For the first time in a long time, I felt energetic enough to actually consider doing something more than the bare minimum today.

I don't know why...I don't know whether it's that my allergies have finally abated a bit and the pain I was having in my sinuses/ upper teeth went away Saturday night, allowing me to sleep. I think when you have some kind of low-grade pain like that, you really don't notice how much it affects your life. You tell yourself: This is not a migraine. I should be able to function. And you try to, but it's not the same, and you don't have the energy or the desire to do stuff.

I think especially pain in and around the face is bad. I don't know if it's because there are SO many nerves (There are something like 11 cranial nerves. I used to know most of them, there's a mnemnonic that goes "On Old Olympus' Torrid Top, a Finn and German Viewed Some Hops" but I think some of the names of the nerves have been changed since). Or maybe it's because it's close to your brain, close to "you" in the sense of it being your thought-centers and all. I don't know...I do know whenever I have tooth problems (like the bad temporary crown a couple years ago), I'm really miserable to a degree I don't fully recognize until the pain is gone.

I also wonder if maybe it took this long for me to actually get rid of the aftereffects of the virus I had over a month ago. It's possible I developed a low-grade sinus infection after the cold and didn't realize it, and my body finally fought it off (I've actually read recently that some doctors don't give antibiotics for every sinus infection any more, because apparently in some cases they're fungal in nature, or the body is able to eventually fight them off). It's also possible that it just took this long - my mom had something similar over a year ago and she claimed it took her a month to finally shake off the fatigue. (I kind of pooh-poohed that at the time as my mother maybe being a wee bit dramatic, but maybe it was true). Viruses are funny things.

It may also be that I heard and did some things today that I needed to hear and do. First of all, the sermon in church. It was the standard post-Easter lectionary about Doubting Thomas, but the minister took a different tack. I've usually heard it as a "blame Thomas" sermon, or a "aren't we really all like Thomas" sermon. But this time, he talked more about Christ's scars...and how He's showing people that everyone has scars, and yet, everyone has value...and the minister extended that to point out that sometimes the things that scar a person also shape them (he referred to a well-known theologian - I didn't know her or remember her name but she was a professor at Emory- who used crutches all her life, and how she said that she felt like in Heaven, she'd still be on crutches, because that was part of how she "knew" herself, and she felt she was given the disability for a reason). And he spoke of his own dyslexia. And it made me think about how much time I spent talking about some of the traits I have, how I think they make me weird or abnormal or something and how maybe I need to change them. And maybe I'm looking at it the wrong way, maybe it's those traits that really make me who I am, and while I can see the bad about them, there's also a lot of good in them too. And the scars: well, I don't really have any, other than perhaps some emotional scars of a relatively minor sort. But for example, having been "unpopular"* and getting teased a lot as a grade school kid: on the bad side, it's made me overly wary about opening up to people and sort of shy and suspicious of people I don't know. But on the good side, I think I am a FAR more compassionate and understanding-of-human-frailties sort of person than I would have been otherwise. And I don't think I'd give that up in return for greater self-confidence, or more of a tendency to come right  out and make friends easily.

(*though again, I wonder: it seems a lot of people I know and consider friends thought of themselves as "unpopular" kids, so maybe popularity is largely a myth and everyone felt like they were hopeless and weird in grade school)

ETA: Maybe I'm not saying it very clearly. By "scars" or "flaws," I mean ways in which either the world has damaged us, or in ways in which the world says there's something wrong with us. Sort of, to use a silly example, Barbra Streisand being told her nose was too long - but if she had had surgery on it, it would have affected her voice. 

So the main message, which really hit me and actually made me almost tear up a little (and I think one of my friends saw it and understood, she reached out and squeezed my hand right at the end) is that we're all flawed, but that those flaws are what make us who we are, what make us unique. What give us something different to contribute.  And I spend way too much time focusing on how I am "flawed" and how I "need to change" and perhaps not enough in focusing how I have a different perspective or something of value to contribute.

I don't know, there's something tremendously freeing to me to think of just accepting the ways in which I am flawed (I don't mean moral flaws here, I don't mean bad behavior: I mean the ways in which who I am is different from what is "normal") and figuring I have the unusual personality traits or whatever for a reason, and maybe I can even figure out a way to use them to help others.

Also, after church, I went out to lunch. There's a group of the women - I think the next-youngest is some 15 or maybe 20 years older than I am - they are all widowed or divorced so they get together most Sundays and go somewhere to eat. They ask me, but I don't always go (some weeks I have something I took out of the freezer, or some weeks I just want to get back home, to be honest). But I did go this week and I realized that I probably don't get enough interaction with people where really nothing is "expected" of me - where I'm not in charge of some meeting or class, where I don't have to make a decision, where I'm not somehow an authority. I think I've just been carrying too heavy a load this semester (I say this every semester) and it was nice to just go and eat lunch and talk about stuff, just ordinary everyday stuff, and not have to come to any big decisions or fix any problems.

And then I went home. And mowed the yard and trimmed back the abelia and the hollies. Because, as I said, this was the first day in a long time where I felt kind of energetic again.

Yesterday I also went out - I still wasn't feeling 100% but after I got done with grading and sorting 2 soil samples (Two is all I can do in a day before my eyes go; it's looking down a microscope at a bright light). I hadn't done any shopping other than in-town grocery shopping since - well, since my birthday. And there were a few things I needed that I can't get in town. So I went to Sherman.

It was good just to get out. I think I need, occasionally, to tell myself it's OK to burn some gas even if there is no necessary goal at the end of the drive. I never got into the "just driving around for the sake of driving" thing but I do think sometimes when I need to clear my head, going for a drive somewhere helps.

But, as I said, I had to pick up a few things. I went to Target, and to the bookstore, and to the Hobby Lobby and the JoAnn's. (Those last two were fun stops, not necessity stops).

At the Target, they still had some of the Liberty of London stuff. I thought they'd be all sold out. I did wind up buying some...one of the big organizer bins to hold the books beside my bed (Yes, I have a bookcase but the books I am "reading right now" have overgrown the space of the "books I want to read next" that are on that bookcase). And a big pillow and a small pillow...they don't 100% match the living room but they were cute and springy and they were nice and squishy because they're stuffed with feathers (luckily, feathers are one of the few things I am not allergic to)

And I bought a hat. I don't need another hat but I liked it. (And secretly, I think I look good in hats. This is not the bestest picture ever, but here it is)



I flipped the brim up in front to try to give it a bit more of a cloche effect than a bucket-hat effect.

I also bought a couple of quilting magazines, including one that has several VERY CUTE simple patterns in it, including one that I've already designated a packet of fat quarters I had "waiting" for the right pattern for.

So maybe part of it was getting out, getting back to a more normal schedule where I'm taking "care" of myself part of the time, instead of just feeling like I'm taking care of other people. One thing I'm learning I have to really guard against is letting my own time and own focus be excessively co-opted by other people. I got to the point this spring where I felt like I was losing myself - that I was becoming solely someone who put out fires and did stuff for people, instead of someone with an independent life. And part of that independent life is taking a Saturday afternoon to go to the bookstore, or going out to lunch with friends, or just doing stuff around the house.