So busy-busy.

I got married almost two weeks ago.  I panicked in the last couple weeks about whether I was going to get that dress as decorated as I wanted it and I recruited some belly dance friends to help me bead and sequin it. So I had two ladies give up several evening for me. We were all, at this time, also getting ready for our big summer dance performances to start 11 days after the wedding, and one of them is getting married at the end of this summer as well. She had to fly out to the east coast to do a bunch of things with her fiancé’s family, but she came over the night before they flew out saying she could stay up as late as I needed her and she’d just sleep on the plane the next day. And she got back into town the Tuesday before the wedding, so she came over and spent all Wednesday beading and putting together wedding favours for me.

I had decided a long time ago that I was going to dance at Diefenbaker Park for Canada day like I have for the last two years, wedding day be damned. But, of course, the morning of, I was like, “why did I think I could do this? I could be at home sewing. Or relaxing.”

I always do this ‘oh babies are no big deal, I will write a book during my maternity leave,’ ‘oh weddings are no big deal, I will do a dance performance on the afternoon of my wedding day.’ I think, honestly, that I have a very low stress threshold and that this has shaped my behaviour by causing me to choose activities based not on what I think I can handle, but based on how I would feel about it afterward. I mean, if I asked, “do I think I can handle a dance performance on my wedding day?” The answer would be no. But if I asked, “do I think I can handle performing dance?” The answer would be no. If I asked, “do I think I could handle a wedding day?” The answer would be no. And yet I manage to get through these things. And while the intensity of doing is sometimes intolerable, the enjoyment comes in the stories I have amassed. Therefore, I will commit to just about anything if I think it will make a good story and I tend to discount stress as a reason to not do something.

Anyhow, the day really went well. The kids were amazingly behaved the whole time.

I think one of my favourite parts of the day was Ethan. When I was panicking at the house trying to make sure we’d got together everything we needed to bring to the boat, I said, “what else do we need?” And Ethan said, “our fancy clothes.” Which amazed me, because he’d been so resistant to my buying him slacks and a white shirt which he didn’t want to wear. But he brought it up and he gamely went and got ready when I told him to. He and Rachel spent much of the day telling me how pretty I looked.

After photos and supper we went to hang out at the Mendel Art Gallery. I got out of the car and looked at the lawn and said, “I can’t walk across that without my heels sinking into the ground, so I’m going to take the paved, long way around.” Ethan said, “I’ll walk with you.” And we started out.

“You might regret that,” I joked as my hemline got snagged on my shoe’s rhinestones and I stopped to disentangle myself for the 815th time. “I’m moving pretty slowly.”

“That’s okay,” he smiled at me, “It just means I get to spend more time with you.”

After the Mendel, Ian and I went down to run decorations onto the boat. The river was so high that the dock was pitched at a steep angle from where it was moored to the concrete launch up to the boat at water-level. Coming back down from the boat, Ethan was beside me and I said, “hey lend me a hand so I don’t put my heel into these gaps between the boards,” so he held out a hand and walked me carefully down the dock. When we got close to the railing, he said, “you better take this railing, it’s steadier than my hand,” and then he ran ahead to open the gate for me.

Too sweet.

The next morning, when Ian got Hannah up, she said, “are we going to go to the boat and get married again?”

My appetite is still gone. But I really don’t seem to be suffering for it.

However, related or unrelated, Thursday night I had the strongest spell of feeling quite divorced from reality. I was trying to get Hannah out of the house to go to my dance rehearsal and she gave me some two-year-old dodge regarding putting on her shoes (”No, I hafta put this thing in this other thing,” or some such) and I couldn’t handle it. I just lay down on the bench by the door and closed my eyes until she came and patted my face to wake me up telling me to get on with putting her shoes on her. When we finally left the house, something about the way the wind hit me felt off. I felt drunk or drugged. My limbs felt far away, my head felt wrapped in cotton.

I stood there for a moment wondering if I should really drive to the hall, but although I felt like I shouldn’t be able to control my limbs, I was walking in a straight line and my motor responses didn’t seem delayed so I chanced it.

On twelfth, I tried to walk Hannah to Booster Juice so I could get a smoothie for supper, but I couldn’t make it the whole way and I was so out of it that the thought of trying to behave normally while ordering and paying for a booster juice was too scary to handle. So we sat down on a bench. Hannah climbed into my lap and put her arms around me and her face down on my chest and rocked me back and forth until Ian arrived to meet us and claim Hannah for the evening.

That night it was so intense, I was really upset about it. I was trying to explain it to Ian, I felt drugged or poisoned. I felt like I’d been wrapped in cotton and hung upside down for a week, and now, flipped right-side-up everything looked right but felt wrong.

I got my smoothie and went to dance. Had to phone it in for the first few runs, but after a couple of hours I felt much better.

The next day, the same thing happened to me in the evening when I left the house to go pick up our supper order. Not remotely as intense - just a sensation on leaving the house that the wind was roaring past me in a vacuum and that my limbs might, at any point, stop obeying me.

Saturday when we walked down to Broadway to get a marriage license, same thing, but I was starting to get used to it, and to know that I would still be able to function through it, so when they were mild, I quit even mentioning it to Ian. Saturday night, while sewing, I noticed that my fingers were clumsier than usual. I was trying to sew and I kept knocking things over or dropping things. When my thread got tied in knots, it took all my concentration to make my fingers obey enough to untie them. Once, with my hand under the fabric, I dropped the needle. And as I fumbled for it, found it and was lifting the fabric so I could see it again, my hand involuntarily closed hard on it and I stabbed it into the webbing at the base of my finger. At the end of the night, I accidentally jabbed the needle into my finger and didn’t really feel it. I sat there experimentally pushing a pin against my finger pads and the heel of my hand and, indeed, did not remotely feel any sharpness in my fingers. I quit sewing and went to bed.

Sunday, the kids went over to hang out with my mother and aunt while Ian cleaned and I sewed. I was feeling more of the same, but not really concerned about it. Each time it came on, it felt like it should be debilitating, but then I would try to do whatever I needed to do to function, keep sewing or keep walking or keep driving or keep conversing, and I seemed to be functioning. I was choosing the right words, walking straight lines, sewing properly. And no one seemed to be stopping conversations to ask if there was something wrong with me. I googled some, and I read about temporal seizures and I didn’t think it was probably that, but I gave Ian the list of symptoms to watch for that I would probably not notice if I were having absence seizures and then I went back to sewing.

But after picking up the kids, and coming home, the numbness and feeling of distance was so acute. The lack-of-sharpness on pressing a pin into my skin had spread to my whole hand and much of my arm. My feet were numb. My tongue and mouth felt numb. I thought to add lack of appetite to my internet searches and found aneurysms. So I called the Saskatchewan health hotline and talked to a nurse who asked me a ton of questions and then told me she was very concerned and I should call an ambulance. And I was like, “I’m glad you’re taking this seriously, but reeeeeeeaally? It’s been 4 days, surely it could wait the extra half hour for us to get someone to stay with the kids while Ian drove me?” And she said, “if you really want to do it that way, but if you’re having one of these attacks right now, I think you should get to a hospital and get looked at immediately.”

Then she asked to talk to Ian and told him to make sure I go to a hospital.

Well, the rest is as anticlimactic as all my trips to the ER have (thankfully) ever been. Ian got his mom to come stay with the kids. We went to the hospital and sat in the waiting room for hours. Suppertime rolled around and Ian called his mom to tell her to order pizza. Then I got put in a bed and examined thoroughly. I waited more. They took blood. I waited more. Bedtime rolled around and I was 99% sure it wasn’t anything serious and I’d be sent home as soon as they looked at my bloodwork, so I sent Ian home to relieve his mother saying I’d just take a cab home. And then the resident came back to say “the good news is that we didn’t find anything. But that’s also the bad news ’cause we don’t know what’s causing it.” Amazing. I think that’s the nicest anyone’s ever been about telling me they didn’t find anything.

Based on the questions they asked and the tests they did, I think an aneurysm or a stroke were the big things they were trying to rule out. But right off the bat my blood pressure was fine, heart rate was pretty normal. And when the resident was examining me, as I had already observed, aside from the numbness, everything seemed to be behaving, neurologically speaking, as it should.

So when the resident was all concerned that they couldn’t give me an answer I was like, shit, everyone had me pretty scared about what this could be. Having been assured that it’s not an aneurysm, I’m happy to go back to my regular discussing it fruitlessly with my GP and being treated dismissively by the medical profession.

I did mention the loss of appetite and weight loss as well. So when the resident was going over my blood work with me, I was interested to note that pretty much everything was perfect. Clearly I’m not perfectly conversant with what would be out of whack if my body was starving - but I’m pretty convinced that the lack of appetite is just another symptom and not the cause, and I think my stellar bloodwork has to back that up.

We also discussed whether these states could be the result of mold exposure. He started by saying, “well anything’s possible,” which made me want to ask if he thought it could possibly be from unicorn exposure, cause I am deathly allergic to unicorn dander.

But we went over some of the symptoms he would expect to see if someone were exposed to and allergic to molds and I talked about some of my symptoms from this spring and he seemed to think it definitely merited investigating with my doctor.

And then I went home.

And I was so exhausted after all that that, even though I am not having an aneurysm, I called in sick today. I am still feeling, physically, very numb. So I suppose I should call my doctor and make an appointment for her to shrug at me.

So, molds, right? Starting to get pretty convinced I must have mold somewhere in my life. Maybe at work as well as in my home. Probably different strains - both places smell musty, but work is where my lungs hurt and I get a bad taste in my mouth and I cough all day. Home is where I cannot, cannot, cannot keep my eyes open, no matter if it’s an evening or a weekend, no matter how much sleep I’ve had.

I will probably just hire someone to come inspect the house. Maybe after the wedding.

Not sure quite how to push the mold-detection agenda at work, but I was asking around if anyone else had health problems that seemed to arise at the end of winter and explaining why I’m wondering. One of my coworkers said, “oh? What are your symptoms?”

So I started listing them. Fatigue, swollen glands, chest pain, persistent cough. headaches, weight loss–

Of course I didn’t get any further because she interrupted at “weight-loss”, “Oh, I could use some of that!”

Hahaha.

Slightly reminded me of stories I hear about people telling Cancer patients how great they look after “shedding a few pounds”.

The rant pretty much writes itself. Boo to a culture that privileges looks over health. Boo to the easy extension of “no pain no gain” into an attitude that a bit of starvation or ill health is simply the price for the … er, health benefits (?) of losing weight. Boo to a culture that primes women to presume bonding over fat-hatred trumps sane, sympathetic responses to reasonable complaints.

But on the other hand, I was thinking today about how since about when I started getting sick my period has been SO light. So light that I feel like it’s disappearing. This time around I think it’s lasted maybe 30 hours. And the time between is stretching longer and longer. I wondered if it could also be a symptom of mold. I remember reading one woman’s account of having early menopause because of household mold health issues. And then I confess I thought about how bad it used to be and then thought to myself, “well maybe a little bit of whatever this is is worth it.”

But then, you know, stabbing pains in my glands, breathlessness and coughing fits. I should know better.

I have lost six pounds in the last couple days. I know, I know it’s because I’m not eating. There is nothing remotely mysterious about the weight loss this time - it’s just lack of food, pretty sure. But I am trying so hard to eat, I really am. I have made so many meals in the last few days and then I just sit and push it around with my fork. Eat a mouthful or three and then throw it away. Gross. Everything is gross. There’s half a banana sitting in front of me that I can’t finish. Gross.

So. Tonight, I’m going to order in some Bean and Corn Enchiladas from Las Palapas and surely that will tempt me into eating. And a big order of chips and guacamole. There’s no way I’d pass that up.

It’s June 15th Dudez! That means it’s re-birthday - the Holiday I am fully adopting in lieu of ever celebrating my birthday again.

I was not very well organized this year, so I never got around to telling you all how Rebirthday is celebrated, so you will be forgiven if you didn’t celebrate it exactly right this year. However, perhaps it is not too late to let you know that Rebirthday traditionally calls for ducking out of work early or cutting class in order to go sit in a park with your best friends.

Also, traditional foods of Rebirthday are french-fries or other fried potato (potato-haters, you may substitute another tuber of your choosing) and cheesecakes or mousse cakes.

I’ll explain it more fully another time. Meanwhile, have a good one.

Tonight at dance practice we spent the whole night working on a Zar dance. It’s a tribal dance involving a lot of spinning and swaying the head wildly from side to side and its ancient use was to induce a trance in which to appease your spirits (or Djinn).

Well, after two or more hours of running this dance, even given that about half of the runs were greatly toned down, just going through the motions to clean up the choreography and make sure we remembered things, we were all quite dizzy.

As I left the hall and stood outside fumbling for my keys, I pondered whether I should just lie down in the grass and let the world finish its spinning before driving home. And I imagined trying to explain my state if I got pulled over.

“Ma’am, can you tell me why you’re driving so erratically?”

“Well…. you seee… I was doing this ancient tribal dance that’s meant to put you in a trance to appease your Djinn. Oops! I mean Djinn, for real. Not Gin.”

And as Ian didn’t even know what Djinn are, I figure I probably couldn’t count on most Saskatoon cops being hip to either middle-eastern cultures or Imperialistic appropriations of middle eastern cultures — er, I mean Kipling.

Gah, I’m not drunk, I’m just in a Djinn-appeasing trance. Cuh-LEEER-ly.

I am investigating a new lead in the Chronic Illness Drama.

You probably remember my not-long-ago day at home with Hannah where I suddenly couldn’t keep my eyes open and fell asleep on the floor?

And then I was okay the next day. And then on Monday I was wasted again at the end of the day. I realized later that week that it had been raining on the Saturday and on the Monday. And I thought, “well, maybe it’s the rain. Seems like a bizarrely extreme response to rain and I am taking vitamin D supplements and I have lived in Saskatchewan where you get little sun for six months out of the year, but who knows how light and weather affects your body.”

Then I went to Edmonton and I felt so normal for four days. Of course it was primarily sunny for those four days.

I got home around midnight Sunday night and Monday was unexceptional and then I went back to work on Tuesday.

I remember when Ian came home that night I was asleep on the couch and couldn’t manage to get off it for very long that evening. I remember because I said to him, “well, I guess I’m allergic to work.”

We were discussing my miracle recovery while in Edmonton and Ian said maybe we should get our water checked. But then today I was thinking about the rain again and remembering how last time it rained, when I came into the house I thought, “Huh, my house has a slightly musty smell when it rains.” It’s funny because although I am generally the first to note and recoil at anything musty-smelling, I remember noting that it was not entirely unpleasant. There is a similar musty smell in the women’s bathroom at work when it rains and that one is rank.

But then I wondered if there’s molds I’m reacting to either at home or at work.

So I went and googled for historical rain-fall in Saskatoon and realized that the last time we’d had a big rain was Tuesday - the last day I fell asleep on the couch.

Then I thought about how my fatigue and swollen glands all started a couple of months ago and googled historical temperatures in Saskatoon and determined that our temperatures started to go above freezing (roof would be covered in melting snow) in late March. And looked at my twitter stream to determine that I first got sick at the end of march/beginning of april.

There aren’t any great, definitive resources on mold reactions online, not like there are for most of the diseases I’ve been worried I have. But there are definitely symptom lists that include swollen glands, pressure on the larynx, extreme fatigue, night sweats, unproductive cough, irritated eyes, muscular and joint pain, weight-loss, mind-fog, chest pain, etc. And then they cheerily go on to note things like brain-damage, cancer, liver problems, and suchlike. I also noted a couple places saying that exposure to black mold can degrade your myelin sheathing and can cause MS-like symptoms or even full-blown MS.

I will maybe inquire of my coworkers whether they have been suffering from any mysterious illnesses that may have started within the last two or three months, because I know one other who has.

Though also, this spring, Rachel had an asthma attack for the first time ever and now I can’t seem to recall when it actually happened. And my cat in the last year has gone from being just an “old lady cat” to being a decrepit old thing who moves as if everything hurts and can’t even walk without lurching these days.

On the other hand, Ethan’s disposition has improved, Ian’s fine and Rachel hasn’t had another attack, so who knows?

But it looks like home testing kits aren’t that expensive, so maybe I’ll just go ahead and get two.

Yech. Crying is totally one of those “don’t break the seal” things. Once you’ve let yourself a little bit, it’s almost impossible to get it all bottled back up and finish your work day. Again, I say, Yech.

Not really much to say about it. Just had an argument today and some of the things that got said to me sparked a whole lot of trauma. We were all out at lunch, so I got really rigid for the drive back to work and then went straight to the bathroom where I found I had choked so hard that there was no way I was going to get air in or out of my lungs without making a bunch of crying-gulp-y sounds. And then once that started, I couldn’t stop. Hate-hate-hate crying at work. I used to have a job that made me cry at work all the time and I figured, when I left there, that I was done with that. But, I suppose the issue is that you can pick your jobs to be as healthy for you as possible. But you still can’t pick all the things that someone might say to you. And, worse, sometimes you can’t predict what’s going to be triggering to you.

And I do have some take-away abstractions that I would like to discuss and explore - but it’s one of those things that, done in close proximity to the event, turns into, really, blog posts where you are just trying to better explain your position and figuratively win the argument. I’m going to give the whole thing a little mental space. We’ll come back to it some day.

Well anyhow, back to this not breaking the seal. I did my best to take a lot of deep breaths and then splashed water on my face, cleared some of my eye-redness with some eye-drops and left the bathroom. But I still looked wan and startled and, holy shit, every time I opened my mouth to say aaaaaanything, nothing would come out and I knew that as soon as I engaged my larynx it would start with the sobby sounds again. And then I would look even more startled and freeze up worse. It was a long afternoon - though I managed to not be constantly leaking tears by about 30 minutes before the end of my day.

Picking up my kids made things quite a bit better. Ethan came walking up to the car and he caught my eye and smiled at me the whole time he was walking up. Then he got in and I asked how his day was, and he’d had a great day. The whole time he was talking I sat and watched him raptly because I think he must have gone and grown up overnight, the way kids sometimes do. He has always had a ridiculous glow about him. And then he finished talking and he said, “is something wrong?” And I choked up even while trying to answer him, of course. But I said, “yeah, I was going to warn you guys that I’ve had a bad day. But I figure we’ll just get Hannah and go straight home. Maybe Hannah will watch a movie, then I’ll go lie down or have a good cry or whatever I need and then we’ll all feel better.” And he just smiled at me and said, “yep, okay.”

When Rachel came up, it looked like she’d been crying and she yanked open Ethan’s door and barked, “You sat on that side yesterday.” And Ethan? Oh man, you know how his sister pushes his buttons, right? Well he just looked at her and said, “Hey Rachel, I got you something,” and handed her a bag of chips.

She was so astonished she forgot about fighting for that seat and even forgot about crying more and got in the other side of the car thanking him profusely. She said, “these are my favorite kind of chips.” And Ethan said, “I know, that’s why I got them for you.”

So I was starting to feel all glowing as we picked up Hannah and drove home.

Then at home, Rachel took Hannah upstairs to play while I hung out by myself recuperating. And when they came down, Hannah climbed into my lap and said, “can you put some music on?” So I hit play on my dance playlist.

Well, Rachel jumped up and started dancing. And Hannah ran over to her yelling, “shimmy! You shimmy.” And then they were both shimmying. Ethan and Rachel’s dad arrived for them in the middle of the dancing, and so I took over dancing with Hannah and we kept going for another two songs.

I never did have that big cry. But I think dance is maybe just as expressive.

Guess what i found? I found my book outline!!!! Yeeeeeah! I’ve been searching for that sucker since my separation seven years ago.

Okay, I mean, we’re talking about an eight year old book outline written by a miserable & melodramatic 24 year old for a book with a completely different plot from the one I want to write now. BUUUUUUT, I’m excited to read it because I remember having some pretty clever things that tied a bunch of plots together. And I had been working up details for about six intersecting plotlines - something which I am finding mentally impossible right now.

So, yeah. Excited to see what I’ve got here. Excited to see if any of it is worth reviving. Will keep y’all posted.

Also, I found some pads of paper that I used to pre-write blog posts back in 2004ish. That was when I was newly separated and so broke that I had my internet disconnected for a year while I got back on my feet. So I had to write it on paper and then type it up in my spare time on my lunch hour at work in order to keep blogging. Back when I was so broke that my fridge held a list of things I was saving for. Ridiculous luxury items like, “fix my oven so I can actually bake things again,” “fix my kitchen light so it will stop doing that freaky sparking thing that fries light-switches so they are fused open and can never shut the light off again,” and “fix my timing belt before it breaks and wrecks all my valves and costs me twice as much.”

Well. I did do all those things eventually.

But shit. That all seems so ridiculously far away now.

I found a page in there where I was trying to work out my budget and I showed Ian how bleak it was. My take-home pay was ~$1500/month. And I got a child tax credit of about $200. My mortgage payment was $800. My daycare costs were $800. Then I had about $400 worth of bills.

Never mind affording gas, clothes and emergencies (which I seemed to have every month).

Ridiculous.

This last weekend I was attending a writing workshop on Juvenile/YA Fantasy.

At the end of Saturday we had a really great group discussion about writing ethics and cultural appropriation (and other privileged appropriation of non-privileged voices and issues).

Fully intend to discuss further my (lack of conclusive) conclusions. In the meantime, apropos of this issue, here is a haiku (plz note irony) about it.

Appropriation
of other cultures: a big
part of my culture.

Fell in the shower
Giant red welt on my thigh
isn’t purple yet.