Existential Boredom

I’m not as intensely suicidal anymore, but I really just don’t see the point of being alive.

Since the election, I have nothing to do with my time.  Literally all I do is sit in bed all day and waste time on my computer.  There is no point to my existence.

Nothing holds my attention.  I try to knit, to watch Netflix, to read, to write.  Nothing interests me.  I force myself to do it, but that doesn’t work for very long, and there are so many hours to fill.

And I hurt.  I don’t know what it is with the roving joint pains–one joint will hurt badly for weeks or sometimes months, and then for no reason that pain will stop.  Soon it starts back up in a different joint.  Right now it’s my left wrist again.  I have a brace from when I sprained my wrist doing kung fu, and it helps some…but it makes it hard to type or knit.  And my belly hurts.  I think I might be heading into another UC flare, which is awesome, especially since I might have to come off the 6-MP soon.  I’ve spent the last two weeks telling myself it was just PMS-related mini-flare symptoms, but since my period hasn’t happened, I don’t think I can blame PMS.  Oh, and it’s IBD Awareness Week, so clearly my body has impeccable timing and a fucked-up sense of humor.

I barely have an appetite, either.  I mean, I get hungry, but I don’t eat for hours because I just don’t care enough to get food.  C made me a gluten-free vegan cheesecake a week ago.  Ordinarily I’d have eaten the whole thing in about two days (no judging), but I’ve still got some left over.  I’ve got a big container of Thanksgiving leftovers, too.  They’re good, but I haven’t touched them.  Oh, and there’s also lentil soup C made.  It’s not even that I’m too tired/weak to prepare anything–literally all I’d have to do was take them out of the refrigerator and microwave them.  But I just don’t care enough.

I’d fooled myself into thinking the weakness was getting at least a little better, but it turns out I only thought it was better because I didn’t do anything beyond sitting in bed and getting up to use the bathroom.  Yesterday I cleaned my microwave.  It took all of five minutes, and that’s a generous estimate.  But then I couldn’t stand up, collapsed on the kitchen floor, and had to crawl back to my bed.  How am I supposed to have ANY quality of life when I can’t even stand for five minutes?  I’m terrified that whatever’s going on is getting worse.  I still haven’t had any luck reaching my gastroenterologist for a referral to a neurologist.  I might ask C to see if my ex-nurse, S, can make some calls.  Often medical professionals get a much better response than patients–sad but true.

I’m just so tired of existing like this.  There’s no light.  I don’t feel an immediate need to kill myself, but I can’t just keep living like this, either.  I want to feel like there’s some meaning, but I can’t see anything in this fog.

Triggers

Sorry I’ve been absent.  I have been/still am really triggered, and I haven’t been able to read–blogs or anything else longer than a few sentences.  Still really struggling and not sure I’ll be able to write coherently.

See, Thursday we went to Boston for a post-election party.  I thought it was just going to be the party, an overnight at someone’s place in Boston, and then home.  Instead it turned into bar-hopping with the campaign staff.  If you’re thinking that sounds like fun, you’re wrong.  See, alcohol is a trigger for me because my father was often drunk when he abused me.  Between the UC and the meds, I can’t drink.  Well, everybody else is getting fucking wasted, and they just leave me sitting in a corner by myself for hours, not even talking to me.  I told my RFD that I’m not physically capable of running all around Boston, and it was raining to boot.  Usually he’s really considerate about my limitations, but that night, he really didn’t seem to give a shit.  Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe it was just that it was his last night with the rest of the campaign staff.  Whatever it was, he basically treated me like I didn’t matter–I got dragged to four different bars, and predictably, I eventually fell on a slick sidewalk at 1:30 in the morning and couldn’t get up for several minutes.  Oh, and for most of the time we were bar-hopping, our 20-year-old intern was just left sitting in his car because she couldn’t get into the bars.  I wanted to go sit with her instead, but my RFD made me stay because his phone was dead, and he needed my GPS to find our way back to where the car was parked.

In the second bar, while I was sitting alone in the corner, the only sober person, this drunk businessman in a nice suit comes over and starts hitting on me.  Then he grabbed my breast, and I just froze.  I just sat there and let him.  I have extensive martial arts experience, and even though I’m not physically capable of as much as I used to be, I could’ve gotten away from him.  If nothing else, I could’ve hit him with my cane.  But I didn’t do any of that.  I didn’t say no, I didn’t say stop.  I just sat there and let him do it.

Now I really hate myself.  It’s just like with my father.  I mean, okay, when I was a kid, there wasn’t really anything I could do about it.  Even as I got a little older, he had me believing that he’d kill me if I fought or if I told anyone, and I didn’t have the reasoning skills to realize he wouldn’t have gotten away with that–he’s really just not smart enough.  So back then, I had an excuse.  But I let it go on when I was old enough that I knew he wouldn’t kill me and I really could’ve stopped him.  I mean, I was 19 the last time he raped me.  There’s no excuse for that.  I just let him.  If I’d fought or said no, he probably would’ve stopped, but I never did.  So that’s on me.

Now I just want to tear myself to shreds.  I want to cut my breasts off–I never wanted them anyway, and if I did that, no one would want to touch me.  I’m also really struggling with sexual self-harm urges.  It’s something I used to do but haven’t in a long time.  But I can’t stop the flashbacks and the body memories, and it would put me back in control.  I know how fucked-up that is, but sometimes it’s the only thing that works.  If I do something worse that any of them ever did to me, then what they did can’t hurt me anymore.

And on top of everything else, my roommate is being horrible.  I came home to a gross apartment–mold in my microwave, a half-empty beer on the kitchen counter, an unflushed toilet, and sopping wet washcloths and a giant hairball in the bathtub.  I just pulled the washcloths and hairball out of the tub and dumped them on the bathroom floor, and this morning, she pitched a hissy fit over it, stomping around and slamming doors and shit.  (Another big trigger, on top of all the other triggers.)  I’m sorry, but you’re fucking 29 years old, and I’m not your goddamned maid.  I pay rent too.  I don’t mind messiness–books and papers and stuff sitting around is not a big deal, but I don’t want fucking mildew growing in my bathroom or mold growing in my kitchen.  In general, I don’t want things growing in my living space.  (Although right now growing some pot for myself sounds pretty ideal.)  How fucking hard is it to dump out the rest of your beer or to hang up your fucking washcloths?  But EVERY FUCKING DAY when I go to take a shower, there they are.  I don’t leave my shit for you to clean up, and you have the goddamn nerve to pitch a fit when I move your messes somewhere obvious as a reminder that maybe you should, you know, be a fucking adult and clean them the fuck up?  Bitch, get on the NOPE train to Fuckthatville.

My landlady is away for the weekend, but I’m thinking about talking to her about this when she gets back.  I’m hesitant to do that on the one hand, because I feel like we’re both adults and should handle our own problems.  But on the other hand, I’m so triggered by her screaming and slamming doors and stomping around that I literally CAN’T deal with it like an adult because I dissociate and switch, either to a terrified child or a really aggressive teenager (hence all the swearing in the last few paragraphs), neither of which is good for dealing with a tense situation.  Plus, if I do want to kick her out, I’m going to have to go through my landlady because Roommate is on the lease now.  I’m not even sure I legally CAN kick her out.  I just know I can’t deal with much more of this.  I’ve been taking photos of the grossness when it happens as documentation, but I’m not sure what the laws are.  I just know I can’t live like this.  I spend a lot of my time afraid to come out of my room when she’s home because I will snap if she starts yelling or bitching at me.  I just have so much other shit to deal with that I really cannot deal with hers on top of everything else.

Collapse

So today I collapsed in the Walmart parking lot and proceeded to have a sobbing meltdown.  Apparently I’m one of THOSE Walmart people now.

I understand why it happened: I’m finally just getting over the sinus infection, I’m still dealing with the gut problems, and now I’ve got my period on top of that.  I could barely stand long enough to get from the bed to the bathroom, but this was the day C could take me grocery shopping.  I thought I could push through it.

Apparently I can’t.

I told her just to take me home, even though I hadn’t done any of my grocery shopping.  She offered to go into Whole Foods and buy my groceries for me, but I said no.  I just wanted to go home…but also I couldn’t come to terms with not being able to do such a basic thing for myself.  I mean, C’s not going to be around forever.  She’s not even supposed to be seeing me at all anymore, but we just mutually don’t mention that.

And next week I get to hear my gastroenterologist blow off my fatigue and weakness because my labs look fine.  I really like him for most stuff, but I feel like he just isn’t taking this seriously.  I mean, at my last appointment, I told him I have trouble standing up for more than 60 seconds, and he told me to reduce my dosage of iron.  I know I’m probably reading too much into it, but I keep thinking he thinks I’m just being histrionic because I have a psych history.  I really like him most of the time, but I don’t know how to make him understand how bad this is.

Maybe I just need to collapse in his office and start sobbing on the floor.  Too bad I can’t do that at will.

My RN friend is going with me to the appointment, though, so maybe she’ll be able to help get the point across.  Of course, then he’ll probably just send me to some other specialist, and that’ll take weeks to get an appointment, and then they’ll do tests, which will take more weeks, and meanwhile my level of functioning will continue to decrease.

Oh, and for added fun, it’s going to be yet another month before I can get my Nexplanon implant, too.  It has to be done during the first five days of your period.  I called today when my period started, but apparently their supplier screwed up.  They don’t have any implants, and the nurse couldn’t tell me when they’d be getting more.  And my NP wasn’t working today, so I have to wait for her to call me back tomorrow and find out what the hell we’re doing about that.  Or I may just beg her to do a hysterectomy if the pain doesn’t let up.

Could something, ANYTHING, please go right for me?

Public Transit Rant

This morning I had an appointment with my GP.  It was really necessary, since I’ve been sick for almost five weeks.  My landlady was able to give me a ride into downtown this morning, and from there I could take the bus to my doctor’s office, which is in the next town over.

It shouldn’t need to be this complicated.  See, my street is right on a bus line.  That bus goes straight into downtown, which is where I catch the bus to my doctor’s office.  Easy enough, right?

LOL NOPE

Because a few months ago, the regional transit authority decided to revise the routes.  For the route that goes by my house, they didn’t actually change any of the streets or anything–but apparently they instituted a new policy to eliminate all stops between downtown Northampton and Holyoke (two towns over, 9.5 miles away).  I live two miles from downtown Northampton, and even though the bus route goes right past my street, more than half the drivers will no longer stop there.  I don’t know what the deal with this new policy is.  I mean, you’re saving what, two minutes tops by refusing to stop?

So that leaves me with only the option of walking home from downtown.  Two miles doesn’t sound so bad, but it’s along a busy highway with no sidewalk or shoulder.  There have been several fatal car v. bicycle collisions there, and pedestrians are even less visible to drivers than bicyclists.  Add to that the fact that I am physically disabled.  My body literally cannot handle a two-mile walk most days.  I run a very real risk of having my muscles give out and collapsing on the side of the road.

I could probably qualify for paratransit, but that costs three times the normal bus fare.  They also require you to book the trip 48 hours in advance, which wouldn’t have worked since this was a last-minute appointment.

So today, I tried taking the bus home, hoping I’d get a sympathetic driver.  In that regard, the cane is sometimes useful.  I think they ought to stop for anyone who needs that stop, but I’m not going to complain if I get a cripple sympathy stop, either.  But the driver today was a huge jerk and refused to stop anywhere vaguely near my street.  So I had to go all the way to Holyoke.  Instead of staying on that bus for the return trip, I waited an hour, hoping I’d get a different driver.  No such luck.  Same guy, still wouldn’t stop.  So then I wound up back in downtown Northampton again.  In utter desperation–I was literally about to burst into tears in the middle of town–I texted my landlady.  Luckily, she was able to take off from work for a few minutes and run me home, for which I was immensely grateful.  It just shouldn’t be necessary.  When I moved to this apartment, I specifically sought out somewhere that was accessible by public transit–and it was, when I moved in.  But now I literally can’t go anywhere on my own, so I don’t leave the house.  I looked into moving somewhere closer to town so I’d have better access to public transit, but everything was miles out of my price range.  So I’m trapped here.

Meanwhile, all the politicians in Boston, when asked about improving public transit, talk about a multi-million dollar project to expand the Orange Line.  Western Mass never gets mentioned.  I want to shake them and say, “Look, asshole, let me tell you a thing.  I’ve used public transit in Boston, and it’s fucking great already.  Meanwhile, I can’t even get to a fucking doctor’s appointment out here.  I can’t go grocery shopping.  I can’t get to the pharmacy.  But yeah, let’s definitely sink all the transit funding into improving a system that already works instead of fixing a system that doesn’t.  ‘Cause nothing west of Boston actually exists.  We’re just motherfucking unicorns out here.”

Comparing Disabilities

I’m so tired of people comparing and ranking different types of disabilities.

Particularly, I’m frustrated that people with psychiatric disabilities keep saying that it’s worse for them because they can’t talk about it, whereas people with physical disabilities can.

I get that there’s a lot of stigma against mental illness.  I live that every day.  There’s a reason I don’t tell anyone at work I have a mental illness: I’m afraid that if I’m ever well enough to get a job, that will get in the way of my being hired.

But I live the other side of the coin every day too.  I have severe ulcerative colitis.  Do you think it’s socially accepted for me to talk about how I was up all night shitting blood?  I think it would probably be more acceptable to say I was hopelessly depressed. 

Because of severe fatigue and weakness, I often have to use a cane if I’m going to be on my feet for more than 30 seconds.  Do you think people don’t judge me for that?  Strangers ask, “What’s wrong with you?”  I get asked if I’m contagious.  I get told I don’t look sick.  I get told I’m too young to be that sick.  I get told I should just stay at home if everyday things are so hard for me.  A LOT of things aren’t accessible to me, from public transportation to jobs, because I can’t stand for very long, even with the cane.  And when you start talking about accessibility, people roll their eyes and act like I’m being an entitled brat.

Not everyone, of course.  Some people are lovely.  But overall, people don’t care.  They’re not willing to go a little out of their way to accommodate someone with a physical disability, either.  So please, for the love of god, stop saying that people with physical disabilities don’t also face stigma and discrimination.  Let’s stop playing the “Whose Life Sucks More?” game.  It’s not productive, and it just leaves everyone feeling worse afterward.

overwhelmed by exhaustion

I don’t know how to cope with this exhaustion anymore.

I slept 11 hours last night, and right now I can barely sit up.  My body won’t sleep anymore, but it’s not functioning, either.  I’m supposed to be doing a predictive dialer phone bank tonight, but I think I’m going to have to cancel.  I mean, my hands are so weak I’m having trouble typing.  I’m having to wear my wrist brace again because the latest joint pain is my left wrist.  The brace drives me crazy, but it’s the only thing that keeps my wrist from hurting every time I move my arms.

Something is wrong with me, and no one is taking it seriously.  My gastroenterologist, who’s otherwise awesome, just blows it off as a symptom of the UC.  I know some fatigue is normal, but not like this.  I mean, I’m not flaring, so there’s no UC-related reason I should be this fatigued and weak.

I should probably go back to my primary care doc, but how would I even get there?  It’s now a two-mile walk on a road with no shoulder to get to the bus stop, then two buses.  I can’t physically handle that.

I’m going to look into the paratransit buses that pick you up and drop you off at your door, but without a diagnosis, I’m not even sure I’ll qualify.  I don’t have a doctor to write a letter saying I’m too sick to use regular public transit because I can’t even get to a doctor in the first place.  Plus, the paratransit service is 2-3 times as expensive as the regular buses, and you have to go to an in-person interview at a place half an hour away.  How the fuck do you think I’m going to get there if I don’t get paratransit?

I just can’t deal with this right now.  Everything just feels so overwhelming, and I want to just go back to bed.  But I have to find a new roommate.

Left Out

The event today went well.  We had several hundred supporters, great weather, and lots of energy and enthusiasm.  I managed pretty well with the fatigue, but since it was outside in the hot sun, that was a pretty big drain on my energy.  Luckily they did have seats available for people with disabilities–otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to manage.

Afterward, we (mostly staff, plus a couple interns and volunteers) went to lunch at this place called Dick’s Last Stand.  It’s pretty hilarious–the servers get to be jerks (not mean jerks, just sarcastic and funny), and they make everyone these hats with rude things on them.  The field director put a social media ban on posting pictures of most of them.  For instance, one guy’s hat said, “I blow bubbles,” and the hat of the guy next to him said, “I’m bubbles.”  There were also gems like “I pee on my balls” and “I mate with innocent animals.”  But mine wasn’t terribly offensive, so I got to tweet mine.

Then, when we were on the way back to HQ, the candidate called to say thank you, which was pretty awesome.  She tried to call me once before, several months ago, but I didn’t pick up because it was an unfamiliar number and I was stuck on the toilet.  I think it’s classy to call the volunteers who put in a lot of time and effort.  Obviously you’re not going to call everybody who shows up for a canvass or two, but I’ve been doing a lot.  Basically, I’m a part-time regional field organizer without the title or the paycheck.

But now I’m exhausted.  That and my hormones mean my moods are all over the place.  For the most part, I enjoyed the rally, but I also felt really left out most of the time because I had to sit most of the time.  I wanted to be doing something, helping, but there was really nothing to do from a chair.  I got left out of conversations because everyone else was standing up, so they stopped noticing I was there.  I was literally below them.

Don’t get me wrong; I don’t think any of it is at all intentional.  I really like the people I’m working with on this campaign, and I don’t think anyone means to leave me out.  I think it just doesn’t occur to them to make an effort to include me, and I don’t feel confident enough to push for it.  So I end up sitting on a bench alone for two hours because when I ask what I can do, nobody knows what to say.  I’m the only visibly disabled person working on the campaign, so I think the staff haven’t really needed to find ways of including me.  Most of the time I’m in western Mass, so I’m kind of invisible.

It just leaves me feeling so lonely and useless and invisible.  Even though the rally itself was good, I found myself wanting to cry and/or disappear for most of the time.  I still really feel like disappearing and crying, but I’m trying to remind myself that a lot of how I’m feeling is a combination of hormones and exhaustion.  Still, it’s really hard, and I start to get upset about how much I’ve lost–not just the loss of physical abilities, but the loss of inclusion.  Sometimes it even feels like I’ve lost my personhood.

Feeling Crippled

Today’s been a rough day.

I needed to get into town to pick up the iron supplements my gastroenterologist prescribed last week.  I thought I was feeling well enough to do it.  Because it’s summer, the bus that goes past my street only runs every 2 hours, so I thought I’d try riding my bike into town.  It’s only two miles, mostly flat, so I didn’t think it would be a big deal.

Yeah, I was wrong.

By halfway there, I felt like I might die right there on the road, but it was a busy street with nowhere safe to pull off and rest, so I made myself keep going.  Then, as I was riding into the center of downtown, I started to have an asthma attack.  My leg muscles just quit working, and my bike and I fell over in the middle of an intersection.  It took me more than a minute just to be able to get up, and somebody had to help me get my bike up and onto the sidewalk.  Luckily I was wearing pretty thick jeans, so I didn’t tear up my leg except for part of my ankle, but my knee and the side of my leg are pretty bruised up.

I feel so useless.  A year and a half ago, I was walking/running around 5 miles a day, and I was doing intense martial arts training three nights a week.  I was strong and in good shape, and I knew my body could do pretty much whatever I wanted it to.  I had the arthritis and pain in my lower back and hip to deal with, but it didn’t limit me much.  Now I can barely do anything more demanding than sitting in bed.  Occasionally I can walk a little, but I have to use a cane, and it takes me days to recover afterward.

Right now, I feel like I can’t live like this anymore.  I feel completely cut off from everything I need, and I feel like I’m completely alone in dealing with this.  I mean, people try to be kind and helpful, but it usually doesn’t go beyond holding doors open for me and such.  Apparently I need a personal chauffeur so that I can do normal things like go to the pharmacy and buy groceries.

And there’s not even anyone I can talk to about all of this.  I don’t have friends anymore, not in real life.  I have friendly acquaintances on the campaigns, but we interact almost entirely around campaign stuff, not personal issues.  And I don’t think I’d tell them how hard things are anyway because I want them to see me as competent and capable, not crippled and deserving of pity.  But it’s so, so lonely and painful.  I feel like crying, but I’m fighting it because I think it would just make me feel worse.

Convention, Part 2

I’m home from the convention.  Completely exhausted, but it was totally worth it.

Both of the candidates I’ve been working for did well.  Both finished in second place, which was what we expected in both races.  (Both of them are facing candidates with more money and political capital than they have.  One has a super-PAC, which is a rant for another day.)  I was pretty pleased with myself because I accurately predicted the rankings in 3 of the 4 races.  (The fourth one, the treasurer’s race, I honestly just didn’t care much about.)

Physically, it was a tough day.  I only got about 3 hours of sleep–probably not even that, since a lot of it was this twilight state where I knew I wasn’t quite asleep.  After the first hour, if I tried to stay on my feet for more than a minute or two, my legs would start shaking so bad I’d have to sit down.  It’s the same feeling as you get during an intense workout when your muscles get so fatigued they twitch and shake, but there was no intense workout happening–just trying to stand up.  I did manage to stand up for the pledge of allegiance, but I had to sit down for the national anthem.

If you recall, my job was supposed to be to follow the party teller around my senate district all day to record who was here for roll call and then who they voted for once voting started in the afternoon.  Obviously that wasn’t going to happen.  Luckily, our senate district lead whip was able to do that, and then I’d tally everything, text the soft numbers to the campaign staff, and enter the data in on my phone.  It worked out.

I was pretty frustrated, though, by the convention’s disability-unfriendliness.  Unfriendly isn’t quite the right term since that implies an intentional effort to make things harder.  I think it was more just that they didn’t have a great idea of what true accessibility is.  For instance, they had closed-captioning of everything on two big screens, which is great…but then people would stand in front of them.  We had a Deaf woman in our delegation, so our whips were constantly having to ask people to move so she could see the captioning.  There were a lot of times when people were asked to stand–presentation of the colors, the invocation prayer, the pledge of allegiance, the national anthem, and retiring the colors…took about 15 minutes in all.  And in my senate district, when we voted, the party teller wanted each town to move to a different corner of our assigned seating area.  The rows of seats were extremely narrow, littered with lit and bags and water bottles, and impossible to navigate safely with the cane.  So I sat down in the aisle closest to where the party teller put my town, and then somebody from the convention center staff told me I couldn’t do that because it was a fire hazard.  There was one man in our senate district who needed a wheelchair, but since it was stadium seating that his wheelchair would never fit into, he just had to sit there in the aisle, not really with the rest of the delegates.  At several points during the convention when no one was speaking, they turned on music and flashing strobe lights–um, guys, with 6000 people there, I can pretty much bet there are people with epilepsy, and that crap could trigger seizures.

I don’t think any of this was malicious at all, but it was still disappointing, especially since they made a big point of saying that the convention and the convention center were 100% accessible.  I think people who haven’t had firsthand experience of disability think that as long as you’ve got wheelchair ramps, it’s totally accessible.  But accessibility is much more than that.  I don’t know who plans these conventions, but I’m gonna guess they have few if any people with disabilities involved.  I’d like to see them do a lot better.

Funny side note: one of the sponsors of the convention was a pharmaceutical company called AbbVie.  (I assume they were sponsors or something similar because they had AbbVie pens in the swag bags all the delegates got.)  They’re best known for Humira, which I take for ulcerative colitis.  It was an odd coincidence.

Okay.  Now I’m gonna sleep for a week.  My whole body hurts, and my colon is being a jerk.  And after about 6 hours of sleep out of the last 60, I’m barely coherent.

Convention, Day 1

So apparently when I said I wouldn’t be around this weekend, I lied.  We left the party early, so I’m hanging out with my laptop in our hotel room.

The convention has been really awesome so far.  We hung out at the campaign’s vendor table for a while before things officially got rolling this afternoon, and I got a chance to talk to people from other campaigns in races I hadn’t decided on.  I’m still not totally sold on a lieutenant governor candidate (I’ve narrowed it down to two choices), and I’m really up in the air about which treasurer candidate I’ll vote for.  I got to talk briefly to one of the LG candidates I’m considering, and I liked him.  Our senate district is seated right by the entrance, so everyone has to walk past us to get in, so we get air time with the candidates much more than most of the other senate districts.  We got good seats because our Representative, Jim McGovern, is one of the major powers in the state party.

I did use my cane, and nobody was a jerk about it.  The questions I got about it were all from people who already knew me and had seen me without the cane, so they were asking out of concern.  Well, there was one woman I hadn’t met before today who asked, but she was asking because she has MS, so it didn’t feel intrusive.  People have actually been really kind–making sure I have a seat, asking if I need any help, stuff like that.  I’m glad people have been so accepting and kind because it was a rough day physically.  If I had to spend more than a minute or two on my feet, my legs started shaking really badly.

I’m a little worried about mobility issues tomorrow.  As a teller whip, I basically have to follow the party teller from my district around for several hours, so that I can see who checks in with the party in the morning and record their votes when we vote in the afternoon.  It’s going to be difficult if standing is as hard tomorrow as it was today.  The mobility issues are pretty new to me, so I haven’t learned the tips and tricks for workarounds and such.  But I’m sure I’ll figure out something.  And if I really need to sit down for a few minutes, I can have one of my whips stay with the teller until I can stand up again.  We can adapt.

Actually, the most frustrating thing for me with the cane is that I don’t have enough hands.  Ive got to be leaning on the cane, but I’m also supposed to be writing in my teller book, and most of the time I also have to have my phone in hand to record data and send soft numbers to the campaign staff.  We humans really need to get around to evolving more arms.  Octopi would be a good model.  I don’t want my arms to be slimy and covered in suckers, but eight arms sounds really good about now, you know?

Here, for your viewing pleasure, is a picture of me from the convention.

This is before they handed out our T-shirts.  I didn’t know staff and whips were getting T-shirts today, so I wore a little black dress, which the T-shirt doesn’t go well with.  But I just shrugged and pulled the T-shirt on over the dress and cardigan.  It probably looked really goofy, but who cares?  Tomorrow we get different T-shirts, and I’ll be wearing mine with dress pants and a blazer.  I can pretend it’s a new fashion statement or something.  Whatevs.

I’d appreciate good thoughts/prayers/energy for me for tomorrow.  I just need to be able to stay on my feet.