Well, we are underway on our grand vacation / migration out to Austin, Tejas.
The movers came on Friday and then we headed up to Willits, CA to visit some relatives of mine. Friday night we got in after dealing with a terrible traffic snarl in Santa Rosa and after a light dinner headed to sleepy land. Saturday we enjoyed Ft. Bragg and the Mendocino coast. We made a really great stop by the Botanical Gardens where we same many rhodedenddrons, grasses, and a variety of Japanese garden plants.
Sunday morning we headed down to Pismo Beach area ( we’re staying in San Luis Obispo ). The evening was going really great and as we headed back to SLO (for a pizza downtown) i started to feel the presence of something I’d not felt in many years, a good old-fashioned asthma attack.
( grossitude follows )
Now, I’ve not written at any great length about growing up all allergic-y and asthmatic-y (sucks to my ass-mar) but that feeling of an attack set on and I felt horrible about it because this time I had my baby by and she had no idea how to help. She heard the pipe organ in my chest, she saw me coughing lung plaque, using darjeeling tea as a dialator…she was so worried.
It’s hard to explain to someone who’s healthy, pulmonary wise, that this is, amazingly enough, familiar and that you need only wait it out. I took the puffs of my inhaler, and knew that all there was to do (after shower to remove allergens) was to wait for the aveoli to loosen.
Like quicksand it just takes time to solve itself.
But my poor baby didn’t know what to makee of it.
I finally got her to go back to sleep while I did something that asthmatic kids around the world find great refuge in: electronic games / programming / etc. You see, when we enter an activity like that our breathing goes shallow, because we’re focused. We stop listening to every wheeze in our lungs and our body can start to unknot the airways. It’s strange, but playing a little Game Boy and writing this entry is really the best cure for the symptoms I know.
I think i must have gotten some allergen in my clothes, so we’ve put all dirty clothes in a laundry bag and will handle it in Vegas.
Tomorrow should be about a 7 hour run down 101, across the top of LA, and then along the 15 to Vegas.
I would post photos, but to get the gear out would wake up my poor, traumatized darling, so I’ll not do that.
Just wanted to say I’ll be leaving the Golden state tomorrow and that everything is going OK - a slight asthmatic episode aside.
May 30th, 2006 at 11:25 am
keep on truckin! sorry to hear about the asthma, but you know in about fifteen (!!!) years of our friendship i don’t know if i’ve ever witnessed an asthma attack on your part, not even a hit off the inhaler. i must have some mitichloridians or something that stave off the deadly allergens that assail you so.
have fun with the trip
May 31st, 2006 at 1:58 am
Oh really? Well, I generally trtied to keep it under control during the HS and frosh year at UT.
But surely you remember that I missed a rather large deal of school in HS? Most of those days were owing to having spent nights up enduring slow oxygen privation. I was also taking about 3 pills a day through HS.
You also recall i used to set the alarm an hour before i meant to get up so i could get up, down my allergy medicine, sleep while it “kicked in” and then go out, no?