{"id":1,"date":"2023-07-18T23:45:54","date_gmt":"2023-07-18T23:45:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fibrofox.com\/?p=1"},"modified":"2023-07-19T01:28:54","modified_gmt":"2023-07-19T01:28:54","slug":"hello-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fibrofox.com\/?p=1","title":{"rendered":"What the heck am I doing on a vacation?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Interesting though, considering the shape I&#8217;m in.  Oh&#8230; sorry&#8230; let me introduce myself. My name is Paul and I&#8217;m a sarcasta-holic&#8230; Yup&#8230; that&#8217;s me. Sarcasm out the wazoo&#8230; It&#8217;s my defense mechanism. Life is really hard and sometimes we need to just let it loose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I know we all have rough times and I&#8217;m certainly not trying to compare myself to anyone else. Part of my rough road is due to my struggles with my health&#8230; migraines, fibromyalgia, multiple chemical introlerance, GERD, ADHD, being generally weird&#8230; you know&#8230; life. So you&#8217;ll have to forgive me if I&#8217;m off on some rabbit trails now and again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jo (my wife) and I just returned from a trip out to BC to see our son and his wife and drop off their cats. It was a wonderful time&#8230; even got a chance to visit Jo&#8217;s sister and her family and with one of my best friends online. We put about 5600km on the truck and, well, just plumb wore ourselves out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, now I lay here thinking, just what makes throwing caution to the wind and spending your spoons like an energy gabillionaire so worth it? Because, that&#8217;s just plain what we did. Rolling down the road, sleeping in our truck, eating fast food like it&#8217;s some sort of travel health plan. Not sure if we&#8217;re insane or brilliant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The thing is that my heart says, &#8220;wow, was that ever a good trip&#8221; and that puts it into the brilliant category as far as I&#8217;m concerned. It wasn&#8217;t exactly a cheap trip&#8230; a whole lot cheaper than flying and renting but still, gas doesn&#8217;t grow on trees and our old Acadia sips pretty hard at times. Still, I got to spend time with my kids, I got to catch up with my brother-in-law that I never get to see because he works so darned much&#8230; (love you Chris!)&#8230; and then I got to meet my brother from another mother.  Let me tell you about it&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Todd is awesome. His health has forced him to walk away from more amazing careers than I will ever have. He is the sort of guy that you pour your heart out to and seem to have known all your life. I met him on a wonderful website that caters to guys suffering with fibromyalgia&#8230; you might have heard of it&#8230; Menwithfibro.com?? Well&#8230; check it out. It&#8217;s a good place to be when your life is coming down around your ears. Todd joined a few years ago and instantly became a staple of our core group. Insta-family&#8230; just add batteries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Well.. Todd lives way out in BC, and we live halfway through Manitoba. Let&#8217;s just say visiting wasn&#8217;t going to be an easy proposition. Fortunately, my son and his sweet lady decided to move to Cranbrook last year. So, on a whim&#8230; ok&#8230; it was a really big whim but I digress&#8230; on a <em>whim<\/em> we decided to do a big circle through Alberta and back into BC and do all our visiting while I could still hold a steering wheel. If you ever get a chance to do a trip like this, trust me&#8230; just do it. Meeting your best friend for the first time is so awesome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Now, for fibro-folk, we have to be really careful how we spend our energy. (just ignore the fact that we had already driven more miles than was wise) so when we got to Todd&#8217;s place, we took things as slow as possible. No exertions, no overwhelming our hosts, no&#8230; oh bah&#8230; we stayed up way later than was smart and poor Todd and I barely made it to a standing position the next day, but it was so worth it. I know it was only a short visit from a traditional standpoint but, the Lord knew I needed smarts so He gave me a smart wife who set the visiting parameters and helped me realize we were throwing our candles into the fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Somehow, we survived our little jaunt and I&#8217;m back in my comfy bed trying desperately to be comfy. I guess the moral of the story is, saving your spoons for when you need them is smart, but sometimes your soul just needs to spend them like a wild person to get the kind of amazing journeys that it needs to stay fresh and alive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To all my spoonies out there, gotcha in my thoughts and prayers. Keep your stick on the ice. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Interesting though, considering the shape I&#8217;m in. Oh&#8230; sorry&#8230; let me introduce myself. My name is Paul and I&#8217;m a sarcasta-holic&#8230; Yup&#8230; that&#8217;s me. Sarcasm out the wazoo&#8230; It&#8217;s my defense mechanism. Life is really hard and sometimes we need to just let it loose. I know we all have rough times and I&#8217;m certainly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4,3,5],"class_list":["post-1","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-fibromyalgia","tag-spoons","tag-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fibrofox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fibrofox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fibrofox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fibrofox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fibrofox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fibrofox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7,"href":"https:\/\/fibrofox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1\/revisions\/7"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fibrofox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fibrofox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fibrofox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fibrofox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}