Vertigo

"If wishes was horses, we'd all be eating steak."
-Jayne

Right, so the past two weeks have alternated between being a complete waste & a bit of a nightmare. The one exception being two and a half days of a convention that I rather enjoyed. Here's the short version:

Two days before I left, I found out that the papers for my car didn't go through at the county clerk's office because when I bought the car the guy filling out the paperwork wrote down my wrong middle initial. I had no time to stand in line at the courthouse (with new papers) for a couple hours, as I had to pack, stop the mail, go to work, pay rent, do other last minute errands, etc. So, I left without having gone. This becomes relevant later.

Went to the airport to catch a plane to PA for the convention-flight was delayed, delayed, and canceled. I ended up trapped in O'Hare and spent the night on a row of seats (got maybe two hours bad sleep). I finally arrived at the hotel for the convention, got checked into the wrong room, had to move my stuff. The convention itself I enjoyed. I brought out my most extroverted self and it was all the way until the last hour or two before I got to the state of "Everyone, go home and leave me alone already."

The trip home wasn't bad-it completely lacked an airport overnighter. My guy met me at the airport and it was very, very good to see him. Woke up the next morning, had to throw up. Did that a few more times over the course of the day. (This would be Tuesday we're talking about now) and anymore, being sick enough to vomit brings on my vertigo.

Short digression: Vertigo. I've had it as long as I can remember. I don't mean a sick to the stomach feeling when you're up too high, either. I'm talking about vertigo as an inner ear problem which is defined by unpredictability. To paraphrase the doctor who finally figured out it was vertigo, "The only thing you can really predict about it is that you can't predict it." This means that at random times, with no warning, I tend to wake up one day and have symptoms. They tend to last about five days and the severity varies. Sometimes it's no more than light twinges here and there, once it was so severe that just standing up was enough to knock me over if I didn't grab onto something. So, basically, during this period I become very sensitive to certain things. Again, this tends to vary from one time to the next. Sometimes I'm very sensitive to light (like this most recent one) which means walking from a light room to a dark one, or having a light flashed in my eyes, makes it feel like someone just spun my head (imagine a top-one moment not moving, then someone turns it and away it goes). Sometimes I'm more sensitive to movement-like bending down to put on my shoes, or going from sitting to standing. Two things I make it a rule to avoid during these times are driving (for obvious reasons) and computers (something about the glare from the screen really aggravates).

So, right. The vertigo hit and I've been trapped in my house for four days. Yesterday, I braved it and went to the courthouse, for the sake of my car, in the afternoon when I was feeling pretty good. For some reason it's always worse in the morning than afternoon. I went to the "dealers only" part of the clerk's office because the title officer at the dealership told me to. I sat and waited for half an hour only to be told I had to go "stand in line." Telling the clerk that the gal at the dealership told me to come there instead did absolutely no good. The line was a good hour long and there was no way I would've been able to make it, so I went home very frustrated. My temporary tags expire today (Saturday) and the courthouse is closed, and the writers' meeting is tomorrow. Let's see if I get stopped. Of course, that will only add to my great joy at how the end of this month has been going.

Alright, the bitch-fest is over. I keep reminding myself that the meeting is tomorrow-along with the post-meeting dinner that I always look forward to. Also, this month I'm submitting a chapter of Oracle that I've been planning for months-two main characters get killed. So, I'm kind of excited about that. I just have to make sure I don't die or total my car or something before then. Wish me luck.