Fibromyalgia & Traveling

I have to admit a little bit of anxiety and stress about traveling this week.

We are flying out in a couple days to California. I am so ridiculously excited about it, and I get sort of energized by all the activity in the airport, the plane taking off and landing, the hilarious Southwest attendants, and am thankful our good friend Brian will be helping to carefully make sure we get to and from the airport safely.

But there are just certain aspects of it that freak me out. It's all those unknowns.

How is my body going to react to this or that? How much walking, climbing will be involved? How hot is it going to get? Am I going to pack the right clothing {this is very important in my planning since I'm so temperature sensitive}? Am I going to accidentally pack something in my checked baggage that I meant for my carry-on or vice versa? Are one of my irrational fears going to come true {the passing out or puking in public things}? Are we going to get caught up in some severe storm and have major turbulence {generally not minded, but one's stomach can only handle so much}?*

*God bless Dramamine.

No, I have no fears about what could happen to the plane. I have no fears about it crashing. I have more fears about dying in a car accident than that. Mine are all the irrational fears of what could happen to me to be super embarrassing and humiliating.

Like our friends Alan & Amy who flew back to California a couple weeks ago from the wedding we were all at, and their overhead bin broke when they went to stow their carry-ons, so everyone had to de-board, get fixed, re-board, and fly away a couple of hours later. The whole time our friends were hated, despised, and had people claiming they were terrorists {and trust me, these people are as far away from being any sort of concern like that, and look like pretty normal people too}. All just because their overhead bin happened to break. People were so upset with them that their flight was delayed and they weren't all where they needed to be. As if it were somehow their fault. So humiliating. 

I guess so long as that sort of thing doesn't happen to us, I should trust that we'll be okay. ;) Thankfully Al & Amy handled it in stride....

But I digress... 

Then there's the lists of stuff to get done both at work and at home.

Why is it we always get more stressed out about going on and getting back from vacation than is really probably necessary? Why is that our lives seem to get the most hectic when we are trying so hard to get a good break?

Ack! It's maddening I tell ya!


Then I came home from the craziness at work, saw our beautiful Spring flowers and tree, walked in circles around them, smelled them, felt them, smelled them some more, sneezed a bit, took oodles of pictures, and soaked in every second I could before leaving on our trip.

And everything else just melted away.


Until the neighbor dog started barking his head off again and the moment was gone. Ahem.