Stung

On Monday my sister who does Cross Fit (an extreme workout from what I can tell, but you can take a look for yourself) started a new challenge with her class workout with a strict paleio (I have no idea how to spell this thing…they also call it a Hunter Gather diet) diet for thirty days.  So, I jumped on the bandwagon of diets (which I have NEVER done in my life) to see if what it would do.  So far…I hate it.  But, hey, you can do anything for thirty days, right? 

So why the diet?  I am not obese.  I am not even close to fat. And Robert thinks I’m hot, so why bother? For me, it has more to do with how I feel about myself.  I work out five to six days a week every week and have since January.  I have lost some weight, but plateaued out in about March.  Though I continually work out and have a physically demanding job lifting weights eight hour a day on the weekends, I would not say exercise is my problem.  So diet it must be.  After one week, I already hate it. 

On this diet you eat meat, fruits and vegetables.  If it has been processed at all you cannot eat it. I miss milk in my coffee and texture to my food.  I am so ready for the next three weeks to fly by (especially because Robert will be back then). 

In the process of all this, my body has taken a beating in my work outs, but also in the unusual way of insect intervention.  I went for a walk the other day with my sister and her two kids through their orchards.  I am in a green top and leggings, just strolling (not even a brisk walk).  All of a sudden out of nowhere my shoulder is on fire.  I think, perhaps I got caught on a branch or something and quickly go to unhook myself, but as I move my arm begins to radiate pain.  I quickly determine I have unknowingly walked into a hornet’s nest and that either they are threatened by me or I blended in with their home and they thought they landed at home base.  Either way, I am no in some of the worst pain I have been in in who knows how long.

The last time I was stung by anything was a bee and I was five.  I was playing dress up in my mom’s clothes, as most little girls are prone to do and took a seat on the window bench.  Just sitting, all of a sudden my left thigh is on fire and it is quickly determined I was stung by a bee.  Whoever said if you don’t bother them they will not bother you lied.  The only times I have been stung I have done nothing, and the first time that bee was in MY home. 

Anyway, so tears are literally streaming down my face at this point and two babies are trying to figure out what could have happened to cancel our walk so abruptly and why I am crying.  I read once that if you don’t usually curse and are in a lot of pain and your curse, it lessens the pain.  This is the first time I have wanted to try it out and of course there are babies around who can and do talk so I can’t. 

My sister was a medic with the Marines and does all the usual stuff.  I take my shirt off to get the stinger out (it must have fallen off in the fight to get home or never came off the buggar).  And because I have never been stung by a hornet (which we decided this must be because the pain is so intense and comes in waves) we call Urgent Care to make sure we are looking out for the right signs…mostly because my entire arm is going numb at this point.  She puts some lavender on it which immediately soothes the pain a little and I start icing it.  But, here is the tricky thing I learned: mud works wonders!  My brother-in-law put some mud on it and within thirty minutes the pain was significantly less (as long as I didn’t move the arm that much) and the waves it came in lasted only a brief moment.  So, next time your stung – mud is a miracle worker. 

Then last night I am coming home from rehearsal and I am so nauseous I want to pull over to the side of the road and vomit for no reason whatsoever.  I make it home.  Crawl into bed.  And call Robert.  You know you love someone when you feel like crap and only want to be with them, which is exactly how I felt when I was stung and again when I wanted to vomit.  He talked with me for a while.  He thinks he will head back to New Orleans this weekend, so we reminisced about our trip.  It was a great way to go to sleep, even if he did succeed in getting some of my most embarrassing stories out of me…only because he embarrassed me.  That’s love.   Let’s just say he had me on speaker without telling me and I said something for his ears only…that is roommate heard.  It wasn’t anything bad, it was just funny looking back, but in that moment I was mortified. 

Funny how life works, isn’t it?  Pain makes you want to be near someone and in the same instant you want to be in a dark cave hiding out from the embarrassment of a quick decision.  Ah, well, such is the life of this crazy girl.  You just never know what you’re going to get.