Tag: Summer

Categories
Travel

Day 1988 and European Interstate Highway System When?

I had a long travel day. I didn’t expect it to be long as the drive on Google Maps estimated it to be around 5 hours or so. That’s barely a third of my waking hours so I can easily shove that into an early morning and get a workday in right?

Alas I didn’t take into account that in America that’s four to five hundred miles of well maintained interstate travel. Easy peasy especially with a Starlink for rolling calls.

But in Europe it’s a whole other beast requiring concentration, quick corrections and constant change. Roads are a mishmash of local jurisdictions, variable paving quality and constant switches in speed limits and limited straightaways.

Also a lot depends on which country is in the EU versus Schengen zone (so many border crossings) versus just a NATO ally but neither EU nor Schengen.

Then finally you must factor in how corrupt its various elites happen to be at any given time versus when they are in a debt restructuring and revitalization phase. A corrupted ally might have much worse roads than a debt restructured southern EU member.

I did a cruising tour of coastal roads in the Mediterranean last summer from Croatia through Albania to Greece and then another run from Tirana to Istanbul so I’m not a total novice to grand tours.

But today felt exhausting as more need kept coming in and then my rolling calls got interrupted by my “hold on lemme get through this border crossing” as rather expectedly borders were on a bit of a high alert.

Thankfully I’ve made it to my destination just as the markets wrap in American after having stopped for a dinner I’d hoped would wrap quickly but turned into a leisurely discussion of the various news items of the day between Dutch, British, Swedish, Albanian, Slovenian and Greek tourists. They all seem to enjoy a long dinner while I just wanted to get my butt into bed so I could do some actual work and also write my post. So my duty is done. European driving in a nice Audi is harder than American driving in a base model Subaru. Fancy that.

Maybe Brussels should consider an interstate highway system for the European Union if they are serious about shouldering more of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization responsibilities. Eisenhower did a good thing making America’s system so free hero status to however can manage it on the continent.

Categories
Medical Travel

Day 1981 and Unpacking Your Stuff

I write about packing so much on this daily blog that you’d think I’d have an equally large collection of posts on the art of unpacking. I enjoy unpacking emotions, family systems work, a complicated social graph so why not my travel bags?

The forethought and execution required for a well packed travel bag in summer high season is a tactical exercise I both love and loath. My husband and I compete on who can most effectively compress down different categories of items from first aid kits to travel cosmetics.

I am however in my mind not a particularly fastidious unpacker. Or maybe I am? I repack my bags on the return leg as closely as possible to resemble the outbound packing trip. There are labeled bags for under garments, separates, and dresses.

I’ll transition some garments into a bag that is designated laundry, but I’ll almost always take laundry detergent with me. So it’s not unusual for me to make a return trip with clean clothing. When one travels as much as I do it can help to treat as much of road life as you would your regular life.

I unpack immediately upon arrival at my destination whether that is home or away. I prefer to get things out and tucked into the proper drawers and line ups. This applies doubly when I return home. I once had a suitcase sit unpacked for two weeks after a particularly bad flare. It was a nightmare.

So today I had unpacking work that required a bit of disassembling of multiple types of trip packs from gala makeup and silk gown to Greek island hopping swimsuits and even Utah desert nuclear facility visiting garments. It’s been a pretty busy couple of weeks.

I feel almost like I’ve found the bits and bobs of items that were misplaced inside tiny pockets or stowed away in unseen baggies. I am still searching for a few things but unpacking why the unpacking took so long is for another day.

Categories
Chronic Disease Emotional Work

Day 1706 and Leaving It In The Past

I’ve got my over the ear noise canceling headphones on playing a Solfeggio frequencies of 396 Hz which is labled as “liberating guilt and fear” on my Endel mobile application (which I recommend though I’m not involved with it).

I am doing breathing exercises with these tunes playing in the background. I have a routine of hyper stimulation autonomic exercises I do when I am in times of physical and emotional stress.

My father died this weekend. While I had been preparing for the possibility for sometime the reality of the moment is never what you expect.

Grief is a strange emotion. You forgive your parents but they don’t always forgive themselves. And then it’s over and everyone is free. The pain is over and the past arrived and your present is without them.

The past becomes a foreign country and you don’t speak the language and as you become middle aged you see your life reworked through success and failure and the hard costs which your ego previously obscured like too much greasepaint.

It is maudlin to stay in grief but if we do not let go of the past we will project past pains and old understandings of reality onto others that do nothing but harm.

It’s a beautiful thing to watch these huge emotions play out in your life. Death offers grand dramas when all you can offer is having built a future on the foundation they gave you.

Categories
Medical

Day 567 and Seasonal Affective Disorder

One of my Twitter mutuals blew my mind yesterday.

I’ve always been a dick to my SAD friends, but heatwave depression is right here, sitting on my lap.

Brent Cox

I’ve got a few friends with SAD or seasonal affective disorder. I had always thought of SAD as a winter disease. Lack of sunlight messes with your circadian rhythm and it can lead to depression (among other other physical symptoms) during shorter colder months. I’ve never had it personally. I thrive in the winter. Maybe it’s generics as my ancestry is Scandinavian.

It never occurred to me that there could be an inversion variant of seasonal affect disorder for the summer. But apparently SSAD exists. People can get summer season affective disorder. It’s rarer but it exists.

“What causes summer SAD? We assume it’s heat and humidity.”

New York Times

Which frankly makes total sense. It’s a fucking misery most of summer. Heat makes my pain worse. I’d assumed any dislike of summer was related to the increase in severity of my symptoms. But maybe it’s a more holistic issue.

Another seasonal challenge that could worsen with climate change — and play into mood — is pollen, said Teodor Postolache, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. He said the immune response to allergens like pollen might create a cascade of changes in the body, including the release of biological compounds called cytokines that regulate inflammation and have been connected to depression.

I don’t think I am necessarily depressed in the summer but my mood is generally rotten. And if it’s from heat or pollen or humidity, the end result does seem to be I’ve got increased inflammation during the summer months and it’s uncomfortable as hell. I don’t know what I’ll do with this information (other than ask my doctor at my next visit) but it’s nice to know that I’m not crazy for feeling crazy in the summer.

Categories
Travel

Day 539 and Hurry Up and Wait

As summer travel is turning into a source of horror stories and tears, I decided the best way to handle transiting across various borders is to pad every flight with extra time. To hurry up and wait as a strategy.

This has naturally lead to some significant mind numbing waiting issues. Two hours in an airport lounge isn’t as fun as I imagined or even remember. Lounges seemed nicer in the past. Sitting in the liminal with lots of other bored, stressed, and otherwise disengaged humans gives you plenty to watch but little of interest.

My lounge experience went as you’d expect. People giving each other a wide berth while they sip mediocre white wine. Teenagers trying to not to look at their parents in case someone cool passes by. All forms of athleisure and sweat pants swaddling the asses of women just hoping for a comfortable flight. The occasional child demanding a cookie from the two poorly stocked snack sections

When it’s time to board everyone simply mobs the doors. No one care about any system. It’s just a throng of desperation yearning to get on and claim overhead baggage space. I’d like to be irritated as I paid for business class but status is funny that way.

I can’t even find anyone to Karen at to say I’m supposed to be up front. So I wait at the back of the line. No one is following orders because no one is giving them. I packed compact & sensibly but everyone else is testing the limits. No wonder everyone wants to get on as fast as they can. Overpacking must be a stress response.

The entire experience is a war of all against all. If everyone is priority boarding than no one is a priority. It’s just pushing and shoving and giving no fucks. Sadly I give fucks about decorum and politeness so I didn’t have the balls to try to make a run around. I just said and wait and wait. Hurry up and wait.