This is my brain on drugs

Oh man, where to start.  I guess I'll just get into it.

The hives didn't quite go away.  I woke up Saturday pretty itchy.  Well, no.  Incredibly itchy.  Maddeningly itchy.  Grateful I had long fingernails that day itchy.  I called the advice nurse and they gave me a prescription for 3 more days of steroids.  Ok, done.  I'll pick that up later.  I took a cool washcloth and ice to my legs.  I called Mr. Renaissance and asked if I could come over and hang out in his hammock while he worked on his house (I was out of steam dealing with this alone).  So stoned on Benadryl, I dragged a cooler of ice, some magazines, and the dog over to his place where he was pile driving some part of the foundation.  A few minutes later I was hanging in the hammock staring into space with some ear protection on.

Then at 5 he took me to The Quiet Comedienne's baby shower.  There was no way I was getting there on my own with all that Benadryl.  He hung out for a few minutes, met some of my friends, then went back to work on the house.  Around 8 I invited him to come back and hang out at the baby shower that had by then turned into a fun BBQ.  We hung out 'til midnight, had fun with my friends (and they approved), then we headed back to my place.  At this point, I couldn't have felt more grateful.  Grateful that I have awesome friends who care enough to approve or disapprove of who I'm dating, grateful that he was comfortable around my friends and had a good time, grateful that he's social and sweet and an ideal party partner, and grateful that he was dragging my ass all over town.

Sunday morning I woke up and my lips were swollen.  And other parts of my face.  With a side of hives.  Oh shit.  This is the sort of thing they told me to go into Urgent Care right away for.  So we got dressed and he drove me in.  I was pretty worried.  And pretty horrified that I looked like Sloth from The Goonies.

He went into the room with me and was very sweet and distracting.  He made me laugh, held my hand, sat me on his lap.  It was way less scary than if I had been there by myself.  

They upped my steroid dosage and put me on a total of 12 days of them, and changed me from Benadryl to Zyrtec.  Ok, fine.  Two hours later we were on our way.  I went home to nap and try to regain normal facial structure, and he went back to the house to work. 

I woke up at 5 looking less like a Real Housewife of Orange County and more like a Real Housewife of Beverly Hills.  Ok, this I can work with.  The hives were also gone.  But I was left with some pretty serious cabin fever from convalescing 4 days in my room.  So I got the ok to convalesce on the hammock at his house.  This time not stoned on Benadryl.  Which meant I could actually read a book.  And text some friends.  

Then we headed over to BurgerMaster for dinner, and I convinced him (which was embarrassingly easy) to come back to my place after he got cleaned up (man was dirty), as I still needed a cuddle.

Monday morning we got some coffee and I took my second day of 3 steroid pills.  Half an hour later I was feeling a little weird.  Imagine the biggest caffeine buzz you've ever had.  You know the fast heartbeat, extreme nervous energy, extra anxiety, and complete inability to focus?  Yes, that.  Now imagine a tornado goes through your brain and shakes it all up.  And you feel like that from 10 am to midnight.  That was my day.  I didn't get a whole lot of work done.  A little, not a lot.  Everything I normally do to relax myself I used in an attempt just to get back to some sort of normal me.  It mostly didn't work.

Tuesday I decided to start reducing my dosage one day early - 2 pills, not 3.  This was a good plan.  Because I'll tell you - my problem is not the hives anymore.  The hives have been gone since Sunday.  My problem now is the drugs.  The drugs are messing with me.  But now that I'm tapering down the steroids it's getting back to normal.  Slowly.  And I have an appointment tomorrow with my regular doctor.  Maybe they'll want to set up an allergy test or something.  I don't know.

But anyway, back to Tuesday.  Ah, I was still too amped up and unfocused to work so I did some other stuff instead (slept til 11 while the steroids were finally worn off from the day before, went grocery shopping with The Baker, and then went to book club).  Afterwards Mr. Renaissance met me back at my place and we stayed up 'til 4 showing each other our lives via digital photo collections.  Oh lord, I guess that leads into today.

Wednesday.  We got up, I made a weekday-morning-nothing-fancy breakfast, I started cleaning the kitchen (two new roommates coming, people!) and he hung out with me and ended up scrubbing the top of cabinets.  It was amazing.  So nice.  Then we spent the lunch hour(s?) back upstairs (ahem).  And ended up talking, and talking, and talking.  And admitting even more of the details that we're smitten.  That we want this to work.  That externalities may make it complicated and therefore taking it slow might be the smartest.  But that we haven't really been able to take it that slow so far.  And that it feels right, and it feels good, and it feels easy.  And a lot of other details that may be a bit too early to reveal at 4 weeks (finances, children, dreams), unless you're us, and unless it feels like this.  We admitted we were both afraid that the other shoe would drop, and we tried to ferret it out.  We didn't find it.  He didn't want to leave, I didn't want him to leave, he finally left (at 4 pm).

And then I spent the rest of the day deep-cleaning and organizing the kitchen and living room.  And it looks good, people.  It looks good.

A Wednesday evening

Well I made it 'til Wednesday.  Not too bad.  Mr. Renaissance and I got a couple of the amazing Cuban sandwiches from Paseo, grabbed some beer, and went down to his sailboat docked across the channel from the Ballard Locks.

We were planning on swimming also, but the lovely sunny day turned into a cloudy evening with sprinkles.  No matter, it was still beautiful and a pretty relaxing way to end a work day.

Bubba and Mr. Renaissance are friends.

Check out the gorgeous sunset.

Unfortunately, my body was not quite down with the program.  What started out that morning as a seemingly itchy dry skin patch on my right hand turned into what looked like a series of mosquito bites on my hand and wrist and then later that evening, hives on my hands, wrists, and legs.

Within 15 seconds of seeing this on the drive home, Mr. Renaissance rolled into the grocery store parking lot.   I was all, 'What are we doing at the grocery store?'.  He was all, 'Getting some cortisone cream and Benadryl.  Stay here.'  Oh, ok.  So I took pictures of my legs.

It was a little bit worse than this - darkness obscures it some.

And then sometime in the night (which included waking at up 3am incredibly itchy and taking more Benadryl) it turned into this.

And this.

Hives!  They were everywhere - feet, legs, back of knees, torso, back, armpits, neck, and they were making their way up my face.  This was only the second time I've gotten hives and these were way worse.  I took two more Benadryl, got super loopy, and decided to sleep the whole morning (perhaps gave in to sleep is a more accurate description).  Mr. Renaissance let Bubba out and fed him his breakfast while I fell in and out of sleep every few minutes having crazy dreams.  He wanted me to go to the doctor and get steroids.  I thought that sounded like a pain in the ass.

But after talking to my mom and the advice nurse, and waking up at noon with a hive on my eyelid, I was on my way to Urgent Care.  At which point the triage nurse and the two doctors who looked at me were pretty impressed with this level of hivery.  I left there an hour later and only $40 poorer (hopefully!) with steroids.  Which I took immediately after locating some food because apparently these things keep you awake (time stamp on this post anyone?).  But not before shuffling around Seattle stoned on Benadryl, running my foot over with a cart at Petco (dog was out of food), and mumbling an order of one cheeseburger and one chocolate chip mint hot fudge sundae to the employee at Dick's.  

But now, it's clearing up.  My arms and back are clear, my right hand knuckles aren't swollen anymore, and everything else is starting to fade.  Good idea, those steroids.  

I still have zero idea what caused it.  Super weird, huh?  The body is tricky business.

It's hard to feel insecure in a new relationship when...

1. You've got flowers sitting on your bookshelf.  'I like you' flowers, not 'I fucked up' flowers.
2. You've been told multiple times how intelligent/gorgeous/interesting you are.
3. His passenger helmet is currently living in your closet.
4. You've told all other romantically-inclined people in your life that you can't see them anymore and that brings relief.
5. You know you both have a mental list of all the things you want to do together.
6. He spent his evening reading your first published paper in its entirety.

Yes, I feel good about this (for the record we're talking about the sailor, who we're going to go ahead and call Mr. Renaissance here).  I thought that fact might mean that I could go a few days without seeing him and be cool about it.  Wrong - I'm completely infatuated.  In the past week we've seen each other Wednesday night to Thursday morning, Friday night to Saturday morning, and Sunday night to Monday morning.  You know Monday?  That day before today?  Yeah, that one.  So what I'm saying is I can only go about 24 hours and be cool about it.  Now I'm starting to twitch.

But, in the interest of not jumping in to an insta-relationship, I'm going to pretend to be cool about it.  I'm going to spend the night watching Mad Men, taking the dog on a jog, and working.  And of course, I'm going to whine to you about it.  Here it goes... I want to see him.  I miss his face.  I want to grab some dinner, talk about our days, give each other the eye, jump into bed and cuddle into his chest, and have to put earplugs in to sleep through the snoring.

But I'm going to jump into the arms of Don Draper instead.  He'll be my tall, dark and handsome #2.

This'll put a smile on your face

I want to dance like Jaleel White!

And... off the grid

It's too much!  I've got enough possibilities at the moment.

Shut 'er down!

The online profile that is.  Yeah, sure I'm blowing my shot at the 6 month guarantee but this girl can't take it anymore.  No new people in the life, please.  Not right this second.

Working at home...

involves breaks.  Like say you get to a tough point in your code and you need to think about it for awhile.  You need to let the options sink in.  You may make up a new pointless trick with the dog.

See, he was supposed to do this.  This is the thing.

But the first time I recorded he did this.

What a weirdo.  But he keeps me entertained.

I think you might be talking about me, otherwise you're probably just speaking gibberish

About half the profiles I've read have stated that they're interested in someone 'who doesn't take themselves too seriously'.

What do they mean by this?  I have no idea.  Which leads me to believe, since I don't know what they're talking about, that in their eyes I probably take myself too seriously for their tastes.

So then I don't respond.  Because really, if 'doesn't take herself too seriously' is an important bullet point, we're probably not looking for the same things.