Thanksgiving Roundup

So we’ve all made it through Thanksgiving and into the beginning of the Yuletide season, and for that I think we should all give ourselves a huge round of applause. Or raise our face off of the carpet and moan softly, depending on how much last week took out of us.

I’ve decided that I can sum up my Thanksgiving in the following way:

75% fun
15% such awful migraines and fibro pain that it felt as though the right side of my face was
attempting to secede from the rest of my body
10% wanting to stab people in the face

So, I’m declaring the weekend a success.

As I mentioned before, there are a lot of parts of my personality that get triggered by traveling and holidays. For example, I’m really a homebody, plus I have my environment all set up to support me in taking care of myself, so I get anxious and fussy when I’m not at home, surrounded by all my
stuff.

Or there’s the fact that I spend so much time in my head. So I’ve usually built up a lot of mental
and creative energy around a couple of projects, and it’s hard for me to transition from an internal focus to an external one.

And then there’s my Hermit. Until my husband gets home from work I spend all my days alone, in
blessed silence. My Hermit needs the time alone, and my nervous system needs the quiet. Since part
of fibromyalgia is extreme sensitivity to sensory input, it’s extremely difficult for me to be
around other people for an extended period of time without ending up in pain.

Fortunately I am old enough and skilled enough now to recognize when I’m getting cranky and out of whack, so I was able to take responsibility for myself and my behavior and take a
timeout whenever I needed one.

We did have a lot of fun last weekend, so to give you a glimpse of our particular brand of holiday spirit, I’ve selected some of the best snippets of conversation to share here with you.

-When discussing a friend who has a tendency to make things up embellish her stories stray from the facts:

“It’s not that she makes things up; I just can’t always verify the data.”

-To justify the fact that my husband and I had just trashed my brother and sister-in-law’s bedroom while playing hide and go seek with their 3-year old daughter:

“When you see how it looks, just remember that every moment we spent destroying things was a moment that you got to sit, talk with grownups, and rest.”

-After my husband turned on his iPod to provide us with music for the trip home:

Me: “What IS that?”

My husband: “Korn.”

Me: “It sounds like hate set to music.”