In my whiny lamentations, I made up a new phrase...

I was going to come in here and whine like the pissy little bitch that I am about how it hurts to go for a walk. And it does. A lot. Okay, let me whine about that for a paragraph or two...

Like an idiot, I declared that all my 365days photos would be taken "a mile from my house" because, dammit, I want to keep losing weight. Not that I ever expect to be thin again, but I'd like to be described as something other than: "That fat chick with the black hair"... like maybe "that moderately weighted chick with the black hair". Turns out, I can't walk a mile away from my house yet. Nope. I'm doing a half-mile and then walking back, to make a full mile. And in other good news, I can't go two days in a row. So on Day two of the Great One Mile Away Day, I'd already broke two promises I made publicly (and by "publicly", I mean "On Facebook").

I hurt so much the day after I walk that I'm not even putting shoes on my feet. That's it, man. The ren faire has healing powers. Sure, I'd hurt at the end of the day and my feet were screaming a symphony like an out-of-key donkey with someone stepping on his testicles, but I always had fun and still managed to walk back up that damn hill from the tilt yard. Of course, the motivation of seeing my friends and watching the joust was a huge draw. But still... walking on concrete and asphalt is a fuck of a lot worse than the grass and dirt paths at the faire.

Now, onto the new phrase I came up with... I was instant messaging with Shawn and telling him about a trying day with the pain after walking and how I can't even be sure some of this is fibrofuckingmyalgia or not. And I said this:

Fibromyalgia is like a fuck-you cocktail of learn-as-you-go.

There it is... share it at will if you feel the urge. I'm going to go have Oreos for dinner or something because I'm too tired and sore to cook anything.

I need to make a jumpsuit out of that blanket...

I felt so awful yesterday that I put off writing this post till today. Yesterday, my skin hurt. Every muscle ached to the point of tears. It wasn't a flareup like the one I had when Shawn was here, but it was bad.

How bad WAS it?

It was so bad that I stripped naked and crawled between two furry, soft, fleece blankets.

That's not much of a punchline! You ripped us off!

Yeah, well, whattya want? I'm not a stand-up comedian! I'm just some freakin' housewife who has this stupid disease and nobody around to listen to my lamentations as I play the same six songs over and over and whimper through the pain.

Only part of that is true. I don't play the same six songs. More like twelve.

I also don't whimper. I fucking bitch out loud and angrily. Then I strip naked and curl in a ball under a blanket and wait for it to pass. I took two Vicodin yesterday afternoon. Then I took two at my regular time (about two hours or so later) and then, my muscle relaxers. By bedtime, I was ready to curl up into a ball and play with yarn.

By "play with yarn", I mean that literally, I was giggling at stuff that wasn't funny to other humans. After I took the two Vicodin in the afternoon, I went upstairs for my strip-down-blanket-cocoon. I ended up watching terrible shows on a channel that used to be CourtTV. It was called "Bait Car" and I giggled my way through three episodes before I felt well enough to get up again.

But wait! I hear you saying, You're NAKED!

True... very true. But, I put on a fleece hoodie and a pair of velvet sweat pants- inside-out. That's right, I was rocking inside-out sweats. I managed to survive the rest of the evening till bedtime when I then stripped down again and re-entered that fleece cocoon I'd built myself.

Pain, itching, aching skin... it was not a good day.

By comparison, today is much, much better. So, at least there's that.

Emotions and a shard of glass-

Shawn left on Tuesday. The time he spends here speeds by so quickly that when the day for him to leave pops up, we're always surprised. That day was emotional enough- and as we all know, emotions are candy to Fibrofuckingmyalgia. "RAAAARRRRGGGH!" bellows Fibrofuckingmyalgia, "I LOVE EMOTIONS! LIKE REESE'S PIECES!! *chomp-chomp-chomp*"

Or, you know, something like that. Plus, I had to drive Shawn to the airport. Our last moments together are of me battling road-rage like a heroin addict scratching for a hit. I get twitchy and scream-y at other drivers. And when I battle the urge to swear at them, it gets worse. But I digress... It is always sad when Shawn leaves. So, the fibrofuckingmyalgia just gobbled that up like a heroin addict getting a hit.

YOU LIKE THAT!? DID YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE!? Yeah, I'm fucking brilliant.

Let's move on, shall we?

So, Tuesday, emotionally exhausting.

Wednesday, physically exhausting. If you know me, you know my kids are all in college now. The youngest is a freshman. She's in a school about an hour and a half a way. Same town as her sister, different school. My oldest lives in an apartment, the youngest is in the dorms. Ceej- that's the youngest if you're taking notes- has Wednesdays off. Nothing at all to do. She's been battling with the Veterans Administration to get her education benefits.

Long-story-short: This is my third kid to go through the VA education benefits bullshit. We applied early- as soon as we found out which college she was going to, we applied. "Apply early!" is what the staff says, for those benefits. We did. We got the usual automated reply: "you qualify for benefits-blah-blah-blah-due to a high volume of applications, it may take ten weeks to complete your process..."

That was when she had four months till the start of her school year. FOUR MONTHS. The boy- that's my middle child, for you note-takers (don't worry, there won't be a test on this later- got his first check at the end of August, because he started school in mid-August. And the VA pays in arrears. End of September comes, Jase and Kat get their checks, but Ceej doesn't. She contacts her VA rep at her school.

Needless to say, she didn't get her first check till November 8th. Yeah. She started school on September 1st. Same day as her sister. And she didn't get her check till this week. Luckily, she has generous grandparents (they gave her cash), a part-time job, a sister who lives in town (took her shopping, lets her do laundry at her apartment), and a brother (who also slipped her some cash to keep her from starving after the cafeteria closed).

So, back to the long-story-that-was-supposed-to-be-short-but-wasn't-short-at-all: Wednesday I spent almost six full hours driving. I had to drive out to get Ceej, bring her home so she could do her banking (there isn't a branch in her town). She wanted to pay her grandparents (that's my parents- you should know that, just because they're awesome) back some of the help they gave her. She gave me gas money- which was nice. Then I had to drive her back to school.

That put me at nearly six hours driving. I was a little tired from that. No worries, as I didn't have anything to do on Thursday. Wednesday night, I went upstairs to change from my jeans into my giant yoga pants and huge T-shirt. In walking from my bedroom to the bathroom, I stepped on an unseen shard of glass. I have callouses on my heels and I didn't feel it till the shard was embedded deep into my foot.

Slight ouch. It was a tiny shard, like a splinter. I tried to get it out with a pair of tweezers (which is when I found out it was glass and not wood). A needle didn't work either. I tried again this morning after my shower (hoping the water would soften up the callous). No luck. If I can't get it out by tomorrow, I'll have to go to "urgent care" and let the medical professionals handle it.

But, I can't put weight on my heel. Its right where the bulk of my weight hits when I step. So, I'm walking on my tiptoes on that foot. My calf is killing me and my right hip (that's the "hot spot" I have) is screaming a symphony of pain. I feel like I'm going to have a flareup caused by a tiny fucking shard of glass. (we assume one of us tracked it upstairs on our shoes)

Don't worry too much, I had a tetanus shot sometime in late September. I knew you were asking yourself about that. Really, I did.

If I ever get this shard of glass out of my goddamn foot, maybe I'll be able to get back to walking. Walking for exercise, that is.

Hey, look at this-

That's me with all three of my kids and Shawn.