I hate summer: reprise

Today, after working outside for about four hours, only about one and a half of which was strenuous shoveling, I started feeling more exhausted than I normally do after a good day's work.  I was drinking plenty of water, and after I finished the shoveling all I was doing was some light gardening and pruning.  But, as expressed in my previous entry, summer here is awful.  And hot.  And apparently, even though I was drinking today, I must have already been dehydrated from fasting half of yesterday.  As the lightheadedness, fast/shallow breathing, and serious weakness set in, my mind flashed back about six years to me picking Chad up from his construction site because he was weak and his muscles were seizing up.  I drove him to the hospital (as he vomited into a Walmart bag; thank goodness I had just been shopping when he called) to be treated for heat exhaustion.  Oh great.  Did I need to go to the hospital?  I panicked a little as I quickly mixed up some Gatorade and refilled my water bottle, then lay down on the living room floor under the A/C vent and ceiling fan.  I called Chad and told him to come home, that I would surely be needing to be hospitalized any minute (I was trying to keep calm on the phone for his sake).  At least I wasn't vomiting.  I wasn't in full panic mode yet.  But Chad was over an hour away.  In the end, after an hour of lying there sipping my drink bottles dry, the full-body tingling had abated, and I had the strength to sit up and eventually stand again.  Thank goodness.  Because I was seriously dirty and smelly from working outside, and would have been so embarrassed if I'd needed to go to the ER.  Anyway, I have since showered, eaten a long-overdue lunch, and drank a few more bottles of water.  I still have a headache, and a low-grade fever, but I'm functional.  And my climbing roses look amazing.

Have I mentioned that I hate summer?