad you’re ok. That heat was awful, but I am sure cooler times are ahead. And yes, somehow you and my other followed bloggers wound up in spam for a week or so – you’re back where you belong now. Sweet dreams.
Oh, Celi, I hope you’ll be more careful with yourself in this heat after that experience. It would be even better if it just went away, wouldn’t it?
You’re amazing, you manage to put up a great post & photos, go a good way to getting sunstroke & give John a fright in the process I imagine, and remind us all lof the vagaries of WP (no spam issues here 🙂 ) Glad all is well.
Sweetie, do take care of yourself. I have found that I simply cannot push this aging body the way I used to. I have to pace myself.
And I’ve not gone anywhere – still here, will always be! You’re still one of my faves 😉
I have found that the best solution for sunstroke is a chamomile tea bath! Hope you do not succumb again 🙂
another blog recently informed its readers that facebook was making changes and that only a percentage of/and actively posting readers, would continue to recieve blogs..something to do with facebook making more money…coud this be the issue?
I don’t understand the FB thing.. at all, what is going on there.. c
Oh darling, do be careful. We’ve just been reading about the heatwave in the US and how it’s already killed 30 people. Scary stuff..
Oh Celi, it sounds like you had a narrow escape! Literally over heating, take care sweetie, and I mean really take care!!
re the WordPress reader and spam – I’ve hauled you out of my spam a couple of times, and I don’t get an updated Reader with the latest blogs on – it shows blogs that are days old, all very frustrating. And yes I’ve noticed the numbers are dropping. I think we need some kind of collective action!
You gave me (probably all of us) a bit of a scare there, C.
And then you scared me with that pic of barn swallows, the single reason I really do not much care for birds. Memories of them swooping at me as I fed cows and scooped manure in the barn are still quite frighteningly imprinted upon my memory.
oops sorry Audrey! there may be a few more as they grow, i will warn you!! c