As of Spring 2016, this site is moving to JenniferFitz.com. My personal updates will be there, and eventually a new project TBA.
I’m still blogging at Patheos.com/blogs/JenniferFitz, and that’s where you’ll want to look for all my punditry and the like.
If you would care to join other fans at my discussion group on Facebook, visit Facebook.com/groups/JenFitz.
Thursday July 2nd at 6pm the fatigue-haze that’s owned me to varying degrees since the end of January suddenly evaporated.
It is intensely pleasant to be out of it. If you’ve ever done that thing where you get someplace and forget to take your sunglasses off, and you’re walking around inside and everything’s really dim, and then suddenly you remember and you take off the shades and suddenly everything’s brighter and you don’t need so many lights on, it’s like that.
No explanation whatsoever, anymore than I could figure out what brought it on. But suddenly it’s like I’m not trying to function underwater anymore.
So I like this.
Something curious: No change physically. I can still be intensely physically tired — tired like holding my head up is too much energy — or short of breath or enjoying one or a couple of the three different variations on light-headedness, but now I’m doing it without the static. Ditto on emotions – I can be frustrated by something or daunted or lazy or lacking in virtue, but now, suddenly, my utter irresponsibility is like an unfettered act of free will, rather than me fighting against this physical inertia.
I can remember telling a friend earlier this year, “I just want to wake up.” That’s what it’s like. Like I’ve been groggy for six months, and then suddenly the coffee kicked in and I snapped to it.
An analogy that is of no help to anyone but me: It’s like the difference between my left side limbs and my right, for those who recall the nerve injury that coincided with the back/pelvic injury eight years ago. I don’t *lack* sensation on the right side, it’s just less — it all feels like there’s no sensory loss, but then apply the exact same touch to the same place on the left side, and left side has more flavor. Or: I don’t feel like there’s anything wrong with my right hand, but if I compare wiggling fingers on right hand versus left, the right side fingers feel thicker, and it feels like there’s more resistance to movement — like a stiffness, but it’s not a physical stiffness, nothing wrong with the joints, no lack of dexterity or flexibility or anything at all. (–> None of that is as profound as it was initially, it’s very background now. I forget it’s a thing. No practical application, other than to remind myself that if I’m only noticing mild *left* leg calf cramps, it’s possible both legs are experiencing the same thing, but only one side is reporting in.)
Dr’s appointment on Monday, and we need to decide with who / when / how to pursue the on-going thing, in light of the fact that I was pretty much laid out for several months this year, which is not good. You who pray should pray for that.
Meanwhile, you who prayed and got me to snap out of the thing, thanks. I’m enjoying this.
The afternoon of May 23rd I had to reluctantly admit that what I was determined to call “allergies” was really a cold. If noses run in your family like they do in mine, you can appreciate the difficulty of telling the difference.
It was this mild cold that half the kids had already had, no big deal. I sneezed a lot, and then it was supposed to be over.
Interesting thing one: Nothing bad happened, and it still managed to own a month of my life and counting. Normally what happens with a cold is that if there aren’t any complications, it annoys you and then you get better.
Instead what I had was no complications, and tangible but glacially-paced recovery. So I go weeks constantly asking myself, “Surely something terrible has happened because no one is this tired, with this obnoxious of a cough, for this long,” except that no, nothing terrible was happening. Not a single sign of a secondary infection or anything else. Every day was in fact just a tiny bit healthier than the day before. A perfectly normal recovery, only carried out in ultra-slow motion.
So that aggravated me, because I was impatient to be back to the fully-functional-esque person I was in earlier April – May. I’m thinking, looking back, that ultra-slow recovery is the same reason February and March were the disaster that they were; or maybe it was something else.
Interesting thing two: Just as I’m turning the corner I start getting a resurgence of the infamous “I feel like I’m buzzed” thing that was the fascinating side note to my initial (untreated) illness. Which leads to a fair bit of lying when I see people, because after hiding in the cave with the cold long enough, when you see someone you’re so happy to see fresh humans that when they ask you how you’re doing you say, “Good!” even though what you mean is not, “I’m doing well,” but rather, “It is good to see you.”
And here’s where the interesting cropped up: My allergies really truly went away. If noses run in your family like they do in mine, not sneezing is an aberration.
Curiously, when I first got dramatically ill in 2014, something that happened is that the allergies completely cleared up and stayed cleared up.
So today I googled “allergies autonomic nervous system” and it turns out this is a thing. Essentially hayfever (cats, dust, pollen) and my presumed type of IST are opposites. Not quite as neatly as all that, but something like it, which will presumably be helpful to figure out.
For the moment all that tells me is that should this renewed spell of sickliness pass, I should plan to start sneezing again. Meanwhile, we’ve got a topic for the visit to re-up the meds this summer, which might entertain or even intrigue. We’ll see.
***
In the meantime, given that 50% of the last six months have been “temporary” disasters, I need to quick get just organized enough to hand off the remainder of my responsible-person obligations. Prayers in that direction appreciated, both that the intended handing-off will happen efficiently and well, and that I’ll make good decisions about precisely how much I can commit to in the year ahead.
Quick update for those who’ve followed the saga all spring: I’m doing great. By which I mean:
Which doesn’t mean I don’t sometimes jiggle the schedule, and borrow from one day to put more into another. That works, as long as I pay up in a timely fashion.
So all you who have prayed, thank you very much. Couldn’t be happier with the results thus far.
Just showed up here and you’re looking for my writing? Check the blorg.
So she was either very very wormy, or . . . I dunno. No kittens. I’m telling you, there were kitten-like creatures inside that cat last month. I guess my future as a cat-midwife is totally written off now. It’s either writing or accounting for me.
Meanwhile, SuperHusband dropped the farm cat off at the vet in the morning, and picked her up again after work, transformed into the Cat Who Will Never Be Suspected of Pregnancy Again. My closet is safe.
No more free cats. No more free cats. No more free cats.
Because I have the coolest friends in the universe, I’m getting offers of help left and right. For which I am so incredibly grateful. And I thought of something to ask for:
A babysitter list.
We’ve never had a single go-to babysitter who could be on call 24/7. I guess most people don’t. For all our younger kids’ births, I compiled a chart with the various volunteers, and their availability, and their contact info. Availability might include days of the week, hours of the day, “Please call me first” or “Please call me only in emergencies”, dates the volunteer wasn’t availabe (“Not May 15th – 27th”), etc.
Also I put in notes like “can come to house” or “Please drop off at their place”, “needs carseats”. Anything that makes in a difference in whether the person can or can’t help at this very instant.
So then when I went into labor, Jon or I could just go down the list and call someone who was available. While I was in the hospital, he could find childcare without needing me to give him 10,000 suggestions. It worked really well.
***
Anyway, if you have a friend who has kids and some kind of crisis-y situation, that’s a good way to help. Babysitter list.
On every block: children in rain boots and camouflage jumpsuits, trailed by parents with cameras in hand. I love this place.
***
In other snow news: No ice on the power lines. We have electricity. I’m happy.
In not snow news: Up at CatholicMom.com this morning, my blogger Q&A with Sarah Reinhard. In which she asks me why I blog, and I tell her. I’m afraid my answers aren’t that glamorous. That’s what you get when you ask me stuff. I just tell you.
Six inches of snow in DC doesn’t bother me a bit. 1/2 of ice in SC? Bothers me. As in: Last time this happened, we didn’t have electricity for a week. It’s winter survival camping, suburban edition. Couldn’t go outside, because iced-over pine limbs were falling on people’s heads.
So anyway, I’m hoping for a nice snow holiday. Meanwhile, am stocking up on clean laundry.
If you didn’t see it already, here’s my post at New Evangelizers today. It’s about what makes a community a community, and why do we need a Christian community?
If you didn’t see the March, EWTN’s coverage is here. All jokes aside, it really did feel kinda like a Ninja March. Noisy Ninjas. But there was no one else around, other than us, as far as the eye could see in both directions on Constitution Ave. coming up by the Capitol.
Someone asked me before we went whether it was true that there were very many young people at the March. Let me clarify: The March for Life is a youth event with some chaperones along in order to reassure the nervous security people at the Smithsonian.
***
Interesting discovery, as I was walking up the hill from the playground after an hour or so of sledding, headed back to my friend’s house in my old neighborhood in the burbs. I passed a house flying a US flag and a Maryland flag. I had no idea a Maryland flag would inspire a wellspring of patriotic sentiment, but it did.
Another thing: Hills covered in tall, bare hardwoods – scattered with snow or not — just shouts with memories from the past.
And another: We went to the Star Spangled Banner exhibit at the US History museum. Just wow. I had a good patriotic upbringing. It was like going to shrine. Well, not like. It is. A shrine to something very, very good.
But, funny thing: Riding home, it was good to reach that special place in NC where it was warm enough to thaw the windshield wiper fluid so I could finally see out the front window without a haze of salt-spray. And then coming west on I-20, the vast expanses of pine trees through the sand hills — exactly the opposite of those Virginia hardwoods — and let me clarify right now that Carolina pine barrens *do not* possess the austere beauty of, say, the desert Southwest. Just no.
But, weirdly, I felt welcomed home. As we entered the infernal city on I-20, shoulder-to-shoulder with drivers doing their best via crowding and incompetence to make up for what we lack in population density, I could finally relax. Driving on the Beltway feels like being in one of those car-race video games to me. Infernal traffic is just as dangerous, but its my traffic, so nothing to worry about, right?
We crossed over a river and my daughter asked, “Is that the Congaree?”
I chuckled. “No, darling. That’s the Broad.” Everyone knows it doesn’t become the Congaree until it joins the Saluda, downtown.
She laughed at her error. Of course. Everyone knows that.
The title publishes, but the text disappears. Sorry guys. We’re around. I’ll see if I can figure it out.
