This last Thursday Erica, Sebastian, Froggy and I packed up the car and drove up to Salinas to spend time with the family and attend my grandpa's memorial service. It was a nice drive up, and was pretty easy even with Froggy fussing a bit toward the end (he didn't want to nap and kept asking for his dada). Robby couldn't come with because of work, so that was a bit of extra stress, but thankfully our friends were able to go and were understanding of my being a nervous, stressed, neurotic mess. We got up at around 8 Thursday night and Froggy was whisked away by his Oma, who was all smiles to see him. It was really good to see her that happy with everything that's been going on.
My cousin, Mitchell, showed up a bit later that night and it was AWESOME to see him. I grew up with him, so he's more like a brother than a cousin, and after not getting to hang out or see him for way longer than family should be away from each other, it was great to catch up. After dinner, we all tried to crash... but Froggy decided that sleep was for the week and screamed until 2am.
The next day, Friday, was Grandpa's memorial. We woke up early-ish to get ready and left the house about half after noon. We got a bit turned around while we were trying to find the church (if you ever go to Salinas, be warned that it's a land of eternal no reception) and got there with about 15 minutes to spare till the service. I was incredibly nervous... being in a church certainly didn't help that. I tried to focus, said hello to a few old friends (including someone who was very perceptive and didn't take my answer of "I'm doing okay." when they asked me how I was, and got the truth out of me) and went over the lyrics to the song I was going to be singing during the service.
We sat in the front, and it was a really pretty setup. At this point, though, I wasn't really doing all that well. I was freaking out HARD. I stuck it out till it was my time to go up on the stage-area (I'm not sure what that's called in a church... pulpit?) and sing. I gave it my all, and despite my knowing every spot I messed up, nobody noticed. I'd picked "Into the West", and it felt fitting. After I was done, I sat down and lasted about ten minutes before I had to politely excuse myself from the service. I ended up having a panic attack, which honestly wasn't unexpected, and I think that my expecting it helped me last as long as I did. We went home to rest until dinner (we skipped the reception, which is okay, because there were just too many people).
Things went okay for the rest of the evening, until it started to get later at night. I'd noticed that my joints were really starting to hurt, my muscles all felt like I'd been running marathons again and my stomach abruptly decided that it wanted to return all items to sender. I ended up having several seizures, and it shot the pain up to the kind of levels that make me decide that going to the ER is a good idea. I'd tried my usual "lets see if we can do X to get this to stop"- meditation, my meds, deep breathing, a hot shower, tea, eating something, resting... nothing had worked. So, we made the call that I needed to go in and Erica and I headed down there. The doctors as Salinas Memorial were great, and actually listened to me. We were able to get things under control really quickly, and I was able to get back to a stable level.
Saturday was relaxing, we didn't really do much else aside from spend time with family. It was really great to catch up with everybody, and it was nice to get to sit out in the gorgeous yard and get some fresh air.
I'm starting to get a headache thinking all this so I'm going to wrap up my summary for now and do a 'part two' later. But here, have some pictures!
