MRI, Half Price Books with Hannah, and Highland Grill with Hannah

October 4, 2023:

Ok, definitely had a good day today. It started off with me taking my meds at 7am with blueberry and vanilla yogurts, and a Zofran before that too. Then, I laid down while Papa drove me to Mayo. We listened to the audiobook for the Kristen Hannah book we've been listening to recently, The Four Winds. Basically, I’d gotten like 3/4 way through it, to chapter 36, but I felt like I hadn’t been following it well, so we went back to around chapter 21 and listened again. There were sections I kind of felt I’d heard before, but those were rare. I truly had not been following it the first time I had listened, apparently.

During the MRI at Mayo, I had two important realizations, that I completely forgot this time. I know there were two though. I remembered the three that I’d thought of last time, and it was thinking about those three that literally made me forget the two from this time. On the way back, I actually drove, which I’d kind of decided to do while I was in the MRI. I also had the thought that in the book, the way that that the main character’s parents think she’s doing great off in California when she’s really struggling, is kind of like how I always assume that everyone else is happier than me, when I don’t know their problems. When we got home, around 1:30pm, Papa told me to try to have something small to eat with Hannah, even if I wasn’t hungry. We decided that I had to be home by like 5:30pm, to make it to my night class, called Creative Process.

For meeting up with Hannah, she said she’d pick me up to go, even though I could drive now, since it’s “better for the environment” and all. She came by, and drove me over to Half Price Books, where Talia was working today. Talia said it’s good we hadn’t come at 1pm, like we’d planned, because she’d have been on break. She also showed me where the Four Winds book was, in the basement. At Half Price, Hannah found her “November read,” since she tries to do one each month. I also learned that she’s now some kind of assistant manager at Nolo’s, her restaurant. At Half Price, I sat down and read the beginning of The Four Winds physically, which I’ve been listening to on audiobook. Some time around here, I know I also told Hannah about the three “realizations” I’d had during my last MRI on the 29th, and she said I might be trying to “live for relationships and a life of love.” At Half Price, I found a possible new book too, called Bloody Lies, that seemed interesting and was possibly a true story, and a Spanish wordsearch book. I got those, along with The Four Winds and a jigsaw puzzle of the Pacific Crest Trail. That was good, because I literally had “get jigsaw puzzle” on my list of things to do, and I was surprised when I saw them at Half Price.

After the book store, we walked over to Highland Grill, even though I’d been there recently. That’s when I told Hannah that I had randomly found the black journal I had been writing in before the crash, when for months I though that I just hadn’t been journaling at all. At Highland Grill, I told our server about our friend’s younger sister who works there, and she said she was nice. I wasn’t very hungry, as always, so I just ordered some tomato basil soup, and then later some cheese curds for both of us. I got a bite of Hannah’s breakfast burrito too. We also played half a game of Canasta. Funny enough, this time was winning by a ton. It ended with me over 4000 and her still at 555. I also achieved some of the things I had on my any.do, like asking Hannah about possibly playing Canasta with her mom some time. She said she’d ask her, even though her mom is busy. Oh, and we also talked about the way that Hannah makes a new playlist for every month, something that I can’t really do currently, because I’m only listening to audiobooks in the car now, not new music.

She got me home before 5:30pm, in time for me to leave for my Creative Process adult enrichment class. I don’t really want to write though everything we did there, but the cool part was that it kind of felt like a real therapy session where I could say most everything on my mind. There was one other woman, Alisa, who is a photographer, and I told her that I was as well. The other cool thing was that there was a point where we were put into pairs, and I was with a lady named Krista, who actually said she was a recreational therapist, which she said is kind of like occupational therapy. We started our talk by reading lists of things we'd written for things that "grows" our energy and "drains" it. Krista told me that she's 58, and that she works with people with disabilities in recreation therapy. At the very end of the class, I told her my thoughts about the fact that I'd been drowning my enlightenment in work, like working all the time, which I think is really true.

At night after the class, I had my meds with an 11g fat Lunds chicken tender at 8:09pm. So following the thing that Jessica suggested about loosening up and taking the meds at different times of the day, really does work. Also feel like I got a tiny bit more interested in reading today.

Today, I literally even mentioned randomly at the end of the day that I was grateful to have all the pictures of my notes. I took 13 pages of notes today in my little 3x5 notebook, and I also saved the pictures of all the pages from this month in the Adobe Scan app that I have. Also, grateful for Hannah and the new class that I got to experience. I think the class will be really good, and I'm already sad about the one I'm going to have to miss when I'm in Colorado.