Well, that's a fly in the pancake batter, a bee in your girdle, a wasp in your farthingale.

That's a knot in your corset laces, a scratch on your CD, a crack in the windshield, a hole in your tire, a zit on your nose, a ghost in your attic, a rat in the elevator...

I have no idea how long I could keep going. I could just throw words together and someone, somewhere, would say: "Yup, I know what you mean..."

So, to recap the pig in the hay barn, the foot/ankle/calf thing- still here. I haven't checked the weather yet, but judging by my itchy and burning skin, I think there's a storm a-comin'... Last week, I had something happened that scared me like an earthworm at dawn. I woke up and my human knee hurt. Bad. It was the sharp, excruciating pain of arthritis. It was like the day my left knee decided to give up the good fight. Bone-on-bone and it ended with a total knee replacement. As helpful as the TKR was in the long run, I don't want to go through that ever again. EVER AGAIN!

For three days, three excruciatingly painful days, I worried about the possibility that my knee was surrendering to the dark side. On the third day, I realized that the pain in my foot/ankle/calf was gone. And at that moment, I realized that the knee pain was possibly fibro related. Heat didn't help. Ice didn't help. Not moving helped a little.

Damn right it was. I woke up on the fourth day and the knee pain was gone. The foot/ankle/calf thing was back. Needless to say, I was relieved. Then I had to move and fibrofuckingmyalgia reminded me how much it sucks.

I just checked Weather-dot-com. So far, there are no storms a-comin', not for the next five days. But, our temps are dropping like a potato in a corn silo (you like that one?). How about: our temps are dropping like a roof that's been raised after the cops arrive? No? I don't like that one either. Our temps are dropping like a hoarder in Sam's Club with a fistful of coupons.

I'm just going to go ahead and post this now, before I completely lose my mind... like a Batman villain in a mirror factory.

What?

Why do the good days have to lull me into a false sense of normalcy?

I had several good days in a row. I've been a little tired now and then, but I was able to keep going. There were a couple days here and there when I said: "Hey, you don't need me to go anywhere, do you?" and then I took a couple Vicodin to take the edge off the pain (I'm still having that weird ankle/calf/foot thing). But I'd wake up each morning and get out of bed with relative quickness... then today happened.

I slept through my first alarm. Then I slept through five minutes of my second alarm. When I finally sat up, I could barely move. My entire body hurts. Head to toes. Hit by a truck? Thrown from a horse? I feel like I was run over by a horse driving a big U-Haul truck full of bricks. Why is a horse driving a large U-Haul full of bricks? I have no idea, maybe his hobby is masonry and he needs the bricks for a project. At any rate, my entire body is in burning-skin, painfully tight muscle agony. Not even 6 AM yet and I'm already curled into a question mark. Every time this happens, it is always a surprise to me. I have no idea why I let myself get into that groove like that. It makes every flareup just that much harder to deal with.

I have to go to the store today, too. This isn't going to be a fun trip. (I have no choice on the store-going. The kids who are home both worked through the night last night. Jason works third shift now and Christine had to go back to her school yesterday for a job- she gets paid for it too- and didn't get home till 330 AM, if my dogs barking was indication). Anyway, since they were both working, they'll both be sleeping and the store closes early this evening because of it being Christmas Eve.

But about those good days... It wasn't a lot, maybe four straight. But I felt good those four days. I was able to do things and able to function and the pain didn't distract me from my tasks. And then I woke up today to this kick in the teeth. It is like my body said: "Oh, you're having a decent time? Feeling good? Let me remind you again of your life." And the fibrofuckingmyalgia round-house kicked me in the back of the face and left me on the floor.

I just tried to type up a paragraph about my mom and how much this Christmas season sucks (for those who don't know, my mom died last year on Christmas night- it was almost midnight). But I can't seem to articulate the whole thing into sentences that make any kind of sense. Let's just say I want this holiday to be over. It still sucks, I still miss her, I wish I could tell her everything that has happened in the past year- even just the past six months- and I can't. And please, don't placate me with how she's looking down on me and all that. It doesn't help and it just makes me want to punch a baby. And what if that baby is her reincarnated? That's no good for any of us.

So, I'm having a hellish flareup today. Partly from stress, partly from activity, partly from that irate horse driving a truckload of bricks and Weather-dot-com alleges we'll have snow this morning. I'll believe it when I see it. "Snowpocalypse 2012" dumped a few inches of alleged snow the other day, but when I went outside to take photos of snowflakes, all I got was closeups of clumps of ice. There were no proper snowflakes.

I'm going to go take my stay-alive pills and eat breakfast. Then I'm going to the store as early as I can so I can come home and take some Vicodin. Merry fucking Christmas.

At least we'll get some cool photos out of this...

My latest flareup is brought to you by Massive Snowstorm That May or May Not be Snow When it Reaches Us. We've got the usual all-over body stiffness and the typical itchy-underneath-the-surface skin. And the utter exhaustion. Let's not forget the utter exhaustion.

But we also have areas of intense pain. My right ankle and calf, for instance. If I judge by my blog posts, it has been happening for almost a month now. I can't rotate my ankle in an effort to relieve pain, swelling, or stiffness because the act of moving it causes the muscles from mid-calf to my toes to contort in a Charlie-Horse-esque cramping that makes me cry out weakly and pathetically. And I'm plenty pathetic on my own, I don't need any help hitting that level. My elbows and wrists are also sore, but not as intense as that damned ankle. So when I try to get out of my chair, I make lovely facial expressions and I groan. When I have to walk, I do so as though I'm a zombie. There's groaning, an awkward shuffling, and I suddenly crave the tender delicacy of human brains. Strange, I don't recall reading that in the Fibrofuckingmyalgia Bylaws.

I FEEL PRETTY! SO PRETTY!

The only good thing coming from this possible storm is that I'll finally get to take some cool macro snowflake photos. I've done a few- we've had a few moments of spitting snow, but I need a real snowfall for it to be awesome.

Right now, at 605 AM, all I want to do is slide to the floor under my desk and take a nap. There's a couple problems with that... If I do slide to the floor, I'll have immense and comical difficulty getting back up. And, if I slide to the floor, I'll immediately get smothered by dogs. And if I slide to the floor, I'll get covered in dog hair- even before the smothering happens.

So instead of sliding to the floor and whimpering like an attention whore at an attention-deficit convention, I'm going to get up, make some oatmeal for breakfast and take my stay-alive pills.

And then... A NAP!

Also, here's a photo of tiny snowflakes from last week or so.

A Tumblr post-

I have a Tumblr. I'd like to say it's for my photography, and it kind of is, but I only got a Tumblr so I could follow a band that I like. They update their official Tumblr with more regularity than Facebook and their Facebook statuses get lost in the shuffle of all the other stuff on Facebook.

So, I got myself a Tumblr to keep up on their activities.

I try to keep it mostly photography related, though. I'll like/favorite/heart posts and such, but I rarely "reblog" a post. Till today. Now, don't worry. I had a pretty good day. I haven't had a terrible flareup for a little while now. Had a couple rough days, but nothing terrible.

I reblogged this photo and added a whole lotta text of my own to the bottom.

Tumblr Post

If you don't want to go to Tumblr, here's the photo I re-posted.

And, here's the text I added myself. 

Pain changes a lot.

Pain changed how I did everything.

How I dress.

How I sleep.

How I sit.

How I walk.

Pain made me change the way I go to the grocery store.

Pain took over my life.

Pain roundhouse kicked me in the face and left me on the ground.

And now I’m struggling to get back up. Every day is a struggle.

Is today going to be a good day? Is it going to be a bad day?

Is gravity going to feel harsher?

And not even important stuff- like: am I going to be able to sit at my desk to work?

No. Pain makes me ask myself, “Am I going to be able to get out of bed?”

Am I going to be able to stand in the shower?

Am I going to be able to put real clothes on today?

Am I going to be able to get through the day without chewing down extra Vicodin?

Am I going to make it through to 6 PM (when I take my nightly pain meds)?

Pain changes everything. Including me.

But I’m working my way back up.

Pain changes everything, but it isn’t going to keep me down for long. I refuse to let pain win.

Now and then, I do a little research on my own disease

Not often, really, but enough to keep up on the latest trend in treatments and such. And in my Google searching, this blog post of my own popped up.  As I went on, a few more popped up, including this one about the rapid decline of a day from a flareup. 

The reason I decided to poke around was because for over a week, my right foot and ankle have been killing me. It feels like a severe sprain or even a fracture. It isn't the usual fibro pain. So, I need to refresh my memory a bit on whether or not that's a normal thing. You know, having one part of the body hurt but not other parts.

So, to bring you up to speed, my left hip from my waist to the hip joint, is in agonizing pain. I make beautiful contortion-ed faces when I go to get up from a chair. And my right ankle from mid-calf to the middle of the arch of my foot is screaming at me every time I move it. I can't even do simple stretches like I normally do to get rid of the stiffness-pain.

Thursday was somewhat rough in that I was halfway through the grocery store when my body wanted to curl itself into a question mark. Today- aside from the ankle thing- wasn't so bad, but it was bad enough I didn't go pick up photo prints I had done. I HAVE to go pick them up tomorrow. And while I'm out, I'm going to find somewhere to take some photos.

But if I wake up feeling the way I feel today, it'll be loose-jeans-giant-t-shirt day.

Oh, by the way, having oddly aching body parts is "normal". Nothing is really "normal" with fibrofuckingmyalgia. What I suffer through isn't necessarily what you suffer through, but of course, there are common themes. And different levels of stress... I'm tired of the stress that causes the pain. Why can't I just have the stress, deal with it, and move on? Why do I have to have a three day engagement with pain after I deal with stress?

I never really realized how much stress I was under till I had to start cutting it out of my life. And that's not easy to do. I'm stuck with one major source of stress in the Disabled Guy.

In my Google searching today, when my own blog posts would pop up, I re-read them. It has been months since I've had someone say something remotely supportive. The good news is, even with my older blog posts, when I read that someone said something encouraging or remotely caring, I remembered the incident and it made me smile.

So fuck the pain. Fuck the stress that causes the pain. Fuck it all. Because someone out there gets it.