First of all, today’s Chicken’s birthday. For some reason, this means that Brett and I went out to the Dew Drop last night and Drank. Our. Dinner. (Several times over, to judge by the way I feel today.) We didn’t get home ’til nearly ten – on a work night!

I drank so much I actually puked before I could get to sleep. (Ugh.) Brett says he managed to pass out before the spins hit him, but I wasn’t so lucky. And no, I have no idea what the hell we were thinking. It’s just that Chicken and Hoss were so terribly fun – and the fact that drinks are so cheap in Iowa that you can put yourself in the hospital with blood poisoning for less than twenty bucks.

Incidentally, Chicken’s birthday party will be celebrated at the Ba-tavern this Saturday night, if you’re so inclined. We told him we’d bring him an inbred, cross-eyed, buck-toothed chick from Missouri for his birthday. Snort!

This morning I woke up still drunk, took a really long hot shower, and made myself some White Trash Breakfast From Hell while sucking down glass after glass of water. Brett informed me that the blower motor on our prehistoric Lennox furnace had seized up during the night. This is not good, since our furnace is so old that they probably don’t make parts for it any more, but Brett’s working on finding something for it this morning. Hopefully he’ll find a motor that will fit, and everything will be hunky-dory. If he doesn’t, we’ll have to run space heaters while we’re gone and hope it’s enough to keep the house from freezing. I hope he remembers to find someone to let the dogs out tonight and tomorrow morning while he’s at it.

I came all the way to town to work for a mere three hours this morning, mostly because Buzz said he’d probably be late today and someone should be here. My commute sucked: my body decided a hangover wasn’t sufficient punishment for being an idiot, and now I’m having a panic attack. Every few minutes my chest feels… weird, I get one of those hated, never-to-be-sufficiently-damned adrenaline surges, and I have to remind myself that the very fact that I’m amped and afraid means I’m not actually dying.

I hate hormones.

Seriously.

Dude.

I’ve been paying attention to the days I have attacks and the days I don’t; sometimes it seems tied to my fertility cycle and other times it seems utterly random. I started thinking it might be dependent on my estrogen/progesterone balance after the miscarriage was followed by a week of the worst panic hell I’ve ever known. (Honestly, I don’t know how something as complex as the female fertility cycle could possibly fail to affect the rest of my hormone production, but who knows.) All I know is that [a] I’m not REALLY dying, despite the hormonal messages to the contrary, and [b] FUCK having to feel like I’m dying. Ever.

I’m not even particularly afraid of dying. I’m afraid of pain, yes, but not dying. Believe it or not, that’s my panic attack mantra: If I were dying, I wouldn’t actually be afraid, so that means this is not a heart attack but adrenaline and safe to ignore.

I hate this whole trip. Yes, I’m definitely learning a great deal from it – about life, health, attachment, the mind, and the nature of fear – but I hate it anyway. I hate feeling physically terrified while mentally I know I’m fine. I hate the thumping heart, the skippped heart beats, the obsessive hyper awareness of my heart and lungs, the tension I keep having to relax from, over and over again, when I find myself utterly locked up – it’s really no wonder I feel pains in my chest, and my fingers get cold or tingly, I get so tense. The adrenaline and other hormones make me so tense I can’t even breathe naturally.

Worst of all, I swear I’m not doing it. Most of what I read says the start of these attacks is mental, that I have to be thinking something that sets off the fight-or-flight hormone reaction. But the thing is, I’m just… not. Ever. I have observed in myself how I can make the attacks worse by freaking out or better by not freaking out, but this is a physiological issue and simply not a mental one. These attacks start all on their own whenever they want to, and what I’m thinking or doing is totally irrelevant. And the best news is – yay – there’s absolutely nothing medicine can do about it. I just get to pursue the non-allopathic paths and suck it up. Thank God for yoga and meditation, that’s all I have to say. And I really, really, really need to see an acupuncturist already!

Oh, being an optimist by nature, I do have to report that there is one benefit to this stupid anxiety condition: it’s its own laxative. Once you’ve got a circulatory system chock full of adrenaline, well, it’s stronger than coffee!

At noon I’ll go collect Joe from his tooly habitat and we’ll head farmward. There, we’ll load up into Brett’s truck and take ourselves, our XMs and iPods, and a change of clothes each to Columbia, MO. The Dew Droppers agreed last night that the drive will be about three and a half hours; so we should get there in the 3:30-to-5:00 range, depending on how much we screw around. I confirmed our hotel reservation last night, so most likely we’ll check in there first and then wander around until it’s time to get in line for the show. I expect to have fun, but I sincerely doubt I’ll be drinking much – if at all!

I’d better go check in on the DSL database before noon arrives. Ciao!
——–