Pace, pace, pace yourself. My mantra since accepting about a decade ago, finally, that I have fibromyalgia. Of course, I’d had it years before, but never wanted to acknowledge that the fatigue and  deep burning muscle pains needed my attention.

But I learned at last and now know if I’m ignoring my body and listening only to my head, my body will eventually turn off as quickly as a light fixture; I must lie flat right away. No waiting. And I start waking up in the morning with a head-to-toe buzzing feeling in my body, as though I’m sitting in a vibrating chair at a nail salon.

So now, in this time of preparing to move out-of-state, my body has picked up its buzzing routine. In the last two weeks, we were in our new city for the closing on our house. This involved stops at our new bank, an insurance agent, our new home for a final walk through, and then the title office. If you read my last post, I’d like to tell you that we were offered not only water, but assorted drinks, plus cookies at the latter; I knew by then to graciously accept them. It seems to be a Sioux Falls thing to offer water, even when one does not look dehydrated.

After the closing, I filled my days with multiple trips to paint and carpet stores and with appointments at our new home with carpet and painter and decorator people. We also attended the college graduation of our oldest grandson in a town an hour away, and the preschool graduation of our youngest grandson…and we spent a day with a nurses’ training friend of mine in another town an hour away…and we went to dinner with our daughter and husband, seeing the play Mary Poppins afterwards in a pleasant intimate theater downtown.

Plus, I can’t forget that I helped (a little) with my daughter’s annual two-day garage sale. In cold and rainy and terrifically windy weather, I hovered in the garage next to a small space heater she was trying to sell. Bone chilling does not adequately describe my discomfort, but meeting lots of nice “rummagers,” as they called themselves, warmed my internally iced self.  A bit.

Now I’ve not even mentioned our grandchildren, ages 5 and 6, a big reason why we’re moving. They talk nonstop and run nonstop, so they delightfully colored the atmosphere all their waking hours.

Is it any wonder that on our 10-hour drive home, my husband and I barely said a word? And that my body has been buzzing ever since? And that I can’t even remember the days when I used to think I could do only one thing?

And, that I’m grateful for every little thing? And I’m starting to pace myself, again? After all, we only have one more month of living in Chicago, and I want to live these days buzz free.