Stress

A little down

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I think I am depressed. 

One of the signs of depression is losing interest in hobbies. What if you just can’t do the things you enjoy anymore?? 

If I spend too much time at work, type a lot (write), shuffle cards, or work jigsaw puzzles my carpal tunnel acts up. My hands ache. I need to wear a brace. If I exercise with weights, sometimes I can’t grasp them. Several times a week my hands just let go of items and I drop them. I’ve dropped my phone several times. Lately, I’ve dropped containers of foundation or eye shadow shattering them into powder so I have to throw them out. I have problems opening lids on jars. 

Sometimes my acid reflux gives me a hoarse voice and sore throat which makes it very difficult for me to sing, another hobby of mine.

I have enjoyed running and competing in races, but now my knee hurts so much that I might have to cut back or stop altogether. 

It seems like everything that I really enjoy doing to deal with my stress is being taken away from me. 

I feel depressed that my daughter will be graduating from high school in a few days. She is a lot like me. We have so much in common and have become close friends. Now she will be moving several hours away and starting a new life without me. I am happy for her, just sad for me.

My relationship with my other two kids sucks. My son is currently failing all of his core classes. He is angry at us or depressed when we give him consequences. The hard part is that he has a brilliant mind, but is too lazy and unorganized to put any effort into his studies. I have no control over this. My youngest daughter and I have nothing in common at all. She takes pride in annoying me and arguing with everything that I say.

Work is stressful. Running our own business, having employees, and demanding customers takes a lot of energy.

My mother-in-law has terminal lung cancer and at best has a few months to live. 

I am starting to see my own parents age in new ways that worry me.

Every organization that we belong to thinks that they are the only organization that we belong to. Everybody wants our time, our money, a life blood commitment. 

My husband and I have both been irritable and stressed these last couple of months. I honestly don’t know how much more of this we can take. Instead of people helping us through these difficult times, they drain us of whatever we have left.

So, yeah, I guess I am feeling a little down. 

  

Knee deep

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I bet you have been sitting at the edge of your seat waiting to hear how my knee is holding up. Today is the first day this week that I went out for a run. The marathon is two and a half weeks away. I braced myself for the run. Literally. I was able to run 6 miles today without stopping. However, my endurance wasn’t the greatest and it wasn’t completely pain free either. I think the tight brace changes how I run. I feel like I am running on a wooden peg. But the run did go better than the run last week. Yeah, baby steps, I know.

Friday night Paul and I spent the evening at the store getting my prescription drugs and looking at braces. Admitting this, I feel old. I am getting old. I am 41. There now you don’t have to go to previous posts to try to find my age to see if I am really old or not. Well, you could go back and read previous posts if you want to. Lol.

The reason why I was seen out drug storing Friday night was that I had some time to kill while Alex was taking his behind the wheel driver’s ed class. Why did I sign him up to drive on a Friday night?? Well, I called to make his monthly appointment at the end of the month. Why? Because I felt embarrassed to call and set up the appointment any earlier. The previous month my son was late for his driving time. They had to call me and ask me where he was. It kills me be late, although he could care less.

It has been a week and a half of doubling my acid reflux meds. The first few days were pretty bad. I think being stressed out about it made it act up more. But I am finally starting to feel a lot better. Maybe I’ll be able to run my races pain free this summer, well as far as my stomach is concerned anyway.

Today I decided to run wearing my old shoes. I was wearing in new shoes when I ran 18 miles and my knee started hurting. Just to be on the safe side, I decided that maybe my new running shoes were to blame for all the difficulties I have been running into.

I also decided to wear the new wireless ear buds that my daughter bought me for Christmas. They hook up to bluetooth on my phone so I don’t have to trip over wires. The only problem is that I have tiny years. Most babies are born with bigger ears than I have. I have met one other person that has smaller ears than me. It has been a source of vanity for me for many years, until now that is. The ear buds were too big to fit into my ears. Back to being wired I guess. 

At this point, I feel like I’m damned if I do and I’m damned if I don’t as far as the marathon goes. I don’t know if I will be able to handle it physically if I run the marathon. I don’t know if I will be able to handle it emotionally if I don’t. I don’t think I will be able to run the race without knee pain. But the knee pain isn’t bad enough for me to drop out especially after months of training. Right now I am praying that if it is not meant to be then it won’t happen.

The only things stopping me now would be the stomach flu or a high fever. A death in the family. Possible, but not wished for. Or the race could be cancelled for severe storms. One year they did cancel the race because the heat index was incredibly high and people were dropping like flies. However, we have had a really cool spring so a freak snowstorm would be more likely.

All I know for sure right now is that I am in this knee deep.

This roller coaster ride

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Sometimes raising teenagers is like riding a roller coaster. There are a lot of low points followed by high points. Sometimes you are excited to be on the ride and at other times you feel like you are going to throw up. Just when you have had enough, the ride is over.

That is what life is like here every day. The last 24 hours has been one hell of a roller coaster ride. It started yesterday when Angel received a text from her ex. Or at least someone that she thought was her ex. Her ex saw her perform in the musical she was in over the weekend. He complimented her on her part, made small talk, and left. Then the next day she started getting texts. They were innocent at first with questions like where she was going to college. Then things got strange. He told her that he wanted her back. He wanted to meet for coffee. He still had feelings for her, etc… She didn’t recognize the phone number and his sister said it wasn’t his. She didn’t hear back after she told him to call her to make sure it was really him.

We started to worry that she was getting messages again from Jeremy, the guy that was previously stalking her. He would sometimes pose as a friend through text. He even hacked into her boyfriend’s Facebook account and broke up with her while pretending to be her bf. He is going to the same college as her bf which resulted in a fist fight. He threatened to rape her. At that point, Paul called him and told him never to contact Angel again. And Angel told this person where she was going to college. Uugghh!@$#

Yesterday evening she called her ex and he said that he hasn’t been texting her. He thought it may be a girl that liked him. Angel did ask in the text about the conversation that she had with her ex at the show. The person knew  about it, but it was a very general conversation. The girl went with her ex to the show. When her ex confronted this girl, she got really upset. Everyone is denying sending the texts. At this time we think it may have been someone else and not the guy we threatened to get a restraining order against. But we really don’t know. It could be anyone. 

I thought that would be it for the day until we got a knock on the door last night at 10:15 PM. Apparently, Alex’s ex-friend went for a walk last night and didn’t come home. This isn’t the same friend that ran away at the beginning of the school year. This is the long time friend that he is no longer allowed to see because his friend got expelled from school for drugs.

This morning my son got a text from the mother of his ex-friend saying that her son was still missing. She asked Alex if he knew where her son was. Alex replied that he didn’t have any contact with him for the last month since they were not allowed to talk anymore. At this point, she called my son a selfish piece of shit, etc…for no apparent reason.. She was angry and worried. Then Jake’s mom got involved. So this started a round of texting for hours while I was at work trying to actually work. Work was crazy busy. I was dealing with phone calls at work, on my cell, and texts at the same time. Eventually the boy returned home. I hope this is the last we hear from them, but I don’t think so. 

Then my son called me from school saying that he didn’t turn In an assignment. We have been monitoring his grades and missing assignments online. That is a real mess since he missed 3 days from being sick. We don’t know what has been turned in because they are still showing up as missing even if they were turned in. My son said that some were turned in but not graded yet. I love having the ability to see grades online, but it is enough to drive a parent crazy. Unupdated notifications about missing assignments and poor grades blow up our emails. Then the status is not updated for weeks sometimes. 

Then I received another call from the school today. Damn, I cringe when I see that number. Angel was calling for me to pick her up from school. She donated blood for the first time today. Afterwards she felt nauseous and dizzy. She almost passed out in class. This may have been caused by being at the bottom of the weight requirement. She didn’t feel well and couldn’t drive home. I had to pick her up from school. 

Then I heard from the school one more time. This time it was good news. Arabella was chosen to be a foreign exchange student for one week in Japan. It has been a dream of hers since I don’t know when. Last year we hosted a foreign exchange student from Japan for a week and loved it. 

That has been my 24 hour teenage roller coaster ride. I don’t particularly like roller coasters. I like to watch other people ride. 

Just wait…

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When my family got together a couple of weeks ago to bowl, I requested the song Stressed Out by Twenty One Pilots. Of course, they never did end up playing the song before we left which seriously caused me to be a little stressed out. LOL. My baby brother Luke gave me some crap about my song selection. He chided me a bit about being stressed out all of the time. He told me that being stressed out was a choice.

This is where I retorted back, “Just wait!” You know that little comment that other people make when they are a little further down the road in life. Like the time that I thought that my toddler wouldn’t throw a temper tantrum in the grocery store over candy like my friend’s child did. Ha, ha just wait your days are coming she said. They sure did. So I am bottling up Luke’s comment to give back to him when he has teenagers. You know, when I am an empty nester and he is in the throes of raising teens. Just wait!

Yes, my life is stressful! I don’t seem to have a lot of control over that right now. I am trying to run a business with my husband. I am raising three teens and trying to be an involved parent. In my spare time I am training for a marathon. Oh, not to mention trying to write a blog everyday. All while maintaining a clean house, staying up on all of the laundry, and trying to keep some shred of sanity.

Luke was a very difficult child. His role as the youngest sibling was to make sure that my autistic brother Matt did not get all of the attention. And he entertained us! When Luke was a little boy, he got angry at my dad and cut the live wire to my dad’s electronics almost electrocuting himself. He also kicked a big hole in the wall. When he was a teenager, he played a round of co-ed strip volleyball in the front yard. But my personal favorite was when he rolled around in the front yard wrestling with my dad for the car keys. My dad had chest pains and spent the evening in the ER. It all ended well. My brother was a wild child. You wouldn’t know that by looking at him now. He is very serious. The running joke is that he became serious and I became wild. But we won’t talk about that now!

My mother did her due diligence to make sure that she prayed that my brother has children just like him. Now he has two daughters. The oldest is serious like he is now. But the youngest is quite the firecracker. She is a wild child. She screams when she doesn’t get her way. She has a very impressive high pitched scream. She tells it like it is without a filter. She is bossy. She loves to be the center of attention. She makes us laugh.  And she just made a list of four boys that she is going to kiss when she is old enough. I just can’t wait.

So someday when I am living the life of leisure and my brother has teenagers I am going to tell him that he is in control of how much stress he is under. Just wait!!

 

Spring feverish

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I feel crabby. 

Work was busy and my employee didn’t come in today, or yesterday for that matter. Her sister’s dog died over the weekend. So I stayed at the office a couple of hours later than usual to catch up. Add in a staff meeting, fitting in an hour workout, finding time to vote, and having a sick child makes me feel crabby. Accuse me of having a lack of sympathy, but I could have used an extra hand at work today.  

Business owners have to drag their ass to work when they have a sick kid, when they are sick, after having a baby, after having major surgery, after a death in the family, etc.. I check my work on the weekends, on vacation, heck even right now. Sometimes I am tempted to check my emails during church. I know, what a sinner!
This summer after Angel graduates she will be working for us until she goes to college. I plan on teaching her everything I know. She has a great mind for business. Alex is great with computers. Arabella is incredible at sales.  My future employees live in my own house. We’ll see. 

Some days work is slow and at others times I can barely keep up. When work is busy, there are tons of customer service emails and calls. I am great at what I do, but sometimes I get frustrated. Sometimes I have to deal with difficult customers that are upset. I am good at diffusing angry people on the phone. It just seems like I get nothing done. Yes, we suck, now can I please get back to work?? LOL. Or my favorite is when people ask when the work will be done but I can’t get to it because I am answering tons of questions about when it will be ready. We have great employees and clients, but some days when work gets bottle necked I feel stressed. 

I printed out my son’s assignments from school before I left work, then forgot them there. I realized this after I took my shoes and jacket off. Then I sped back to the office in the blowing snow to pick it up. Yes, it is cold and snowy again. A couple of weeks ago we had two days of sun. I had forgotten how bright it was. Since then it has been cold, rainy, or snowing. Thankfully, we have an office close to our house.

I think I have a case of spring fever! This is always the hardest time of year. It sure is a lot easier being at work when I don’t want to be outside though. 

Depression, my old friend

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In response to my neighbor’s suicide…

I understand your struggle…

When I grew up, my childhood was very difficult. It was so difficult that the big people in my life could barely cope with the circumstances that they had to deal with. In early childhood I developed two friendships to help me cope, depression and anxiety.

Depression was a close friend of the family. My dad made friends with depression too. Sometimes when the house was really quiet, I was afraid of what he might do. My brother Mark found friendship with depression too. When he was a teen, my mom found several nooses in the tree. I knew the temptation. I knew the struggle.

In late childhood, I tried to break my friendship with depression but she fell in love with me.

When I became an adult, I learned how to live with my friend. I kept myself very busy so I wouldn’t have time for my friend to visit. I worked harder and harder. When my friend noticed I was free, she would visit me.

Have you ever been suicidal before? Do you know what it is like to be that depressed? I do. It is very frightening. Thoughts and images popping into my head of my own demise over and over again. Me in the bathtub with slashed wrists. Driving very fast into a tree. A loaded gun. An empty bottle of pills. Horrible, intrusive thoughts that invade my mind unwanted. The more I try to push my friend away, the more she clings.

Over time I learned how to cope with having a difficult friend. I am a workaholic. Keeping busy keeps her away. I have a strong faith that exorcises my demons. I try to outrun my demons by running 100 miles a month. I take massive doses of vitamin D over the winter months. I try to have something to look forward to. I find the support of family and close friends who have survived difficult times.

What can others do to help that haven’t experienced it? Listen without condemnation. Allow venting, even if it means listening to things you don’t want to hear. Don’t tell them to get over it even if it has been several years since they experienced the initial pain. Sometimes being a good friend is encouraging others to seek professional help.

Does that mean that I no longer get depressed? No. Sometimes when I go through hard times, my friend comes back to help me. A few months ago when I was having difficulties with my son, she visited me for awhile. I spent a long time staring off into space. This is very hard to explain, but when I stared off into space I felt peaceful. When you sink down low enough, sometimes you feel so empty that even the pain is gone. It is a very alluring trap. I had to pull myself out of that dark void. I feel sorry for those that struggle to break free.

Over the years, I learned a few things about my friend. It is okay to feel sad. Sometimes the negative feelings in our life motivate change. During difficult times and emotions, I tell myself that the feelings will pass. I also tell myself over and over that I have felt this way before and survived it. I know how to cope, how to get through.

I am trying hard to face all of the feelings that were locked away for so many years. Writing has been very therapeutic. Maybe if I write honestly about my experiences and struggles, then others won’t feel so all alone. I am okay. You will be okay too. Find a way to cope. Be understanding toward others that struggle. Maybe it will prevent one more unnecessary death.

Just one of those days

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It’s been one of those days. It started with an argument with my husband, well more of a disagreement. Over what? Making plans for next summer. It has started before the calendar has even been turned to 2016. Next summer is getting booked up. What about this date? You know it is my mother’s birthday. Maybe she wants to go along? Well, don’t forget that is when the school usually has their summer school musical theater show. And when do you think we will need to move our daughter into college?? Yadda, yadda, yadda. Oh my, we surely don’t want to start double booking summer events already. Summer is short and the list of things to do is long. I have an idea, maybe we should plan summers 2 years in advance. Geez.

Then I decided to go for a 12 mile run before work. It went pretty good except now I am tired and every part of my body feels sore. Yes, even my toenails. Yes, even my hair. My stomach has been upset all day. I just don’t feel well.

I got to work and the internet and phone lines were down for hours even though our provider said that our service would be disrupted for about 20 minutes. There is nothing more frustrating than sitting around doing nothing when you have work to do. Except paying someone to sit around doing nothing. I decided to send our employee home to work out of the house after she came in this afternoon. I also went home. When I got home, I received the great news that everything was up and running again. Then the calls started pouring in from clients asking why things were taking so long.

Maybe I should just go back to bed! But I can’t. I volunteered to sing for the Advent service tonight. Some days I feel as gloomy as the empty grey days. Blah. It’s just one of those days.

Pierced with anxiety

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This morning started out really rough, as Monday mornings sometimes do. My son got up late and missed the bus. Which technically wasn’t a big deal because he rode to school with my oldest daughter Angelique who drives to school. Angelique refuses to take him to school due to his tardiness, so he has to take the bus. As a result, Angel got into the shower late which disrupted the whole schedule which trickled down into a bad Monday morning for me.

I went to Alex’s room and confronted him for getting up late and missing the bus, which happened despite all my nagging. Well, I should say that I only walked two feet into his room because after that is an abyss I might not escape from without twisted ankles and broken legs due to laundry piles and missing assignments. Probably a couple of rats and definitely spiders. Paul and I told him that he is going to have to go to bed at 9 PM all week as a consequence for missing the bus. This prompted the response of “I hate you” several times to spew out of his mouth. I know, we are the worst parents because you can’t get your butt out of bed.

Angel got into and out of the shower late. She ran out of time to get gas in the morning and needed to borrow my credit card all day since she didn’t have time to run it back home. Oh, and did I tell you that while she was running late, she lost the car keys?? Mad scramble around the house looking for keys. By the time they left, I was shaking!

I figured that it would be the perfect time to change my ear cartilage piercing for the first time in over a year. The last time I changed it, I put in a crappy nickel earring and then left for the overnight sail and ended up with a red, sore ear that doubled in size. This caused a lot of anxiety, so much anxiety that even the thought of changing it again caused some panic within me.

It’s not as if I didn’t end up in the ER before due to an ear piercing. I got my ears pierced at age 6, my ears double pierced at 30, my doubles pierced again in my upper 30’s (they tend to close up if I don’t wear earrings in them for over a week), and my cartilage piercing at 40. But I didn’t end up going to the ER, Arabella did. After having issues with caring for my piercings at age 6, I told my daughters they could have piercings at age 10. Arabella wore the same earrings for so long that the back of her earring ended up getting embedded in her ear. So off to the ER with her for that feeling like a bad parent. It wasn’t her first trip to the ER and it wasn’t the last. Now she doesn’t even wear earrings and her piercing probably closed up. Geez. That was one expensive piercing too with the ER trip.

This morning I scoured my hands with special care. I’m sure an obsessive compulsive hand washer would be proud. I won’t tell them that last night I volunteered to do a dirty cleaning project. At times while cleaning, I broke through my latex gloves without knowing it. I imagined deadly germs seeping under my fingernails just looking for an entry spot like a cartilage piercing perhaps. I cleaned my earrings. The first earring I tried went right in, but it did not fit right. Then I tried a hoop earring. I could not get it in for anything. I tried until my ear started bleeding and figured it wouldn’t work. Since I got it pierced with a stud, I think that maybe trying to get a hoop in is like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. Or maybe because my hands were still shaking.

Finally, I got the third earring in with no problem and all is well. But I thought it wouldn’t hurt to change my earring on a Monday, just in case I needed to go to the doctor with a deadly ear cartilage piercing infection. It is very practical to think that going to the doctor is a heck of a lot easier, not to mention more affordable, on a Monday morning than going to the ER on Friday night. Ah, life with an active imagination…

Hoarding, clutter, and cleaning freaks

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I am knee deep in fall cleaning right now. I thoroughly clean my house twice a year, once for spring and once for fall. Spring cleaning is the big event of the year where I scrub the whole house with a toothbrush. Fall cleaning is more of a hairbrush clean. I used to thoroughly clean my house after every season, but I really hate dusting. Talk about a useless task! I dust everything and within a half an hour new dust takes over. Then I sneeze for 3 days.

I threw out and donated many items to the point of guilt. I come from a very long line of hoarders. When we sold Aunt Grace’s house, we moved everything into my grandma’s house. When we sold grandma’s house, we moved stuff into my parent’s shed. Now their very large shed is full. Time to build another shed! We did get a large dumpster for my grandma’s house which was emptied 3 times. We made multiple trips to Goodwill to the point where they didn’t want any of our crap anymore. Did you ever hear of anyone getting turned away from Goodwill for over donating? Yeah, me neither.

Yesterday I went to my parents house and watched them struggle to maintain their property. There was a pipe that was leaking into the basement. Mom took me downstairs to look at the damage. There was some water that pooled around food items that expired in the 1990’s. I feel overwhelmed at the thought of cleaning it all out someday. My mom has always been a food hoarder which she attributes to growing up poor.  She has 4 freezers and 2 refrigerators. The cupboards are full of mostly expired food. There are grocery bags sitting on the floor with new food. Downstairs the situation is worse. Multiple peanut butter containers that expired in the 90’s, homemade canned food items from the 80’s, glass containers full of stale grains, corroded cans, juice separating in bottles.

My parents also hoard other things like cars, magazines, paper, newspapers, clothing, blankets, wood, books, movies, old toys, candles, soap, empty jars, tools, and parts. My dad collects electronics, broken parts to fix other broken parts. The floor and chairs are stacked with papers. The dining room table is never clutter free and neither is the kitchen counter. Nothing is thrown out even if it is expired, broken, or useless. Paul’s mom and step-dad are hoarders too. They have 2 refrigerators in their small kitchen. One doesn’t work and is used for storage. Both of our parents have given us some of their junk which we throw out for them. Thankfully Paul and I share the same motto of when in doubt throw it out. Looking at my kids rooms, I think we may have a few future hoarders on our hands. 

As a clean freak, the clutter overwhelms me. I can’t breathe. I feel a lonely emptiness in a room stacked full of clutter. It rises within me a feeling of absolute despair which I cannot explain. It feels hopeless. I want to throw everything away. I want my house to be clean, but no matter what I do it still feels dirty and messy.

A few years back, my brother Luke and his wife brought her sister to my parents house with them for the weekend. Luke’s sister-in-law told my brother that my parents house was so messy that she would never stay there again. Luke told my mom. This started a big fight with a lot of tears and stress from my mom. Luke was hoping that my mom would throw things out like he does, but instead they built another shed. My mom gets very attached to items and needed a lot of moral support to throw out my brother’s baby blanket a few years ago when he was well into his 30’s. We also did not want our old baby clothes for our children. Why do items attach so much hurt for the people who don’t want to part with them and the people that don’t want to keep them?

I have helped my parents countless times in the past. It is so overwhelming to me. It is like emptying a lake with a cup. I feel guilty for not helping them more. I’ll be totally honest, I can’t handle it. It elicits such a strong negative response within me that is unbearable. So I scour every corner of my house. After cleaning I still see all of the streaks in the windows, all the stains on the carpeting, the little yellow rings that don’t come out of my sink and bath tubs, the grease that lingers around the oven, the little spots on the walls, and the cracks in the linoleum. Will we ever be free from cleaning or hoarding? Will we be forever haunted by earthly treasure or trash?

The 1st (planned) overnight sail

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Last year for my husband’s birthday, we planned our first overnight sail on our sailboat. Technically, it wasn’t our first overnight sail. But we won’t talk about that. If you want to read about everything that could go wrong without sinking the boat, feel free to read the accidental overnight sail post. It was pretty funny, but not at the time. 

As I mentioned briefly previously, I got my first ear cartilage piercing for my 40th birthday. I am a very ritualistic and rule oriented person, at times borderline OCD. My world consists of order, rules, rules, rituals, and more rules. My rules. My structure. I am an extreme person. That is just the way I am. So, I got my ear pierced for my birthday. It required cleaning 3 times a day for 12 weeks. Ok, I got that, no problem. My husband’s birthday was exactly 12 weeks to the day after I got the cartilage piercing. It would be perfect to change the earring right before we left for the overnight sail, or so I thought. I had a hoop earring that I wanted to try. 

Removing the back of the earring stud required a lot of yanking. My ear was “ear itated” before I got the earring out. Then it started to swell and bleed. I tried to get the hoop in which was impossible. I could barely get it into my regular ear piercings. Hmmmm, now this is where I really went wrong. I put a nickel earring stud into the ear cartilage piercing and left for the overnight sail. 

It was a perfect early fall day for a sail. It was warm and windy, but not too windy. We sailed several hours to get to the resort. Once we got there, it was during the week and the pool was closed for the season. There was not much to do. By the time we got there, my ear doubled in size. I thought that maybe my piercing was infected. I was so stressed that I couldn’t eat. Worried. This is the point when my acid reflux acted up again as an adult but I didn’t know at the time what it was. 

The next day we headed back home. I called the ear piercing place and they said I was probably allergic to the nickel earring. I found that strange because I didn’t have problems with nickel in my regular ear piercings. They suggested putting the piercing stud back in. This was problematic because I was on open water and didn’t have any other earrings with me. The minute I got home, hours later, I put my piercing stud back in and haven’t taken it out since. I am almost afraid to. I felt bad that my seemingly great idea turned my husband’s birthday into a big mess of anxiety. I have only stayed overnight on the sailboat once since then. It was for our anniversary when the big unexpected storm hit. 

Why does everything have to be so eventful in my life?? Well, it sure gives me things to write about and at times things to laugh about.