Today is our third wedding anniversary. I didn’t know that until I happened to turn on my PPC and there it was! Happy anniversary to me and my man! I’d call Brett to tell him so, but our phones are dead. Sigh. I guess I’ll tell him at dinner.

This morning, I made myself some chai. I put it in a go-cup. During my morning commute, I clicked back the little sliding door over the cup’s lid opening and lifted it. Although the chai was made of the usual things – milk, water, tea, cardamom, cinnamon, sugar, and cloves – I swear I got a whiff of that particular odor one would get opening a fresh box of Frootloops! Isn’t that odd? I really enjoyed it for its incongruity.

The morning was gorgeous; cool and damp and green and misty. It was a lovely drive. I adore this time of year in Iowa, even if there is a little too much humidity, and maybe the nights are a little colder than strictly necessary.

One of the many wonderful (not) symptoms my non-diagnosed-but-quite-obvious thyroid disorder is rapid heartbeat.

This symptom is quite frightening, because one tends to depend on one’s heart to do its job properly and without comment, thank you very damn much.

I’ve had a rapid heartbeat issue for some time now; I talked to both my (ahem) ‘real’ doctor and my beloved midwife, Kathy, about it. It bugs the hell out of me because it freaks me out, (‘what if it STOPS?!?’) and I’ve been trying to find out what’s causing it or at least how to help manage it.

My ‘real’ doctor offered me zero advice. He said the “only thing” he could do would be to send me home wearing a monitor for 24 hours, which would tell him only that I actually had a rapid heartbeat – which I’d already told him, duh – it would not inform him of any way to detect its cause, nor any way to effect a cure. He furthermore gave me no advice whatsoever regarding diet, lifestyle, or even stress management!

Kathy, on the other hand, immediately told me to reduce my caffeine intake, use my favorite stress management techniques (like meditation or yoga) regularly, take massive doses of calcium and magnesium in addition to my established supplement routine, make a point of not skipping any doses, and email her in a month with an update.

Oh, what a difference!

Anyway, last night I had a disturbing bout of rapid heartbeat. My heart was going 116 or more beats per minute for a few hours; my hands and face went very nearly numb, and I was dizzy. The timing of the sudden dizziness utterly sucked – I had to abandon some very fun action with my husband. (What the fucking hell?! Sex is too much activity for me now?! WHAT HAVE I DONE TO DESERVE THIS SHIT?!?!) I must have said “I’m sorry” to Brett about nine times, he just patted me absently and asked me if I was alright.

I was really freaked out by the experience, mainly because I’d read shit like this on the web: “untreated hypothyroidism can cause congestive heart failure, a condition in which a weakened heart is unable to pump enough blood to body organs,” (Discovery Health), and because my ‘doctor’ said it was ‘dangerous’ to have a sustained rate of 120 or above and to seek treatment if I experienced it.

To quote myself, “I’m sick of having stupid shit wrong with me all the time.”

I don’t mind the occasional illness or injury; they’re finite, they have a clear (or at least guessable!) cause, you know that you feel bad now but that you will eventually feel better.

This – stupid – thing – that I’ve been living the past few years is really starting to fucking bother me. It’s so small, so subtle, so insiduous, so total – I am beginning to resent it. (Which is probably a reaction to having ignored it for so long, pretending I was just tired or needed to drink more water or meditate more or – the worst – that it was all ‘normal aging’.)

Why do I have to feel just a little bit bad for three years in a row? Why does everything have to be just a little too hard all the damn time? Why do all these problems have to be so trivial and small, and almost impossible to relate to other people without sounding like a hypochondriac?

I look fine, I act fine (much of the time at least) – I’m not sick. I’m just not right. I think Brett finds it hard to understand what I’m saying when I go to bed at eight with an ‘I’m just really, really, really fatigued’. I think he’s beginning to suspect that I’m secretly lazy.

And that’s the thing – I’m not lazy. Not really. It’s true that I like to do things the easy way, but the real me actually does like to do things and to be busy. The current me likes to do nothing at all. I find myself always pondering what I can get out of, what I can skip, what I can cut corners on. And I’m just not like this.

I don’t have pain. There’s nothing wrong with me, really… I just get tired too much, worry too much, want to lie down and rest too much, want to put things off. I feel like the quintessential 30-something housewife with vague and miscellaneous complaints who should just get off her ass and do more.

I’m tired of being too cold or too hot all the time, and of feeling the self-reproach only the lazy can truly understand. Embarassingly, I’m also tired of feeling sorry for myself when I don’t get any recognition for the quasi-heroic effort I shouldn’t even have to make in the first place just to get a normal amount of stuff done!

It’s absurd, the whole thing, and I want to feel normal. I want to feel energetic. I want to be able to drink coffee occasionally without arrhythmic repercussions. I mean, I don’t need a pot a day, but a cup here and there is sooo enjoyable. I want to be able to have a relationship with alcohol that I’m not required to think about, just like everyone else!

I want to finish the day feeling satisfied rather than too tired and guilty for not getting enough done. I want to erase this new part of my brain that wonders how little I can do and still ‘get away with it.’ I want to never, ever have to stop in the middle of nookie with my hubby because something weird and disturbing and totally unnecessary is happening to my body.

And I want my freaking book to get here!

I’m also already quite tired of listening to myself whine. Over half of my posts lately are those sickening me-me-me-and-MY-problems posts! Ugh! I hate it! Argh!

Give me a problem, a real enemy to defeat! Not this horrible slow decay into uselessness and self-pity. I write about it because it’s too trivial to actually talk about; when someone asks “how are you?” they really don’t want to hear “well, actually, I’m tired and my heartbeat is so fast it’s making me more so, and I’m worried about absolutely nothing because my hormones are all fucked up”.

My other peeve today – hmm, could I be PMSing? – is the fact that I have no money and my fucking cell phone is turned off! That really bugs me!

I can’t believe how much all these phone bills are costing us; I won’t be all that shocked if the land line is diconnected when I get home tonight. I want to be compassionate about it, but I also don’t want to be a liar: the whole phone bill scene has made me angry because I can’t afford to pay an extra $700, and I don’t want to pay it because I never offered in the first place!

Lending someone money is one thing; it’s an intentional action you have control over. Having your bills run up to huge amounts with no warning is, well, a total drag. (Hopefully we’ll see some restitution soon – that would really rock.)

I hope it isn’t crass to admit that the dead trees don’t really bother me; we’ve got tons of trees and none of the orchard trees really produce enough to be particularly missed. I just wish I could use my cell to call my hubby (waaaah!!!) and wish him a happy anniversary. (I am so addicted to my cell, dammit!)

In other news, I have weird credit card karma. To wit: on the way back from Atchison last Sunday, we stopped at Target, where I purchased $87 worth of items. I tried to use my Target card, but it was declined. So I wrote a check and went on my way.

Today I logged into my Target.com account, and lo and behold – my card’s only got a $35.04 balance on it and there’s plenty of available credit. This shit happens to me all the time!