my own little may day (from fb - 20200501)

(this is a post I originally made on facebook, copied here and backdated so I can look back on it later)

My own little MayDay...five years since The Great Shingles Incident of 2015, five years (and counting) of postherpetic trigeminal neuralgia. No change in the past few years (grr), so life settled in to what has become the new baseline: avoiding triggers where possible (sun, wind, cold, wet, basically anything really), planning for down time after activities, accepting the weird twitches and spikes and Tourettes bouts of "Ow!", "Monkey buckets!!". "Gah!", "Mother PUS bucket!!" (and other less family-friendly epithets).

(A weird "advantage": I'd gotten used to wearing face scarves and gaiters for protection long before Coronapocalypse hit, so that came in handy. Umm, #silverlining?? Or more like #tinfoillining maybe?)

Big thanks to Will for dealing with this shit for so long; this isn't quite what we pictured when we pledged "in sickness and in health". And hugs to all my friends who put up with my twitches and postponements and inability to do everything I want to do. You guys rock.

(bonus pic of Railroad Bandit Stacey and Always Underfoot Darwin)