After a little hiatus I have retuned! I’m back from my fabulous camping trip! I feel refreshed, I got to see family I haven’t seen in years, I got to got to the beach every other freaking day! Ok, calming down. So my family has a tradition of traveling to a little coastal tourist town called Pismo Beach, California, it’s a little bit north of Arroyo Grande which is a little more north of Santa Maria. It’s an amazing little place with a state park campground and a rocking clam chowder place that has lines out the door most of the time. We stayed at the North Beach State Campground which now feels like a second home from the amount of time I have spent over countless summers there. We had about 25 relatives in the campground at one time, but some of them left after the official family reunion luncheon. Getting to camp out with my family for over a week straight, getting smelly from the lack of taking showers and getting on each others nerves was amazing. I missed it. Camping at Pismo has always been a fond memory and getting to renew that with my cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents was probably the happiest and most pain free I’ve been all year. My favorite memory this trip will be on the trip back to the good old valley, my great grandma treated us to Sizzlers since I had never been and the waiter asked if she was a senior, she gave a slight laugh and said something along the likes of “most definitely” or “of course!’. You see my great grandma is 87 and when the waiter asked he age he could not believe it, most people can’t though because she doesn’t look a day over 70 and she’s as feisty as they come. But the disbelief in his eyes made me realize just how much I love my great grandma and how much I appreciate and cherish that I get to spend some much time with her (she moved down to the valley to live closer to us recently). Sorry for getting so sappy, I just love that I get to see my family when I do because they live quite far and spread out.
Camping not only was happy and fun, it was almost like a pain reliever. I had far fewer and less intense headaches because of the cool coastal air and I had hardly any back pain even considering I slept on a mostly deflated air mattress for a week. Now my joints on the other hand hated the cool air. They flared a lot more than usual, with joints that rarely hurt giving me mobility problems. Another big issue was my neck. A big part of Pismo is it’s bustling downtown, you can walk there from the campground so we would spend hours down there shopping. Usually, shopping is difficult for me in general, the walking for long periods of time brings on dizziness, hip and knee joints flare, my cognitive ability fades and I get spacey. But those got better at Pismo and my neck got worse. I would walk for only ten minutes before my neck started to feel like it was on fire, like someone had hit the joint where your neck connects to your spine with a brick. It would hurt to look down, up, side to side, I had to keep my head in a very specific position for it to not hurt, It sucked to be honest. Having to cut hang time with the cousins short because of my health is something I hate to do. But even on vacation I have to take care of myself, I can’t push myself and risk further damage to my health. I know my chronic illness warriors can relate and I just want to remind y’all, rest days are important, mental health days are important. Take care of yourselves so that you might take care of others. All right I’ll wrap it up, have a good day y’all and see ya soon ❤
