Cabin Fever

I've always hated the cold. I'd scrunch up my shoulders until I realized I was giving myself a headache. I haven't worn a coat this winter because pulling my right arm back to put on a coat produces a jolt of such painful magnitude, it's just easier to just not do it. I've also put off the transition to pants, I'm wearing 3/4 length skirts, thick fuzzy knee socks and low cut Uggs. I'd love a taller pair of Uggs, but I can't afford them. Thus far, they're the only shoes I can wear aside from the adidas sports sandals and flip flops. I have a long wide, scarf I drape around me and gloves and I go outside and while I know it's cold, I don't really feel the cold. I feel it, but as if through a barrier. I don't scrunch up my shoulders, I don't shiver, I'm not miserable, I feel it, but I don't feel it. I'm desensitized.

I heat the first floor of my house with a gas fireplace, so when I go up to bed, as soon as I turn the corner up to the second floor I feel a blast of cold air. I used to use a space heater every night and still be unable to warm up. I'd get in bed with fleece pants and socks to warm up the freezing sheets before I braved them. Now I get into bed in a t-shirt. I feel the cold sheets, and at the same time I don't. I'm desensitized.

Maybe you can only have enough happen to your body before something shuts down. I was pretty beat up before I got cancer. High risk pregnancies, invasive fertility tests, late term amnio, constant probing and prodding doctor's appointments and emergency C-section, a terrible infection and then the year of cancer treatment. I think something has been severed, or turned off for my protection. Ultimately, I don't' know whether that's a good thing or bad.

I used to have an endless capacity for staying home and endless patience for the antics of my kids, truly, endless. I'm losing that as well. Little dude, my beloved, was home sick for almost two weeks, got back to school for a week or so, then it was the long holiday vacation, back to school for a week and a day, and home sick again for the rest of the week, and I am on my last nerve. I'm climbing the walls, I'm impatient with the antics, I just want the homework to get done and I'm not distracted or amused by the silly dances or the drama. I feel like I've been turned off the past few days, switch clicked, dial turned. Maybe it was the year, mostly at home that just utterly filled my quota for that sort of thing. Maybe it's that I have very few nights off to go out and no one to go out with when I do. Much of that is my own fault as I'm bad at making plans. Maybe I have a classic case of cabin fever. If I didn't have my upcoming trip to look forward to, I think I'd loose my mind. How did I go twenty years without a vacation and now barely five months since my trip to Mexico, I'm climbing the walls. I need to be at the beach, in the warm water, away from home and tasks and chores and clutter and care taking. I went from never doing anything for myself to counting the days until I get on a plane. Don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I guess it just is what it is and I have to just go with it. Things change, we change.