Bottoming Out Days

I have noticed that as a family we have what I call "bottoming out" days. These are days we all feel sluggish and a bit on edge. They seem to occur every 4th or 5th day. I attribute it mostly to sleep cycles and I can only imagine what our nervous systems are going through as they try to absorb and process all of the new sights and sounds around us.

We try to walk a lot here. We've got Nick walking 10,000 steps before he asks for a Coca Cola. Last weekend we ended up walking and seeing a lot of the Port of Barcelona, including Port Vell.

My body was very tired after the busy weekend and I did not sleep much on Sunday night. John didn't either and we met up about 3:30am in the living room. We contemplated making the most of our non sleep time by watching the sunrise. But sunrise wouldn't happen for another 4 and 1/2 hours, and that seemed too long away.

We ended up going back to sleep at 5am which made for a very long Monday. Nick awoke kind of grumpy and edgy. I imagine he felt as tired and out of sorts as we did.

All day yesterday I felt as if I was in a strange sleep state. My neck and shoulder area hurt a lot. I managed to go get groceries but anything more seemed to be too much. I didn't feel like working as I felt like I was in a foggy brain state. My body yelled for my physical therapy tools that haven't arrived yet. We shipped them in a storage bin since they were light and awkward shapes.

Ah, the bin. I sure would like to have the bin we shipped. Hoping it would meet us here, I had planned to be without my tools less than a week. It has been tied up in Customs now for over a week. We are hoping we are getting closer to its arrival today, at least that is what I am telling my body.

Some good news today makes me feel more hopeful about its arrival. John shipped his personal laptop the day we left Austin and it arrived this morning. I feel there might be an energetic shift happening that will bring the bin to us soon. We packed things like Nick's school books, deodorant, shoes, and some electronics, like a mouse, some cables and a microphone I use for dictation.

It would be great to have some of that stuff, especially our Native deodorant, we won't be able to buy that here. If you haven't tried it yet, you should, it is a wonderful alternative to most deodorant that contains aluminum, https://www.nativecos.com/product/deodorant-women/.

So every few days our bodies seem to say, "Enough!" and we find our family unit tired and in a strange mood. But we try to make the most of it and focus on the fact that we are here in Spain. Even bad days can seem a bit better because our dream to live in Spain has come true.

When I find myself in the state I was in yesterday, I usually take myself out of any project's critical path. My energy can be a bit much and if I am not resonating at the positive end of the scale, I seem to cause more problems or hold ups in the world around me. This I figured out after many years of trial and error in many projects that could have gone easier. LOL

I have discovered the best thing for me to do in states like the one I was in yesterday is to meditate and lay low. So yesterday I did some guided meditations and some simple breathing meditation to help the issues my neck has been having.

And how I miss my chiropractor, Dr. Rogers, he is really skilled with restoring functionality in people with cervical neck injuries, (https://www.facebook.com/Dr-Jason-Rogers-236709003132652/). Now how to get him to follow me here...

I am grateful we did a lot of work before I left, though, and I really do feel more empowered to live this active life. He specializes in the injury I incurred over 20 years ago and has been well equipped to take my body's frame to the next level of healing.

So even when my neck begins to hurt, I know some new exercises and anti-inflammatory actions I can take to help my body recover faster. Recovering faster from over exercise means less degeneration and pain messages for me.

And to that point, I have been amazed at how well my neck has been doing, it took it about two weeks to start yelling at me. That is some amazing progress because the two weeks I speak of were not normal weeks. They were filled with moving and cleaning and travel and walking. We've had a lot to adjust to, this pedestrian lifestyle requires a lot of the body. I am glad I took the time to work with Dr. Rogers. He really helped me get my muscles into good shape before I arrived.

Which brings us back to the physical therapy tools in the bin. Oh, bin, I can't wait until you arrive. I visualize you coming to our door every day and hope you get here soon. My muscles sure could use the precious objects you hold.

What we've learned about shipping internationally is this: don't expect the package you ship to arrive within a week. There are many steps we were unaware of. We also highly recommend shipping your items from someone who is knowledgeable about the shipping requirements of the destination country. We think our person wasn't as knowledgeable about customs in Spain and so we have run into some unexpected snags.

While the process is probably business as usual, we didn't expect to have the bin tied up for this long. And we've had to provide, as of yesterday, a copy of John's passport, his plane ticket and his residency info, (which we don't have yet). We also had to send a copy of the packing slip with estimated values to the customs agent yesterday even though the carrier was given a copy of it.

So there you have it, we are still waiting but celebrating the arrival of John's personal laptop. Yay! And Nick is feeling better today. All of us seem to be feeling better today and we look forward to taking Nick to a soccer practice, even if all he does is watch and mingle like he did last week.

Since he's been doing so well in school, our next project for him involves finding a way for him to play soccer. That is another process we weren't expecting to be so hard. Some things, like soccer, should get easier once we get our residency cards, though.

That appointment is next week.