One of the hardest parts about taking extended breaks (four days is apparently a lifetime?) from my daily updates are the rumours and the terrible predictions I come back to in emails.
People wonder if I died. If I did myself in or if maybe Caleb killed me, or worse, someone else did. People wondered if we were taking a fancy trip abroad and I didn't want to get flack for it in the time of a pandemic. People wondered if Lochlan finally got tired of me and left, leaving me heartbroken. People wondered if I was finally moving on from writing everything down that I want to share or even don't want to share.
A lot of you wondered if maybe I had been sent away to be fixed or bettered or helped somewhat, that it was good. Those ones were weirdly encouraging and loving and now I feel strange about every word I've ever written here.
But nope. Close but I didn't. I wouldn't. He didn't. No one else would dare. Of course not. No, he didn't and he never will. No I'm not. And no, I didn't.
Hope that helps, okay, byeeeeeeee-
Ha. I am still here.
This is totally sad but as I said, my body takes Great Delight in sabotaging me every single chance it gets and so the DAY BEFORE I am to have my Covid vaccine I stepped right into a wasp nest in the back of the orchard. One tucked in to the place where I stand to reach up and hang the bird feeder when I remember to refill it. There's a large piece of driftwood underneath that delineates the path from the arbour and it's also a great way for me to reach the lowest branch. Apparently it was also a great place to build a nest for a large quantity of super aggressive yellowjackets and of course when I stood on it they came out and in my surprise I kicked the log again and oh, my.
It was a cloud of black angry buzzing in my face and all around me.
They stung my hairline and my lip and my nose and right at the corner of one eye, one on my elbow, getting caught and then for good measure my thumb, too.
I am not allergic, or rather, I wasn't, but fourteen stings at once is a lot and I didn't fare so well and my blood pressure dropped and my heart began to dance and now, well now I am allergic. Really thought I would be fine before my body went hey...what? No.
The whole side of my face swelled up, a rash developed almost all over my top half and my eyes swelled shut. My nostril swelled shut. One side of my mouth blew up. It was frightening. It hurt so bad. So, so bad.
Expired epi pens still have lots of life though and that's good.
The boys are surprisingly good in emergencies now and didn't fuck around wondering if it was a real emergency or something we could figure out. It was just go go go.
Doctors are fast and incredible at what they do, and that's even better.
The boys have spoiled me rotten for more the last week. It happened last Saturday afternoon and I think I lost an entire week of my life but I'm feeling so much better and the only long term effects are whatever time it's going to take the rash and subsequent nerve pain to subside and the fact that I have to add ALLERGIC TO STINGS to my HARD OF HEARING medical bracelet. My vision is okay, hearing bad as ever and when do I not have a rash or reaction to something?
Fun fact since I managed to demonize Caleb at the beginning of this post for no reason and I have to not do that, as he spent all of Tuesday randomly describing the screen for me as we watched Bling Empire on Netflix. Well, he watched and I listened because I couldn't see and even if I could have I couldn't put my glasses on because it still hurts and my skin feels like a third degree burn and it almost burst in places. He said they paused and zoomed in on various designer items during the episodes and I told him it's to give people time to buy something from that designer online and there begat a new game for us and now we have some interesting packages coming in the post this week and fully a third of them are from Cartier.
(the rest are men's Dior and Balenciaga RTW items for Lochlan since he expressed interest in a shirt so Caleb bought him a BUNCH of stuff he thinks Lochlan might like. They, along with Ben have stuck beside me around the clock even though I look like the elephant girl. Still do, pretty much though the swelling has gone down a little now.)
So all is not lost. The silver lining in a long week turned out to be white gold. And never stand on a hollow log without checking to see if anyone's home first.
(My vaccine is rebooked for the end of the month, thank God. That's all I wanted in the first place and it's why I was rushing to get the gardening done so I wouldn't have to do any on vaccine day or the day after that because the boys were all really tired after their shots.)