My Monday

I almost forgot — I promised in a comment yesterday to blog about my exhausting Monday.

Basically, I started out the day at a disadvantage, as I had stayed up late finishing The White Darkness and didn't get enough sleep. I had a riding lesson with my trainer in the morning and then visited Panama for a little while, which was basically the calm before the storm — the last normal moments of my day.

Just as I was getting ready to leave the stables, my sister called from work to say that she was having bad dizzy spells and felt like she had fluid in her ears. She wanted me to pick her up from work and take her to the doctor's office. To explain the background a little, as a kid and a young teen in gymnastics, my sister suffered a lot from vertigo, so we take it seriously when she has problems with her ears!

It turned out she did indeed have fluid in her ears, but the doctor thought it was because she was getting sick. The dizzy spells, the doctor thinks, were caused by the Sudafed my sister took that morning — it was clearing the congestion out of her ears, which in turn upset her sense of balance.

After leaving the doctor's office, I took my sister to pick up her car, as she hadn't had a dizzy spell in a while and felt safe to drive. I then picked Michael up from work, and headed home at last.

I'd been on the road most of the day, and had had little time to eat. I had a headache from driving so much and from clenching my jaw, something I do when I get stressed out. I also felt inordinately tired from lack of sleep and nourishment: All I'd had to eat was a travel mug of tea and some graham cracker snacks in the morning, and some jelly beans I ate on the way to the doctor's office.

A snack and a walk after we got home made me feel a little better, but I still wasn't feeling great. In fact, I planned to go to bed early, but accidentally got hooked on a book and stayed up late reading. I didn't get any work done, didn't even get to check my email until evening, so today I will need to work extra hard to catch up.