Dreams of Scurvy

Well, I wasn’t able to do it… I was supposed to have 21 days of being overwhelmingly busy, and while I still have 3 left (if you count today), I faltered a bit. I called out sick for work this morning. I originally had a meeting at 9:30 am, but it was canceled yesterday afternoon. I took that as my opening and took the morning off.

On average for these last 3 weeks (including weekends) I’ve been out of my house from 8:30 am – 11 pm. Of course there was some variance, some days I was better and left the house at 8 am… some days worse and left the house at 9 am. And some days were shorter and I’d get home at 10 pm and others were longer and I’d get home at midnight or later.

But I couldn’t keep doing it, I needed some sleep… I also may have been in desperate need of 3 square meals a day. I was missing dinner most (all?) nights. In fact, it has gotten so bad (and I apologize for the detail here, you may want to skip the rest of this) that I have developed two little ulcers in my mouth, not like canker sores, but like when you bite your cheek really hard and it takes a few days to heal. So I have one on my cheek and one on my tongue, although I don’t remember biting either. And my tongue feels (and looks) like it’s covered in little paper cuts. Pretty awesome, I must say.

Last night, I actually had a dream that I was on ship sailing from Europe to America way back when and had scurvy.

Now I don’t actually believe that I have scurvy, but I was craving citrus when I woke up thanks to my seaward dream. I have to say, I was worried that eating grapefruit for breakfast would burn a little, but I was wrong, it was delicious and now I want oranges.

Up until this point I have been living on caffeine and little mantras:

 I may be able to take care of a lot of things, and juggle lots of aspects of my life, but the first ball to always fall is my health. I am terrible at taking care of myself when I’m busy. I’m glad the overwhelming amount of activities will slow down soon.

When you’re feeling overwhelmed and stressed, do you have any mantras you repeat to keep yourself going?