I feel ... pummeled. I went back to work too soon on Friday, still high from hydrocodone, glued together, sore. Ma and Pa left for home on Friday, then I realized I needed them to come back because Beloved had to make a last-minute trip. They turned around and came back, bless my wonderful parents. It got better, then it got worse, then it got better, then it got worse. This morning I had pain of a new kind, a more normal kind, but pain all the same. I hobbled downstairs at six to get ibuprofin then back to bed to apply counter-pressure and wait the twenty minutes for the Advil to kick in so I could stop moaning and get out of bed, because today is Monday and I need to go back to work and Beloved has another two-day trip. The poor guy stood there this morning no doubt wondering if I would indeed get out of bed and get the little angel on the bus and go to work or if I would just lie there and moan all day. I admit I was wondering, too.

I don't find out what was in my leg until a week from today. Until then, I'm not supposed to exercise, which I shouldn't want to do because it would hurt and might tear the glue and stitches, but that is how I regulate my anxiety easier. 

So I'm sort of sitting here looking at this list of shit I have to do and giving myself the best pep talk I can, because there is no one else here to do this life for me. I want nothing more than to lie down and dissolve into a puddle of needs, because there is nothing like having the guy in the coffee shop ask you if you got bit by a spider while gesturing to the black bruise on your hand and having to tell him, no, that was just where they put the IV two days ago to make you feel old and tired and sore. It wasn't major surgery, but the in and out and the forced ejection back into normal life before the shock even wore off has spun me around and left me wandering, disoriented, through my house, wondering if the cat has been fed. 

I don't want to push off the little angel, who wants to have all her friends over tonight for a Play-Dough party in the driveway. I will let her have it, of course, but there is a huge part of me that would prefer to scream FUCK PLAY-DOUGH. LIFE, PLEASE JUST STOP AND LET ME CATCH UP, THANK YOU. 

I know the truth is that I'm just allowing myself to have these few minutes wallowing in my pity party because I'll hit publish and open my email and dry my tears and maybe go take a shower so I don't feel like such a worthless blob and try to find some pants that don't squeeze my incisions and figure out how to haul myself through today and tonight and tomorrow when I have another doctor appointment to try to figure out what's been going on with my gut for the past three years. 

I feel so old and so tired today. Accomplishing something will probably help a lot. God, I can't even stand to read my own writing, I sound so whiny.

Hi everyone!

Yesterday I had a post go up on BlogHer about the sources of stress. Not sources of stress like deadlines and traffic jams and being out of orange juice at 7 am, but sources of stress in your brainz. Here's an excerpt:

That said, I've spent most of my stress-fighting career thinking about how tohandle stress rather than what caused it in the first place. Things are rough all over, Ponyboy. And I've blamed myself a lot for not being tougher.

I recently read Stress Less (for Women) by Thea Singer, a book that appeared in the mail for review. One passage struck me in particular -- one that talked about stress research being flipped on its head when researchers stopped thinking about stress or age atrophying parts of the brain and instead studied whether people who stressed more started out less equipped to deal with the stress in the first place:

The vulnerability hypothesis of stress -- that is, that a smaller hypocampus, whether due to genes or early exposure to stress -- can predispose you to the damaging effects of stress, rendering you more vulnerable to age-related memory loss and disorders such as PTSD.

There was good news at the end! Read the rest on BlogHer!

PS: Last night the little angel asked for a drink of water while in the bathtub. I handed her the crappy hot pink water bottle we got with Culver's points. She took one drink and gagged. Then she said, "I don't know why, but yesterday I put Goldfish crackers in here." I opened it and there were bloated Goldfish floating in two inches of tepid tap water. And then I threw up in my mouth.