Saturday, September 11, 2010

functioning in 3/4 time

Sometimes I hate my body.  It looks good, it has strength, stamina, and the skin, hair and teeth are good with very little maintenance.  my hands are nimble and skilled with all kinds of tools and with all kinds of crafts.  At the same time there are some downsides to living in here.  The one that gets me on a regular basis is the Chronic Fatigue/ fibromyalgia piece.
  This one has been with me one way or another for thirty years.  It seems to work like this:  Three days out of four, I am a fully functional human being with a normal amount of energy and a normal work schedule. The fourth day I feel like I have been hit by a truck.   All my joints ache, there is bone deep fatigue, with a burn in the connective tissue.  Standing hurts, sitting hurts, laying down hurts.   In Hot weather I run on 2/4 time, heat makes things much harder.  Nothing seems to help except for quiet,coolness, and not doing much. Over the years I have managed to come to some kind of terms with this, including choosing work that allows me to have slow days and days to not do much in the "middle " of the work week.  If I am faced with a push through time where I must be functional without downtime I can do it, and then I pay a price after with the painful days.
Today is a Saturday, and there are a lot of things that I wanted to get done including helping cider a tree, putting up the gate posts that we started last week, Errands, Farmer's market, Library.
I woke up and knew that today is a downtime day.  I revised the list.
Delegate the Farmers Market.  Limit the time at the cidering.  Put off some of the errands, move the gateposts to late this afternoon, Hit the library and sit down with a book.    Not much better, but some.
So I will take my time tomorrow, go slow today and that should leave me ready for work on Monday, right?
Maybe.

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