ADdIcITIoN

OMG! I woke up this morning with a throbbing headache-- throbbing hard enough to wake me from a very deep sleep. I rolled over, put my meditation CD on and assumed that I was just tired from the trip out to El Paso and having to go to work this morning. Within minutes my headache worsened and I was forced to get out of bed to find aspirin. As I stood in front of the cabinet I tried to figure out what kind of headache was I having-- a normal stress headache which means Advil or a sinus/allergy issue? As I stood there, the headache worsened until I almost thought I was having a migraine. I grabbed 2 Advil, got water and washed them down, got back in bed and restarted the meditation CD. Not 5 minutes later, I found myself fighting to keep the Advil in my stomach. My head was roaring and I was in the most acute pain that I have been in for quite a while. I knew I wasn't having a migraine because I have decided that I don't get them anymore, so what on earth was going on? I also knew that calling for a substitute on the first day back was unacceptable because I would be docked my pay! I spent a bit o' cash on my sweet boys and I pretty much need my normal paycheck anyway so...

I laid in bed trying to figure out what was going on with my body I realized that my headache was worsening (if that was even possible), my stomach was roiling, my muscles were weak and I was acutely sensitive to light and sounds. I was sweating, which is so unusual for me and my thoughts were richoceting around my head like a pingpong ball at an Olympics tournament. I had no focus whatsoever. I tried to think back to the day before to trace my day to discover what was going on with my body...

I got up at the normal time- 4:30-- 3:30 El Paso time-- dressed and left Melissa's house. (A little trauma there-- I hate saying good bye and prefer to slip away like a thief in the night but of course, my daughter and her husband sleep lightly and I was foiled in the attempt.) Melissa doesn't have a coffeepot and the Starbuck's was closed so I just headed out on I10. Driving into the night, there was nothing but a deep starry sky and a humming road for quite a while. By the time I got to VanHorn, I was wishing for some coffee but there just aren't any coffee shops in West Texas like there are in central and east Texas.... and I am NOT drinking horse piss just to have coffee! At Fort Stockton (actually Kent, a small town outside of Fort Stockton) I stopped, gassed up and got a Coke to abate the caffeine craving I was experiencing. Back on the road I was on the lookout for a Starbuck's sign or any coffee shop but I was feeling better because I had the Coke. Traffic was VERY light and the trip went smoothly until we were between Dripping Springs and south Austin and all I can say is thank god it was not anywhere near 5:00 because traffic was at a standstill for long lengths of time. I think it took longer to get from Convict Hill onto the freeway than it did to go through Harper and Fredericksburg....
I dropped Dad off, went to the post office and dealt with my vandalized mailbox, washed the car and gassed up again. Went home, showered, took a short nap, and went to HEB since my cupboards were BARREN. I went to Mom and Dad's for dinner, watched HOUSE MD and 24; came home checked my email; tried to decide on a Facebook entry to no avail, and just went to bed... nothing too out of the ordinary, so why was I feeling so awful?

Allergies? Stress? Missing my boys? Ahhh... no caffeine. What? Didn't I have several Cokes? Yes, but I had Coke Zeros-- no calories, no carbs and NO CAFFEINE. I was sadly enough in the midst of a caffeine withdrawal.

Unfortunately, knowing that doesn't make it better-- only time does that but I did need to make that fateful decision-- do I make a pot of coffee to ease this pain I was in-- or do I give up my morning pleasure...

Traveling

Since I've been told that I get to go to Chicago, my mind has been filled with traveling thoughts... If I could get a job traveling and then teaching about the places that I travel to... well, that would be my idea of the PERFECT job. The TRAVEL Channel just has to interview me!

So I'm going to Chicago -- prior to my trip to Washington D.C. -- prior to flying off to Edinburgh... How COOL is that??? I'm feeling pretty lucky (Even though I didn't win the set of Magic Tree House books and I'm not the winner for the HEB Excellence in Teaching award, and something else didn't happen but I've forgotten what it is... too many applications, I guess) I'M GOING TO CHICAGO, WASHINGTON D.C. AND EDINBURGH (and all of Scotland because if I can make it around Texas, I certainly can visit all of Scotland!) How fun!

But I won't be going to Chicago until next month so in order to tide me over my ROAD TRIP FEVER, I'm going out to El Paso. Yes, I am going to see my beautiful grandchildren and I'm going to drag them around El Paso taking pictures of all the historic sights to put into an interactive Promethean flipchart 'cause I told told the district I would make some of those things... and it would help my second grade team when we teach Texas history in Social Studies... and of course, I will use them in North Queensferry Primary School. So, no, it's not really a vacation (or holiday, as the Scots say), it's a field trip. ButitwillbeaFUNfieldtripbecauseIthinklearningisfunandmybeautifulboyswilllearn moreaboutthehistoryoftheircityandalltherestofusbenefitaswell. (pant, pant)

Which means I have to plan... LOTS of plans. The fun part... the dreaming and imagining part... (the figuring out what to put on the flipchart is the not-so-fun part) but it's all a part of THE TRIP. Which reminds me of other trips, and in my mind I go back to those memorable moments and relive them all over again. I enjoy them and savor them... turn them over a bit in my mind... then I dissect them, just a little, so I can figure out what it was that made it memorable. Then the possiblilty of recreating it can be had. Some things just can't be recreated like the startling turquoise color of the water of New Zealand... that's just an unexpected beauty that makes your soul sing as your heart flies into your throat when you first glimpse it. But then there's having a bagel boy at a regular morning stop and learning to hail a cab and having strangers ask you where the nearest subway stop is and for a while I pretend that I am a native New Yorker... those moments can be recreated. I can jam-pack experiences into an amazingly short amount of time. I can throw myself into a frenzy of sightseeing and things to do so that I am breathless and barely able to sleep. But I've also found that for me, it's important to find time to have quiet moments to sit on an irrigation wall listening to the sea swell against the shore while rushes dance in the wind and bullfrogs sing to each other as the townspeople greet each other in Japanese on their evening walks... those moments can be "recreated" as well by knowing that I need to leave time for the quiet to creep in...the time when I am doing nothing, moving nothing, just absorbing the sounds and smells and the beauty like a sponge. Just "being".

Which means that in El Paso, I will find time -alone- to go up onto Transmountain Road. I'll find time to to park and walk a distance into the desert to once again feel the dry breezes swirl around me carrying the scent of sage, dust, and creosote. I'll find time to listen for the swish of a reptile tail or the thump of a rabbit's bound to heal, albeit temporarily, my homesickness for the desert. For that's the other part of travel... it's price. Those moments that live so indelibly in my heart, the moments that I live for as I travel, always cost a slice of my heart.