I'm All Swollen

Running tip: Don’t neglect and irritate your family and friends by spending all your time running and talking about running. You love running and everyone knows it. However, not everyone wants to hear about what pace you kept over ten miles. The good news is, your running friends and blogger friends eat that shit up. So save it for them.


Home safe and sound, but barely. Our annual Mexico family vacation ended up on an interesting note for two reasons.

1. Right before leaving for the airport, we were having lunch at the resort. Ken told me that my face looked a bit swollen around the eyes. A few minutes later he told me that I was "starting to look different," and he was worried. To understand the impact of his comment, you need to know Ken. He worries about nothing (except maybe his March Madness bracket). Even when I was in labor and screaming, shitting and cussing, he was cool as a cucumber. So for him to even admit any kind of worry is in and of itself alarming. I looked in the mirror and sure enough my face was swollen and getting more so by the second. I took a Zyrtec and we left for the airport. By the time I got up this morning, I looked like this - swollen face shot, can also be called my "mug shot":

As compared to the "real" me:

Seriously. I could be Nick Nolte (remember this?):

A trip to the doc first thing this morning confirmed that I am, indeed, allergic to Mexico. Bummer, because I really like it there. The doc, in fact, had no clue what caused the reaction: the sun, the mango yogurt from that morning, who knows. I headed to Target to get an Rx of Prednisone filled (hey, cool, a steroid. Maybe this will help my running and make me really bulky). I kept on my sunglasses in the store.

Whenever I see people wearing sunglasses inside I always thing that 1) they think they are really cool, 2) they are incredibly hungover, or 3) they forgot they had them on. Now I realize that maybe those people had an allergic reaction on a vacation and are picking up a prescription. Kind of a bummer to be all ballooned up, but I think I prefer the swollen face to diarrhea, which I did not get on this trip.

Here's the second welcome home incident:

2. You know it's going to be a rough ride on the airplane when the captain/pilot comes on and says, "It's going to be a rough ride for the duration of the flight. Return to your seats NOW." You really know it's going to be a rough ride when the flight attendants prepare the cabin for landing when you are still at 32,000 feet because they need to strap in (don't they usually do this like 2 seconds before the wheels hit the ground?). You know it's going to be a white knuckle, stomach churning, really, really rough ride when the flight attendants say, "Buckle in your children really tight. If you start to feel airsick, take off your sweater and keep as cool as possible." Seriously. Does the captain not know I have a vomit phobia? The only thing than having a vomit phobia is being trapped in a seat belt at 30,000 feet with the potential of vomit occurring around me. Did I mention I hate to fly? I do it fairly frequently, but I hate it. It scares me to death. I even hate those itty bitty bits of turbulence that no one else seems to feel or notice.

So, when the rough patch hit, and it HIT, I thought I was going to die. Literally. At about 25,000 feet the plane was being tossed around in the air. Everyone did several collective gasps/screams. Several people got sick. My seat belt was digging into my middle where it was holding me. It only went on a for a few minutes, but it was seriously awful. The only thing that saved me was that I was distracted by having to take care of Sam, who is 12, and help him to feel less afraid. I found myself saying things like, "Oh, we'll be fine (oh my god, we're going to die!). It's not dangerous, just uncomfortable (Bullshit! We're going down. I love you son, I love all of you!). We only have 10,000 feet more to go 'til the ground" (10 mother eff'ing feet! We'll never make it).

If you are wondering how I know how high we were it's because Frontier has maps at every seat showing where you are and at what elevation. I'm not some cartographer or whatever. I don't even know what that means. Here's one from this trip as we approached Cancun:

Of course, we made it safely. I was never so glad to touch down. They should have handed out mints or something when we got off to celebrate being alive. There were some pretty crazy winds south of Denver yesterday (70 mph), so that was the culprit.

I've got tons of pictures coming to share with you, so check back.

I've also got an upcoming giveaway/contest that is INSANE. You seriously will not want to miss this one.

Have you ever had a harrowing or extremely uncomfortable experience on an airplane? Do tell.


Drinking: Nothing. Too swollen.