I usually get the response that post pregnancy I’m lactose intolerant, but please let me show you the ice cream, the yogurt, and the whipped cream I’ve had since not being pregnant anymore. Really, it’s not lactose, unless there’s a level thing where cottage cheese has an unholy amount of lactose and eggs developed lactose as well.

Last night, I was over at a friend’s house doing some work and she wanted Chinese food. I was all ok, I’ll share your appetizer and score me some egg drop soup. Neither of us flinched, I put my head back down into my computer and kept working.

The egg drop soup tasted great. Then, about ten minutes pass and my tummy starts to feel a little hurty. I rub my tummy and try to relax, figuring this must be just some weird stress thing and try to ignore it. Pretty soon I’m laying flat out on my friend’s floor trying to stretch my tummy by stretching my body, then flipping over onto my stomach, then sitting up, then sitting on my knees, then sitting on my knees on the couch trying to hang over the arm of the couch to put pressure on my stomach.

Then I had an overwhelming need for my bed, so I drove home.

Pain can help you stay surprisingly focused on the expressway. I do not recommend anyone actually drive while IN pain, of course. Yeah, don’t do that. <– clear disclaimer

I get home, writhe around on my bed, the couch, stand up, make hubby rub my back and finally, finally he made me drink some Pepto. Even though I tried to refuse because “this wasn’t that kind of stomachache” – well, it wasn’t. All the Pepto did was make me puke.

But the puking was the beginning of the solution to the problem.

The pain went from a 9 to a 6. Tolerable. Cope-able. Better than before. All the things you need for your body to ignore the pain and let you sleep it off.

When I woke up this morning my upper back and stomach ached from the spasms the night before. Not just the throwing up, either. My stomach and upper back hurt so bad the night before. There was muscle cramping. In my back. It was so weird.

So now I ache really bad and had trouble getting out of bed because none of the muscles in my ribcage want to work. Which means *drum roll please* I didn’t get to take my daughter to Kindergarten Orientation and Bus Orientation today. I feel like a slimeball. I finally would have had a chance to meet the Kindergarten teacher and be all, “Hey there, it’s me, let’s be besties!” Ok, I wouldn’t have been THAT creepy, but you know what I mean.

Today was my day to feel different. To be different about Kindergarten. To know what it feels like to start a year being the me I am right now. The one everyone likes. The one that gets along with everybody. The one that has a bright and sparkling gem of a daughter about to go to classes there.

I want to walk into that school relaxed and confident that I’m a rock star, my daughter is a rock star and the school year is going to be fabulous for both of us.

Instead she’s at school with her father, I’m home with a stomachache and backache – and it’s all my fault because I know how I react to eggs and it never even dawned on me that egg drop soup, you know, might be a problem. Because I forgot I had dietary restrictions.

How does that even happen?

It makes me smile.

Last night was my first day of school. Other than the horrific panic attack on the way to the classroom (that was relieved by going into an empty classroom and “breathing it off”) it went really well. But I know you’re all dying to know what the outcome was. Was I able to keep my mouth shut, my head down, and just get through class?

Nope.

I was so disappointed in myself. But everyone was yelling out answers to questions, it was a communications class, everyone was really into it and they asked me what I’d do if I won a $1M dollar lottery and I could not resist answering, “Hookers and Blow!”

How does your anxiety present itself? Mine presents in the form of inappropriate but wildly funny (in context) randomness. I did explain that I wasn’t the type to gamble and play the lottery and in my mind if I were the type of person to play the lottery I probably would be the type to waste the money on hookers and blow. One woman looked at me strangely and I said, “What? There are male hookers.”

Frying pan into the fire, much? Why yes, yes that’s where I went.

So when the teacher laughed and said, “Yep, this one is trouble.” I couldn’t tell if she meant the funny, enjoyable kind of trouble kids get  into on sitcoms like Leave it to Beaver or something really innocently funny, or if she meant the Secret Life of the American Teenager kind of trouble with the emotional train wrecks and bad writing.

Which is really funny because we talked about communication as encoded messages given by the talker that are decoded by the listener and the types of “noise” that keep the communication from being understood. One was semantic noise, which is differences in language. AKA when my teacher says, “This one is trouble” I don’t know her language or personality well enough to decode if I was supposed to smile or just withdraw now because she’s going to flunk me because she doesn’t think I’m funny.

Semantic noise.

Hey, if nothing else I’m learning! Right? That’s the point of school, right? No? The point of school is to transfer to the other college next semester and fast track through so I can start on my Masters in a year? Crap.

Why can’t I just keep my mouth shut?

On a brighter note, I slept like a BABY last night. All the learning about Hinduism and Communications did my brain good. It slept the sleep of the righteous. Of the learned. Of the not-self-hateful. Going back to school – panic attacks or no – was a very good decision on my part. I can feel it in mah bones – and my sleep patterns.

(reference to The Tipping Point, published in 2000 and still very popular today)

Kind of a long way of saying, “The devil is in the details.”

But I feel like I’m at the edge of a cliff. Not a bad cliff. A pretty cliff. With lots of foliage and butterflies and even trees. A nice place, except for the inherent cliff-iness of the whole thing. Because it’s a long way down and I’ve come really far and now….now it’s time to go even farther.

I’m scared. School is not something I’ve ever been good at and now I have to be sure of myself and my ability to succeed at something that has always been very difficult for me.

Sometimes I feel like I’m too old to be amazing but too young to actually have any real power.

School always makes that feeling, that in-between, not-good-enough feeling come into painful focus. It hurts to think I may not be good enough, especially when I know I can be. I do have the potential for…I don’t want to say greatness, that sounds way too over-the-top. I never wanted to be great, just…good enough.

Maybe I am having trouble verbalizing it because what I want is to not want. I want to enjoy the moment, the day, my choices, this life.

Enjoy it without always having to think twenty steps ahead. It’s a strange feeling to have a five-year-plan and realize it was only made so I did not have to think about my path now. I could just allow my path to happen and my only job was to be me. Inside my life, living it, authentically me.

Now, see, for authentically me …. that means I have to be vulnerable (because I am) I have to be trusting, and as wise as I am able.

…and kind.

Just when I think my dual nature of dirty hippie vs. dirty capitalist has come to an end and one side has clearly won the battle of myself – a day comes along, I wake up, and there she is. Me. Back for another fabulous round.

Sorry if this gets a little wonky and off topic. My need to replace my theology book has the part of my brain that thinks about religion out and getting un-dusty and having a field day with belief and thought and need and want and worry and trying to lecture me from afar.

But right now, I’m trying to decide if I should go to the bookstore now, or this evening. When will there be less people? When will this chore be best accomplished? Now, methinks. Because who knows what will happen later.

I have to re-read the book … because I forget if it’s mentioned that people remember the tipping point as the point where their muscles were all bunched or it was when the release happened.

Did this post make any sense?