Pelicans in Cattle Country

(and other things that make me go… “?!?”)

Sometimes things are just *NOT* what you expect.

While this can be a Good Thing, it can also be confusing or stressful or challenging (on physical, emotional, mental, or psychological levels) and the thing is… Those responses are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

My spouse – who had a kidney transplant 12 weeks ago – accompanied me recently on a trip to Montana. Nothing about the trip — not the training I was attending, nor the hotels we stayed in, the driving challenges, or the ability to travel without an excess of medical equipment (because he’s no longer on dialysis) — none of it was what either of us expected.

Some of those not-what-we-expected things were surprising in their lightness. The time flew; the hauling of suitcases in and out of three hotels over the course of a week was not nearly so burdensome as we were previously accustomed to due to there being no dialysis machine and related supplies to cart about; my learning curve when it came to conference material was more of a bunny hill than an Olympic-grade mogul.

Other things – while manageable – were exhausting, as much for their unexpectedness as for their level of difficulty. Food options (apparently ‘vegetarian’ is another word for ‘nofoodforyou’ in Beefville), weather conditions, the horrible headcold I came down with… None of these things were awful and really, they were not even all that out-of-the-norm. But being in a foreign environment and coming across something otherwise ‘normal’ is just… Weird? Hard? I dunno. Something.

I had to drive far more than I wished on this trip, because even though my spouse is doing very well overall, he was not feeling well while we were away from home. Like, he was tired. Couldn’t keep his eyes open behind the wheel for 30 minutes at a stretch kind of tired. We’ve since figured out why that happened, but while we were in the middle of a 26-hr round-trip drive, that meant the majority of the driving fell to me.

Yeah, that kinda sucked.

I’m spoiled when we’re at home. I drive all over four counties to do my job, so whenever my husband and I have to go out together for any reason (to run errands, pick up dinner, visit friends, go to an event, etc.), he drives. He’s my chauffeur. 🙂

It’s one of many things that – post-surgery – we both had to readjust to. He couldn’t drive at all for three weeks after transplant, and even then he was a bit restricted for another three weeks. So one of the unexpected things I had to take on** while he was recovering, was driving. Everywhere. For everything.

**I would like to state for the record that Yard Work is the bane of my existence.

I didn’t like it. But it wasn’t a permanent change. (Unlike the cat box duties, which have now become – and will infinitely remain – my responsibility [Blech! Puke!] because with his lifelong immune-suppression medication regimen, Mr Fever will not be medically allowed to manage cat poo ever again.) (He, of course, finds this perfectly acceptable.) (I. Do. NOT.) (But I digress.) So, having gotten back into our He-Chauffeurs-Me routine in recent weeks, we were both expecting that he would do the majority of the driving on our trip through Cattle Country.

NOPE.

A n y w a y

The point, I guess (I’m attempting to make one! really I am…), is that sometimes even though something would be ‘normal’ or at least ‘not-unexpected’ in everyday life, it doesn’t always translate when taken out of routine context. It can be hard to wrap your head around, even when it’s something that’s otherwise just part of your world.

So when, on the first morning of my conference, I received a photo message from my hubby showing pelicans (pelicans! of all things!) swimming about on the Missouri River, I was kinda like…

That’s weird.

So cool!

But…

WEIRD.

As are so many things in our lives right now.

SO. Tell me something new/strange/hard-to-wrap-your-head-around.

How are things in your world, hmmm?