Routines

I've been a worrywart lately, and I wasn't really sure what I was so nervous about until now.

Obviously, building a house is a very stressful thing, but so far I've been having fun with it. It's given me something to do and, more importantly, something exciting to save for finally. The whole affording it thing is always in the back of my mind, but, for the most part, it hasn't been a huge issue so far. But today it finally hit me that the part of the building process that has me freaked out is not the building at all- it's what happens after the house is built. We move in.

Yay! Exciting! Right? Wrong!! Being someone who has lived their whole life with IBS, I have grown very accustomed to my routines. I believe they are what has given me a mostly normal and predictable life. I don't want to get sick? I eat the same meals over and over and over again until food disgusts me and then pick another. I have a bad day? I spend the entire day at home in my bed, steps away from the same, comfortable bathroom I've used for 5 years with my meds all in a row downstairs in the medicine cabinet.

To any normal person this would seem childish. They'd think, "You grow up and move on. New things happen and you adapt to them," but being the so not normal person I am, I'm worrying about how I'm going to feel in my new bathroom. Is there going to be room for my emergency meds in there? Am I going to feel cramped? Our bed is going to be flipped, so my side will now be facing away from the bathroom, so am I going to be able to make it to the bathroom quickly in the middle of the night? Where am I going to put my meds so that I can find them quickly? And then there is ALL of the other routines that I've set up for myself in our current house that don't have to do with IBS. Where will I set my stuff when I come home from work? Where will we pile up the mail? Where will the dogs leashes go? Will I get so stressed out about all of the changes and cause an IBS flare up?

This should be such an exciting time in my life and while it is in some respects, I just can't get this nagging feeling out of my brain that the first year or so is going to be super stressful while we try to make new routines for ourselves in our new space.

There is, of course, another side to the story. We're getting a new fridge that will have so much more room for fresh food, and we'll have plenty of room to cook now. This could mean more home-cooked meals tailored to my diet. The dogs will have a fenced backyard to get all of their energy out so they'll be less annoying inside with us.

I just can't wait for them to get started building the house so I can start to visualize where I'm going to put everything and how I'm going to do my daily routines in the new space. I keep saying that I wish we could just fast forward 6 months and have it be done so I can stop worrying about what may be, but I don't know if I'm ready. I need to break down all of my routines and see if I can make it work in the new house. I just hope my IBS is up for the challenge because it's going to be a stressful 6 months while I get it all figured out.

Have any of you ever dealt with a move or something where you had to switch up your normal routines? How did you deal with it?

I hate the winter

I was doing so well. If you follow my blog at all, you probably know that I've been a lucky girl as of late. I graduated, got engaged, and now we're building a house. Oh, and hey, my IBS has been in check too! Lots of things are finally going well for me.

But then winter happened, and I started struggling to stay well. I got a sinus infection and started feeling crummy here and there after I "recovered" from the infection. But this morning I woke up to a massive grumble in my stomach. Unfortunately, it was a grumble that I'm all too familiar with. And then the urgency hit me. Gahhh, here we go.

I spent the first two hours of my day in the bathroom, gobbling down Imodium and praying it would stop. I eventually dragged myself to my bed, flipped on the heating pad and fell asleep for a few hours. Good news is the urgency doesn't have any effect on you while you're unconscious. Luckily, when I woke up the Imodium had kicked in, but I was left with the cramping and general icky feeling.

After this little bout with my winter stomach bug, I'm thankful for a few things- Imodium, my heating pad and some wonderful coworkers who worked together to cover my 13 hour shift today. Can't imagine being stuck at work and having to run to the bathroom every 2 minutes. Let's hope this crap hits the road and is completely gone by tomorrow.