Not a Wasted Word

So I broke my brain with a neti pot. I’m not sure what exactly I did wrong but now, when I lower my head at all, I feel a searing pain across the back of my skull. It sucks so bad! I was using the neti pot in an attempt to ease my allergy symptoms, which have been driving me bonkers this year. I was using it daily, and I think initially I used it twice in the first day, and while I had a little bit of ear discomfort, it resolved quickly. Whatever I did the last time it is not resolving quickly. Tonight it will be 48 hours and the pain is not abating. The only positive is that I only feel it when I lower my head – but even when I crouch down (with my head upright) it hurts! It’s driving me crazy and I’m so frustrated that a supposedly non-invasive way of managing allergies backfired so badly.

{I do have wonky Eustachian tubes – I have to gently clear my ears a few times every day, and airplanes (and scubba diving when I used to do it) can cause serious problems. So I’m not surprised that I’m one of the “few people” the can experience adverse effects when I use a nasal saline rinse. I just hope it resolves and that I can find a way to use it that doesn’t cause this, because it really was helping to manage my symptoms.

Oh, and I forgot to update – my husband remains VERY positive, and my kid and I still remain negative.

I got 10 more tests at Costco today ($10 off a box!) so we’ll have enough to test before we fly and before we get to the farm (the morning after we fly). I think if I don’t have symptoms by tomorrow evening I will let myself really believe we’re going to go. And of course every day after that I’ll feel more confident. My husband was exposed on Tuesday and felt awful by Thursday night. If we were following that same trajectory, we’d have symptoms by now (I slept next to my husband Thursday night and we started isolating him Friday morning). I’ve been taking Umcka and Airborne every day, just in case. At this point I think we probably avoided it, but we’re still in “the wait.”

The kids and I are not flying with my husband, so if he does need to cancel his flights, it won’t affect ours in any way. I really hope he gets to join us, but he would be the least disappointed to miss this trip (we’re visiting my family), so I’m just not as worried about him right now (I also feel fairly certain that he’ll be testing negative by then, but if he’s not, he’ll be okay bowing out).

Meanwhile I remain totally unmotivated to do anything around my house. I’m just doing enough to keep the chaos at bay. But my friend needs help putting up a shed and I told her I’d help her with that. She’s really good at organizing, so if I can help her lay pavers and build this little shed, she can help me with my house in August, when I hopefully have more time and energy. I actually really would like to do some work downstairs, where all my clothes are, but of course I can’t this week. I can’t even pack myself! That is driving me crazy. I may ask my husband to open all the windows and then go into the backyard for a couple hours so that after an hour, I can go down with a mask on and put everything I want to pack into a bag. If the weather weren’t so foggy, cold and windy, I wouldn’t feel so bad asking him to do that.

{For real though, when is summer going to start in the Bay Area!? It’s been so unseasonably cool this year!}

One thing I’m trying to figure out for my trip is how I’m going to work out. I know some people love to take time away from their workout routine while they travel, but I am not one of them (I know you see me SHU!). I really love having a little time to myself, and raising my heartbeat delivers much needed endorphins. I’ve also had some of my best traveling experiences on a run, because I saw something really unforgettable on a route I wouldn’t have ventured if I weren’t trying to cover a certain number of miles (a before dawn run up the Seine to the lit-up Eiffle tower in January – after the first snow in seven years! – is something I ill never forget). That probably won’t be the case in St. Louis, where the temps and humidity are so high, but once a herd of cows ran with me for a good quarter mile (behind a fence in their own space thank god) and once I got back early enough to skinny dip in the quarry, which felt AMAZING! So who knows, maybe this year I’ll have a memorable run in St. Louis too. But mostly I want to do inside working out – little 30 minutes strength training videos – and I’m not sure how to manage that now that I cancelled my beachbody digital membership (they were doubling the price so I shut it down). I got the DVDs (for $20!) of the classes I used most of beachbody, but my old shady way of ripping DVDs is not working on my new computer. So now I’m not sure what to do. I may try a free month of the pelaton app and find a couple things on there. If anyone has any recommendations please let me know. I need classes that don’t require weights, but I could bring my resistance band.

Speaking of working out, my time on the elliptical is almost up, so I’m going to shut this down. I hope you’re all enjoying your start to summer!

Lest you think, from my last post, that I’m capable of taking all this one como si nada, please know that I can’t. 48 hours in and my house is a disaster and my brain is a dumpster fire. I’m kind of losing my mind.

I don’t know how I’m going to make it to mid-week. I think by Wednesday I’ll feel confident we either have it or we don’t. In the meantime… the wait.

The kids and I made it to the de Young to see the Ansel Adams exhibit. It was good. But they were distracted and not that into it and I didn’t have the energy to keep us in there very long.

My son and I walked across the promenade to check out the new dinosaur exhibit at the Academy of Sciences (I have a teacher membership and can only bring in one of them at a time). It was small and interesting, but more about how their bodies worked when they were so big (like the amount of food they would have to eat, and how far their heads were from their hearts) and less about different kinds of dinosaurs. He had been wanting to see it, so I’m glad we went really quick.

We got hot pretzels in the promenade before the de Young and paletas after the Academy while we waited for the bus.

At home we hung out in the back yard for a while. I finished my book (a Spanish language thriller) and tried to get the kitchen picked up enough that it didn’t make me panic every time I walked into it. We ordered a bunch of pizzas to get us through the week, and watched Howl’s Moving Castle. I got the kids to bed way too late.

I’m not the parent in this family who likes to stay home all day with the kids. The prospect of doing that today is kind of terrifying to me. I have a list of things we need to get done – clean out the car, make lunches, do laundry, cut both kids’ hair, work out (me) – and things I’d like to get done – pack the kids (which I can do a week before we (maybe) leave because it still hasn’t hit 70 here and it will be hot and humid where we’re going), finish The Emotional Lives of Teenagers (it’s due back to the library soon) – and I will write down when I plan to do these things so the day feels like it has some structure.

After a rough first day with Covid, my husband was feeling much better by last night, so I’m assuming he will feel even better today. That doesn’t mean much for me as were keeping him isolated downstairs, but at least I can just give him food to prepare for himself in the downstairs kitchen, instead of making stuff for him.

Right now I have to kittens in my lap so the day will have to wait.