thank you antibiotics?

I've had a note scrawled on a post it note on my desk for months and I had no idea why I'd written 'WJF' but I didn't toss it because, well, I wouldn't. I just realized it actually says INFJ and that makes a whole lot more sense. More sense than the sign for a 'Hawaiian Laua' pizza at the deli downtown. Or my boss always never using the right 'your.' Always never.

Well, in other news, there's a trailer park outside my window, and I'm on a roll of almost a week of feeling good, like actually GOOD. I feel like myself and have felt like myself for enough days in a row that I'm getting a little bit of confidence back. I'm beginning to blunder forward fearlessly again, yes I am. I have no idea if this good physical state is a permanent thing, but it is a gift, no doubt, and it is seemingly setting me up very well for these next ten days of traveling mayhem. Knock on wood, I suppose.

I'm going to go to Indiana and North Carolina and Maryland, brb.

assets

Things I have:

A jar of pickles under my desk to celebrate my favorite coworker's birthday

A lovely soon to be new sister, because my brother found a really really good one to agree to be his wife

This song stuck in my head

A good leftover loop going for lunches

A husband who, just because, brings home a baguette and fancy cheese and rich red wine

Shampoo that smells like lavender

A Netflix subscription

Hand-me-down wrapping paper

Freckles on my shoulders and nose

Three thriving house plants

A deep and abiding love for Ben & Jerry's Coffee Toffee ice cream

A glorious mom-made quilt on a soft and wide queen sized bed

An air popcorn popper passed down from my grandma, that I love

A plastic skeleton chillin in my living room

A baggy of blueberries in my top desk drawer

doing something

I have had a summer (and a spring, and a winter) of feeling tied to the couch. But, it appears, if all goes well, I will be ending the summer on a three week spree of doing something. I was THIS close to rsvping no to the bridal shower of my very first best friend up in NY this weekend, but then my mom offered to come along, and so I am going, and I'll be there. I waffled for a few months about a family wedding in Indiana on Labor Day weekend, but in the end, that was another say yes, I'll be there. And after that, four or five days in the Outer Banks with S's family, at a posh yellow beach house that has its own swimming pool, never mind the ocean just over the sand dune. After THAT, my superhuman husband is running the Tough Mudder with his brother and a friend up in Maryland, and I'm going along to be photographer, cheerleader, and pieces picker upper, providing there are any after they've finished. By the time all this is over the fall semester will be more than swinging, and my hours will go back up to full time, and it'll be getting cooler, and dear LORD I better be getting better. I'm on one last round of antibiotics before we have to go nuclear again, and please lets all cross our fingers on my behalf. 

powerwashing

It has rained so much and so hard in the past month or so that the silver 'Civic' on the back of my car has been power washed off. That's not even an exaggeration. I'm not a farmer in the midwest and I'm not yet a foot-commuter again, and I don't live in a basement. So the weather is just a thing. The rain and thunder, even on a Sunday morning, is just a background. I am indifferent, and I'm still calm.

This second thing is unrelated, but last evening I drew blood by dropping a butter knife on my foot. That's not even the first time I'd bled myself with a butter knife. But it was the first time it was on my foot. There's no significance there. 

pricklily

I am listening to choral music on youtube and squinting because I've not been able to shake off a wave of tired, tired, tiredness. I welcome this tiredness, though, because it's the tiredness of an inner silence, whereas for months it'd been the tiredness of mental exhaustion from a constantly roiling mind as well as a beat up body. Today I do feel pricklily sick, but I'm also blessedly, blessedly empty.
I've been through another round of another doctor. This one is obese and forward and last week was not encouraging, but today he was. There has been another thing on my list of potentially wayward body parts that has been checked off as 'just fine.' Better than fine, actually. He said, I couldn't have gotten better results if I'd cheated. I'm not sure how you cheat dizziness. But the important thing is that there IS a next thing on the list that I can fight and check.
A year and more will go by, I think. I got sick in the fall and then I had a mental breakdown, and I'm still sick, but at least my head is more on my shoulders (today). What a narrative this will be when it ever gets to the end.
I was reminded (it is entirely appropriate, seeing as who reminded me), that this last Monday was the equivalent of the Monday two years ago when S stopped me on my way toward the door on my way home and said, 'I have something for you.' 'For me?' '...If you want it...' and I incautiously agreed, and when I looked up he was holding out a diamond ring. He's the same man who always thanks me these days for being home at night when he gets off a 15 hour shift. It's pretty remarkable.

I just started crocheting a new afghan and I have someones in mind to give it to on their wedding day. 

dealing with it

I have finally come to terms with the fact that I don't like raw onions. I fought it for a while, but screw it. It's cooked onions or bust. My next goal is to come to terms with the fact that I still don't not feel weird. Still. There's dealing with it and then there's dealing with it and I can do the first only.

noticing

Here is a news bulletin about my lower half: I have bug bites down the backs of my legs. Probably from sitting in the grass, watching corn hole. And I'm also wearing pants that are... wearing... thin at the crotch, and I'm having a hard time stopping wearing them. I haven't bought new clothes in the better part of a year.

Last night at the band concert that I wasn't playing (but my oboe was, actually, in someone else's hands) they played such a good set of songs, and one of them was the piece that I walked down the aisle to on October 1st. It was because of that band arrangement that we used it, actually. The conductor was our organist and handed it to us on a platter. It startled me when I was the only one who noticed.

Ugh. There are a lot of things I am doing that make me feel dumb, and make me feel overwhelmed, and I think I keep accidentally offending a coworker, and I have more tasks than time and.

BUT, I am feeling (kind of, in small doses) that I am capable of a comeback.

I'm wearing the same shirt I wore three years ago

I have been loving this man of mine for three years as of today. Three years ago we were just kind of friends and we rode to Staunton together sometimes, but then on a Thursday in August he asked if I wanted to go out to dinner with him and I did, of course I did, so we spent the evening together. Had dinner, went for a walk in the woods, sat on a hill and talked and talked and by the end of the night I asked him if he wanted a girlfriend and he said yes, so I became one. He is no longer the same man I walked and talked with that night, and right at the beginning he told me he was afraid he'd become less of himself if he was in a relationship, but the opposite happened. He is so much bigger, stronger, wiser, and more genuine today than he was that August. He's my superman, and he is never stopping getting better, at everything. At loving me, at loving himself, at relaxing, at working hard, at being just the best damn man in the world.

at once

I dreamed I was in jail last night, and I spent a lot of last evening thinking about comparative nipple sizes. I'm watering plants and overeating and undersleeping and developing blisters. I've made another appointment, I've finally fallen for Trailer Park Boys, I'm whipping through a to-do list today. I am proud to my guts of S, with his straight As and running and weight lifting and wearing clothes without holes. I am behind at work and getting behinder because I am moving... like... this.... Why does my left armpit smell and my right not? I haven't worn deodorant in a year, and sometimes I think I should again. Maybe just on the one side. I think I did better when I used to sweat righteously, not the prickly waiting on hold with the pharmacy sweat. Tis the season of cherries and plums and living in flip flops.