Spinning out of balance with jet lag…


Scott inquired if I had another blog entry I was thinking about…“No, nothing on my mind as of late.” However, I knew that was his newly acquired “Asian” way of trying to get me to write and post one. I guess it worked!

Well, I was reading through a little publication on what Christian women in the USA really want to know about how missionaries “on the field” live their lives… funny stories, daily activities etc. Throwing caution to the wind and my pride out the door, I decided I would share the real story of why I currently sit with a lavender heat pack draped across my shoulders and neck.

Some people may think (if they think about it at all) that only the person who travels via an airplane is the one to suffer from jet lag. However, when Scott returns from a trip he is either awake late at night, very early in the morning, throughout the night or a combination of all three. Sometimes an upset stomach gets added to the mix as well, depending on the location of travel or the recent airline food ingested. Thus, I too can suffer from his jet lag. Let me explain a most recent experience.

We have a front loading washing machine which I love most of the time particularly because it is about the only thing designed to be gentle on our clothes in this Asian world. However, it is highly temperamental and if it becomes unbalanced in the spin cycle for any reason, it refuses to spin and consequently dings incessantly…After contending with Scott’s jet lag for a couple of days (and the extra pollution), I too was tired and ready for an earlier bed time even though the laundry hadn’t finished it’s spin cycle. With Scott already conked out, I closed up the house, put the dog out and bid an early goodnight to Faith and Tim who were still up doing homework.

• 1:00 am: Scott awake and in the bathroom adjusting to the pleasures of eating Thai food again.
  
• 4:00 am: Scott awake once more ~ same reason except that he added that he could hear the washing machine dinging from being unbalanced.
  

Since Scott wasn’t feeling well, I decided to be the one to get up and take pity on our dog and neighbors and shut the machine off so the constant dinging would stop.

Being quite out of it, yet having good night vision, the need for turning on the lights didn’t even enter my thoughts. Down the stairs I quietly tread, navigated around a corner, around the kitchen table and next I instinctively unlocked the glass door to the outside, down a couple more outside steps and BAMM into the glass door of the laundry room. What was that? Into a glass door? Yes…face first! The dogs in the neighborhood even began to howl from the commotion I had created. I felt the faucet in my head turn on. The blood began to trickle out my nose and the tears dropped from my eyes. My lips swelled instantly and I felt pain in my head, jaws and neck. Would the laws of physics confirm whiplash?

So, yes, now I sit with a heat pack on my neck. Yesterday, I had a $3.00 neck, shoulder and back massage to try and curb some of the stiffness. (Relatively inexpensive massages are one of the small pleasures of life in Thailand.) My nose and mouth are feeling better today and are far less swollen. Scott still won’t allow me to drive as he doesn’t think I could make fast enough turns with my head to keep up with the continual darting movements of motorbikes and other street traffic. Thankfully, he is actually here to assist with the driving.

Sometimes, this is how missionaries “on the field” live their daily lives…a bit mundane and ordinary, really.