A side-effect to giving up Martyrdom and then there's today

So, I stepped off my high horse and decided that I'd take those pain meds in the daytime, to hell with it. But there's a problem...

I feel decent and functional and I tend to do more. I stand more, I pace more, I take more photos. Which is all well and good that day at faire. But the next day? Yikes. The last couple weeks when I've taken those pain meds at faire, the Monday after, I can barely move. And I mean that literally. When I go to sit up in bed when my alarm goes off, I almost can't. And standing? That pain scale should go to 15 instead of 10. I cried when I stood up and shuffled out of my room. Cried.

I'm going to keep doing it though. My photography at faire is still improving. And with the whole "I feel better, let's move around more" thing, I've been getting a better range of photos. Last year, it was mostly about the joust and not much else. But this year, I've been asked by actors and performers to take photos of their shows/demonstrations. (I will fully admit that my favorite part is when they stay in character and ask me if I'm "the Patty Smith who takes photos" or even when I get recognized as exactly that).

I'm going to skip over the crappy Monday and Tuesday I had this week. What happened isn't important and it was just straight up ignorance about what is wrong with me and I just don't feel like rehashing it all over again.

Then we have today...

I woke up tired. I mean, dead-dog-tired. I sat here, going through the photo notifications on Facebook and could barely keep my eyes open. I couldn't figure out why. When I took the dogs out at 530 AM, the sky was clear, I could see the light from the impending sunrise. Some of my faire family were posting about thunderstorms, but most of them are almost two hours away from me.

Then the rain started. Then the thunder. Yup, we have thunderstorms predicted for almost all day today. That  explains my exhaustion. My tiredness, my sore muscles, my aching and itching skin. I'm sat here in my soft "I shoot RAW" T-shirt and giant yoga pants and fuzzy slippers. I'd rather be curled up naked in my bed under the fleece blankets, but I have stuff to do and the "naked blanket curling" isn't going to get it done.

I'm refraining from daytime pain meds, though. Not out of martyrdom, but out of practicality. I don't want my body to get used to getting a steady flow of pain meds because then I have to have my dose increased as I get used to it and I think I already take too much of it as it is.

Here I sit, in soft, giant clothes, I even put my hair up because my hair was annoying me. And I hate putting my hair up.

I'm not going to bore you with a lot of photos from this weekend. That's why I have a blog for my photography. Besides, of the people reading this, most of you have already hidden my photos in your news feeds on Facebook. But, I will share something here...

Among the many joust photos I took this weekend, I also got a lot of the nobles dancing, a lot of Fantastikal shots, and the Queen's visit to the Friends of Faire garden. And of those photos, this one is my favorite.

This is the Earl of Leicester- Robert Dudley and Queen Elizabeth (as portrayed by T. Stacy Hicks and Jennifer Higgins, respectively).