The weather here is simply unbearable – it’s dreary and/or raining about 75% of the time. My vitamin D levels must be ridiculously low. We had a session this morning with the owner of the property we’re staying on. He talked about permaculture in general, but I did not find him very engaging and was falling asleep due to my sleep deprivation.
When we broke for lunch, I decided to walk up the street, get some coffee and perhaps find a place to eat. I could’ve sworn I saw a sushi restaurant nearby. While getting my coffee, I had a fabulous conversation with the owner of the coffee stand. He’s a really interesting guy.
I crossed the street as it started to rain and sprinted onto the sidewalk under the 7-Eleven to avoid a heavier downpour in progress. There was a thrift shop a couple doors down, so I wandered in only to find out that it was also a cat adoption center. The problem with this was that everything in the thrift store (mostly clothes) smelled like cat poop. I would’ve loved to buy something to support them, but I would’ve offended my roommates if I’d brought it back.
As I did not find a sushi place, and there is not much around to eat besides Mexican, I decided to go into town on the bus. I walked in the light rain over to the bus stop and waited with some other folks. The bus here is kind of expensive at $1.50 a ride as compared to 75 cents in Sarasota. When I got off the bus, I checked my phone’s GPS and headed off toward a restaurant I’d been to. On the way, I stopped at the garden store and gift shop. They had a lot of things with recycled content and that were made int he USA. I got a few things that I needed anyway that were inexpensive or on sale… cloth napkins, nice wooden salad servers, a pastry brush, etc. I also picked up a beautiful purple glass corked jar for Helen, who loves purple.
I continued down the street and stopped in a restaurant to eat. I got a table close to an outlet so I could use my computer. As it turned out, I wasn’t very hungry – blue mood + sleep deprivation = too stressed out to eat. I stayed for a while on my computer before heading back to the bus stop. My period came on like a freight train today, and I was starting to feel a little crampy as I rushed back to the course site in the rain. I fell into my uncomfortable bed for about 30 minutes or so and, when I awoke, I was in excruciating pain. I mean really bad pain. I took a Tylenol 3 and started pacing the room. Then I took another Tylenol 3. Then one of my roommates came in and asked if I needed her to do something. I asked if she’d refill my water bottle so I could take some ibuprofin. She came back, and I took the pills and we got to having a nice conversation, and I think that helped, too. Of all my roommates, I feel I am most similar to her… we seem to think the same.
After about 30 minutes (and once the 5 pills I took seemed to be kicking in a bit), I went down to the evening class. It wasn’t until another 30 minutes that the pain really started to subside. The speaker was very interesting, and I’m glad I went down. He talked about the future, different ideas about how it will be, and different ideas about how we should deal with it. He was very pragmatic, which I can relate to. He lives a few doors down from the course site and showed us his master plan for converting his one-acre property to food production and permaculture.
I dreaded going to sleep as I did not know when the drugs would wear off and the pain would return.
