The Christmas Princess Syndrome in Everyday Ramblings

Well we broke the record for most rainfall in one month since they started recording rainfall here. It has rained every day this month. Hence the bleak picture.

I know, it is Christmas, and it would be the socially desirable thing for me to post a picture of the cats or something else warm and fuzzy but I admit to feeling just a bit bleak.

(As a warm fuzzy aside, Diego just woke up from a nap to tell me it is time for his evening snack. He is a truly remarkable alarm clock, he is a cat man that knows what time it is and is not shy about sharing it. Now he is snuggled up next to my hip grooming his thick gray coat. Soon he will bap at my hands typing here.)

About a week ago I started not feeling well, in the same rather dramatic not feeling well way I felt last spring. A host of mystery symptoms I won’t go into here but I was worried about an infection so I went to the doctor early Tuesday morning. And they wanted me to have a follow-up extremely uncomfortable ultrasound to the one I had last April.

Right then.

I managed to convince them it was okay to have it today.

In the meantime one of my students had had a bit of a princess moment about the temperature in the room at the church on Monday night. The new big beautiful room. It was cold, he wasn’t imagining it. And he had chilled down at the end of class last week. Turns out they were actually working on the system and the heat had been turned off. My student having the princess moment left before class started. We got some space heaters and used blankets to block the draft under the doors and class was fine, not perfect but fine.

He apologized profusely and was embarrassed the next morning but I totally got why he left. But it made me think about how yoga practices do toughen us up and give us skills to deal with difficulty.

Then yesterday at work was insane. Completely insane. More work came in by far than I have ever seen in one day. And it was just me. And in the middle of it I am making stuffing in the slow cooker for the potluck I don’t have time to attend. (It was yummy!)

And then Kes and Most Honorable showed up for our festive annual big blow out meal at our favorite small restaurant that we have been going to for years on Christmas Eve, Eve. I was frazzled and not feeling at all well and dreading the ultrasound.

And we got to the restaurant (in the cold rain, because that is what it does here now, is rain) and what the… our restaurant has been discovered! There was a line. And even though we had a reservation and were on time they put us at a bar table in line with the door so cold air and literally next to the little hall that went to the bathrooms.

I had a princess moment.

Kes and Most Honorable were wonderful and they put me in the corner so I was protected as much as possible from the draft and the passers by. And I settled down and we had a lovely extravagant meal that went on for hours. The service was slow and quite unusual. Everyone that worked there at one point brought us something or took something away.

And today at work I did the best I could. I didn’t come close to finishing. And I used those aforementioned yogic tools to help me get through the discomfort of the exam.

My heart was touched by the woman in the waiting room alone, maybe in her 50’s, waiting for a CT scan and the tech came out with this huge cup of water and told her to drink it before she came back for her contrast IV and the woman, who clearly is not comfortable in English, was trying to explain that she had a PIC line in her chest and didn’t want an additional IV started. And she didn’t want to drink the water, she was tiny and couldn’t understand why they needed her full of water as well as contrast all I thought reasonable questions.

The head of our radiology department read my scan this afternoon. I know that because I used to work in that department. I am clean, there is no cancer. They don’t know what it is but it is not cancer.

So this is good news. And I have a couple of days off.

I am warm and safe and relatively comfortable and there is a wild man cat curled up next to me graciously letting me type about my fading Christmas blues to share with you.

There is a rumor; I will let you know if it is true, that it may not rain tomorrow!

That would be a gift of a divine order from my royal point of view. :)

Last updated December 25, 2015