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Jun. 26th, 2008 10:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckSo, we're at Origins. Scott and Delia are over in the kids' room, playing games with Delia's best friend (or mostly best friend. Delia changes her mind about who's her best friend fairly often) and her father. I'm in the hotel room, feeling cranky. A bout of IBS has me stuck for a little while. With luck, that'll finish up in another half an hour to an hour, and I'll be able to go to the convention center.
There's part of me that doesn't want to leave the room at all. This is a strange place, and I'm going to be alone or with just Delia a lot. I'm very glad that I'll have a scooter even though that makes some logistics more complicated. I discovered last night that walking around in a place I don't know is more exhausting and painful than walking around somewhere that I know well-- We went out to dinner with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dagoski and his wife. It wasn't too far, two very long blocks that probably come out to four blocks by downtown Ann Arbor standards. I should be able to walk that. By the time we got there, my hips and feet hurt. By the time we got back to the hotel, I was ready to never move again. (I did do more walking later when Delia was refusing to sleep. I had to leave the room so as not to escalate the problem. Anything else resulted in her pushing harder.)
I suspect that the heavy humidity and my new shoes played a role in the pain. The shoes are good ones, but I haven't had them even a week, and they're still not broken in. I miss the previous pair (same size, same color, same brand) that I'd had for four and a half years.
Those two things can't be the whole cause, though. I've walked that far in that sort of humidity before, many times (living in Michigan has to be good for something), and I've been wearing the shoes off and on for days. I suspect that the stress of being in a new place is ratcheting up my anxiety, my fight or flight instincts, even when I'm steadfastly not looking at the anxiety so that I can function.
I'd rather have my mind working moderately well and my body working badly than the reverse, but I wish I didn't have to make the choice. Not that it's a choice any longer. I don't do it deliberately. I suppose it's part of the arithmetic of anxiety when combined with physical disability. My body's never going to work really well, so I trade a bit more function for sharpening my mind. Sharpening my mind makes the anxiety a little bit more powerful but also makes me feel more like I can handle things that the universe throws at me.
The IBS isn't entirely a surprise. I'd been expecting in since yesterday. I am a bit worried about it, though. My first bowel movement today turned the water in the toilet dark pink, so something was bleeding. If I were home, I'd have headed for my doctor. (Well, I'd wait until I could be away from the toilet for more than ten minutes at a time. The half hour trip is hard to do in increments.) Other bowel movements since have not included blood, so I'm being cautiously optimistic. I will be avoiding my standard pain killer for the next several days (until I do see a doctor). I'm not adding anaprox to any potential digestive tract bleeding. I don't think that that's the likely culprit, though, as I think it usually causes stomach bleeding which wouldn't come through the intestines as red. Still, I expect intestinal bleeding isn't impossible.
(For anyone worried, I feel fine, for me, given that I'm not at home and only got about six hours of sleep last night. I'm going to see if the hotel shop has Tylenol at prices that don't constitute extortion. If they do, I'll take that. If they don't, I'll deal with the pain and use Vicodin if I absolutely have to.)
There were tornado warnings in Columbus last night, starting about 11:30. The front desk called our room three times to tell us where the shelters were, a meeting room downstairs and the bathroom in our room. The sirens and thunder were enough that I couldn't sleep through it, even without the anxiety of wondering if a tornado would hit. The adults in the room discussed the matter in the way that people who've been briefly asleep or mostly asleep do. We decided to gamble that we'd be fine. I ended up sitting up and playing computer solitaire while periodically refreshing the NOAA website.
Scott has been cranky since we started packing on Tuesday. I'm not sure if he realizes how cranky or just how much that pushes my anxiety to new heights. I'm actually at the point that I'm reluctant to ask him to help me out with anything because I'm afraid of making the cranky worse. Intellectually, I know that it's not me and that there's no risk of driving him away or provoking him to worse than crankiness, but I don't respond rationally to such things.
I don't think Scott understands what him being cranky and snapping does to me. I hesitate to try to tell him because it's horribly unfair to tell someone that they're not allowed to have a bad day or to be upset. Nobody can manage that, and it's damaging to try.
Packing for a trip is harder with a child. If we, as adults, forget something for us, we do without or scavenge a substitute. For Delia, it's harder. When something she expects isn't there, she doesn't really understand why Mama and Daddy can't magic it up. Plus, we want her to be comfortable here. She's not at all sure that being here is a good thing. She alternates between excitement and wanting to go home.
Scott's also realized that he didn't bring enough cash. He got some out of the bank last week and then spent quite a bit of it before we even left home. I have none. I trusted him when he said he had it dealt with (the whole not driving thing means that I have to beg a ride to go to the bank). I get the impression that, on some level, he counted on me having cash. It's silly of him because he never got me more after we spent the last of mine last Friday evening. He was there for that.
We got lost on the trip down. It was spitting rain, and there were a lot of trucks on the road, so we had a constant layer of rough water over the windshield during a critical bit of the trip. We missed seeing the turn we were supposed to make and weren't certain that we'd missed it until we hit the Columbus city limits. As it turned out, the road we were on came down here anyway. It just wasn't as efficient in terms of time because it came through town at no more than 20-30 mph. Still, Scott had quite a long period of utter terror that we were lost, that it was his fault, that things were going horribly wrong. He had trouble taking simple steps to deal with it and snapped at me and Delia a few times. (We did stop to try to buy a Columbus map. Sadly, the place we stopped only had Cincinnati and Dayton city maps. We have no understanding of the logic of that.)
We arrived an hour and a half after Scott had planned. I don't think he got over that until after dinner. I think he's fine now, but he's also very focused on not letting anything disrupt his time away from home. He's worried about me, but he's not sticking close. He came back once to get his game books. I think there was some element of checking up on me in that, too, but I'm not sure how much.
There's part of me that doesn't want to leave the room at all. This is a strange place, and I'm going to be alone or with just Delia a lot. I'm very glad that I'll have a scooter even though that makes some logistics more complicated. I discovered last night that walking around in a place I don't know is more exhausting and painful than walking around somewhere that I know well-- We went out to dinner with
dagoski and his wife. It wasn't too far, two very long blocks that probably come out to four blocks by downtown Ann Arbor standards. I should be able to walk that. By the time we got there, my hips and feet hurt. By the time we got back to the hotel, I was ready to never move again. (I did do more walking later when Delia was refusing to sleep. I had to leave the room so as not to escalate the problem. Anything else resulted in her pushing harder.)I suspect that the heavy humidity and my new shoes played a role in the pain. The shoes are good ones, but I haven't had them even a week, and they're still not broken in. I miss the previous pair (same size, same color, same brand) that I'd had for four and a half years.
Those two things can't be the whole cause, though. I've walked that far in that sort of humidity before, many times (living in Michigan has to be good for something), and I've been wearing the shoes off and on for days. I suspect that the stress of being in a new place is ratcheting up my anxiety, my fight or flight instincts, even when I'm steadfastly not looking at the anxiety so that I can function.
I'd rather have my mind working moderately well and my body working badly than the reverse, but I wish I didn't have to make the choice. Not that it's a choice any longer. I don't do it deliberately. I suppose it's part of the arithmetic of anxiety when combined with physical disability. My body's never going to work really well, so I trade a bit more function for sharpening my mind. Sharpening my mind makes the anxiety a little bit more powerful but also makes me feel more like I can handle things that the universe throws at me.
The IBS isn't entirely a surprise. I'd been expecting in since yesterday. I am a bit worried about it, though. My first bowel movement today turned the water in the toilet dark pink, so something was bleeding. If I were home, I'd have headed for my doctor. (Well, I'd wait until I could be away from the toilet for more than ten minutes at a time. The half hour trip is hard to do in increments.) Other bowel movements since have not included blood, so I'm being cautiously optimistic. I will be avoiding my standard pain killer for the next several days (until I do see a doctor). I'm not adding anaprox to any potential digestive tract bleeding. I don't think that that's the likely culprit, though, as I think it usually causes stomach bleeding which wouldn't come through the intestines as red. Still, I expect intestinal bleeding isn't impossible.
(For anyone worried, I feel fine, for me, given that I'm not at home and only got about six hours of sleep last night. I'm going to see if the hotel shop has Tylenol at prices that don't constitute extortion. If they do, I'll take that. If they don't, I'll deal with the pain and use Vicodin if I absolutely have to.)
There were tornado warnings in Columbus last night, starting about 11:30. The front desk called our room three times to tell us where the shelters were, a meeting room downstairs and the bathroom in our room. The sirens and thunder were enough that I couldn't sleep through it, even without the anxiety of wondering if a tornado would hit. The adults in the room discussed the matter in the way that people who've been briefly asleep or mostly asleep do. We decided to gamble that we'd be fine. I ended up sitting up and playing computer solitaire while periodically refreshing the NOAA website.
Scott has been cranky since we started packing on Tuesday. I'm not sure if he realizes how cranky or just how much that pushes my anxiety to new heights. I'm actually at the point that I'm reluctant to ask him to help me out with anything because I'm afraid of making the cranky worse. Intellectually, I know that it's not me and that there's no risk of driving him away or provoking him to worse than crankiness, but I don't respond rationally to such things.
I don't think Scott understands what him being cranky and snapping does to me. I hesitate to try to tell him because it's horribly unfair to tell someone that they're not allowed to have a bad day or to be upset. Nobody can manage that, and it's damaging to try.
Packing for a trip is harder with a child. If we, as adults, forget something for us, we do without or scavenge a substitute. For Delia, it's harder. When something she expects isn't there, she doesn't really understand why Mama and Daddy can't magic it up. Plus, we want her to be comfortable here. She's not at all sure that being here is a good thing. She alternates between excitement and wanting to go home.
Scott's also realized that he didn't bring enough cash. He got some out of the bank last week and then spent quite a bit of it before we even left home. I have none. I trusted him when he said he had it dealt with (the whole not driving thing means that I have to beg a ride to go to the bank). I get the impression that, on some level, he counted on me having cash. It's silly of him because he never got me more after we spent the last of mine last Friday evening. He was there for that.
We got lost on the trip down. It was spitting rain, and there were a lot of trucks on the road, so we had a constant layer of rough water over the windshield during a critical bit of the trip. We missed seeing the turn we were supposed to make and weren't certain that we'd missed it until we hit the Columbus city limits. As it turned out, the road we were on came down here anyway. It just wasn't as efficient in terms of time because it came through town at no more than 20-30 mph. Still, Scott had quite a long period of utter terror that we were lost, that it was his fault, that things were going horribly wrong. He had trouble taking simple steps to deal with it and snapped at me and Delia a few times. (We did stop to try to buy a Columbus map. Sadly, the place we stopped only had Cincinnati and Dayton city maps. We have no understanding of the logic of that.)
We arrived an hour and a half after Scott had planned. I don't think he got over that until after dinner. I think he's fine now, but he's also very focused on not letting anything disrupt his time away from home. He's worried about me, but he's not sticking close. He came back once to get his game books. I think there was some element of checking up on me in that, too, but I'm not sure how much.
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no subject
Date: 2008-06-26 05:40 pm (UTC)Can't he just use the cash machine? (Me, I love my debit card. No cash? No problem!)
I hope that you feel better for some of Origins and that you can play some games.
My friends Linda and Dean are there (I don't know if you know them -- Dean used to be the Rider's game guy back fifteen years ago or so, when it was still a Good Game Store).
no subject
Date: 2008-06-26 06:25 pm (UTC)Scott's looking for a cash machine. He just went online and found that there's one for our bank about half a mile away. He's planning to drive over later, after he takes Delia swimming. We're fortunate in a way that our bank got bought out by Chase. If it were still NBD (as it was when we opened our account), we'd have to accept the service fees from using a 'foreign' ATM.
I don't have any history to explain my anxiety. I think it's just that my anxiety manifests through difficulty in ignoring *possible* threats, however unlikely they are. In order to ignore something, I have to find a way to limit how much I can see it, hear it, feel it, etc. That's one reason I'm more comfortable with closed curtains when I'm at home. Not being able to see the outside world makes it easier not to worry about stupid things.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-26 06:27 pm (UTC)Yeah, it's weird how anxiety is a pain.
Will talk to you more.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-27 02:30 am (UTC)Sounds like there was a lot of scary stuff on this trip that neither of you could have anticipated. It's tough with a little one in tow. *hugs*
no subject
Date: 2008-07-03 03:48 pm (UTC)I miss Origins' ginger bath oil. The last I knew, they'd discontinued it. I'd have bought a lot if I could have figure out a way to keep it from going rancid for a few years.