Triggered: A Short Story of Anxiety

We bought a new-used Toyota 4Runner a couple of weeks ago. It was the make and model of the vehicle we were in during our car accident in '04 (just a few years newer, it's a '96). Despite the vehicle not having air-bags at the time of the accident, we survived the 75 mph semi-truck collision that night. Crumbled and broken, both the car, us and our driver, it was almost a miracle.

So naturally, having to travel almost 40 miles to and from our new house at the end of the month; particularly if we find a job, and when we start University in the fall; and for the next few years, on the same interstate where the accident took place, we thought the safest thing we could do, mentally, is have a vehicle we trust.

That was all good, until today, driving to the gym, when we gently applied our foot to the brake to turn the corner into the parking lot, at a low speed, and the ABS (Anti-lock braking system) kicked in, and the car wouldn't stop. Or maybe it didn't kick in. We're not even sure how ABS works, exactly. According to James there is an error in the programming of the third generation Toyota ABS. So, that's nice.

If you've ever experienced a braking system on ice, when it's not working properly (or maybe it is, but braking shouldn't feel like that) it sort of jerks, feels like it's shaking across the pavement. It's not stopping.

And it triggers us into a panic, even though we weren't going very fast. We had forgotten that particular feeling of the car accident. Suddenly we're staring at a giant wall of metal, and closing our eyes, holding back a scream. So. Fun.

It's almost like passing semi-trucks on the interstate, or any time we're not driving. Being a passenger makes us nervous, and so does having a passenger if we're driving.. It's not that we don't trust our driver. We don't trust anybody around us in a vehicle. And the bigger the vehicle, the most stressed and anxious we feel. If we're driving passing a truck, our knuckles are white, we're intensely focused, and our head is pounding to the beat of our heart. It's actually a very unsafe way to react. We know that. yet, we have a hard time controlling it.

In any case. Fun times.

In house hunting news: Tonight we sign our half of the paperwork on the Purchase Agreement. It's the home-stretch.

Not An Exciting Entry

It felt like a long weekend.
James worked a bit on Saturday, then we put in counter offer to the house we're trying to buy.
Then it was a lot of...nothingness.

It feels like it took a long time to get to today.

Tonight we're going to test drive a "new" vehicle. A 4x4, because the car we are currently driving (a '98 Mercury Mystique) is not reliable on the interstate in the winter. The steering is loose, it's got some minor operating issues, and the tires, while new, have to have air added to them every three days; ultimately we don't feel safe on the interstate with it. Since the town where we plan to buy a house is nearly 40 miles south on the interstate...well..it seems logical to get a vehicle that makes us feel safe.

So we're looking at the make and model of the kind that we were in the car accident with back in '04, that pretty much saved our life, even without air-bags. We're hoping it is as good as it sounds on paper, if only because the drive is over an hour, and we will likely be coming back in the dark. We do NOT do well on the interstate, especially in the winter, and at night. We're getting better though, nearly 8 years later. We'd probably have no worries at all anymore, if we didn't have a daily reminder (pain) of how unexpected things can happen at high speeds, when you're feel safe.

Not an exciting entry (for you, anyway), but...let's call it a warm up exercise for this week.

Wheels For Exploration

(Not an image we own...)

James/The Boyfriend bought a car today (on Ebay of all places), it's a manual of some sort, and of course made for Britain, so it's likely we won't be able to drive it because a) we don't know how to drive a manual (though an ex boyfriend tried to teach one of us back when we were about 20 years old) b) the steering wheel is on the opposite side as it is in America and c) well...they drive on the other (left) side of the road here too. While we spent weeks driving around Germany in 2009 (?), the cars there have the steering wheel on the same side as the cars in America, and they drive on the right ("right"?) side of the road. So we get to be a passenger. We're good at that.

He decided that rather than spend money on rentals (which would be more expensive than the car he bought) it would be a better idea to buy a car, and then sell it before we leave in a couple of months, or store it at a friends house, until we come back in for awhile in September.

It's good timing too, the car purchase, because any day now the flat sale will (finally) be completed and we'll have to move out...and with the need for a place for only a month or so, and not being flush with cash, we may end up spending a couple nights in the car until we can figure out how to work around the issues of leases, or very expensive extended stay hotel options. On the upside maybe we'll be somewhere with a fridge so we can stop worrying about the state of the meats and dairy products not being chilled properly. Good thing most of us have a stomach of steel. (In DID/MPD it is not unusual that some of us have different allergies, different intolerance levels, or different sensitivities, some of us also have massively different pain thresholds, which is extremely common with the "disorder".)

In the meantime now we can be more mobile on the weekends. Time to explore Britain!! And take more pictures! If you want to see some of our most recent pictures of England head over to Our Frank Adventures (http://ourfrankadventures.blogspot.com/), the blog dedicated to the next year plus of our travel experiences.

A Candy Shoppe Day

We spent a lot of time walking today, which is not unusual, but soon it may be less usual. We walked around some nearby villages all afternoon to look at used cars because James figures it will be cheaper to get a car for the next month and a half or so, rather than rent one. This way we can go exploring even further on the weekend, maybe take a weekend trip to the North Sea, and most importantly go to Northern England to visit Kerry Stott, our guest blogger.

Sugar Mice

We stopped at a sweets shop in town center today, it just re-opened - we missed the Oompa Loopas that were coming with a photographer to celebrate the opening by an hour, we we're a little upset, we would have loved to have our picture taken with an Oompa Loompa.

We got a couple cool candies we'd never had before; flying saucers, which is an edible coloured rice paper candy with fizzy white sweet and sour powder inside, they call the powder 'sherbet'; and sugar mice, which is a candy made of fondant (sugar and glucose) containing no artificial colours or flavours. (which is common in candy here, they use fruit and vegetable based colouring agents in much of their foods). They are adorable, but we didn't like them as much as we thought we would, which is surprising because...sugar. We thought it might be fun to make a cake that looks like Swiss cheese and use them as decoration.

Playing Domino's at The Anchor 

So we walked all over the place today, we went to a village called Rowhenge and had dinner [we wrote a review, accompanied by lots of photos, of the village and restaurant on our Frank Adventures blog: http://ourfrankadventures.blogspot.com/2012/02/anchor-of-rowhedge.html], playing a game of Domino's, both James and us agree we probably played it the wrong way, but it was still a fun distraction while we waited for our food.

We were going to go to a movie tonight but I was too tired, and didn't want to go to a 9pm movie, so here I sit. James got upset at me for something silly and went for a sulk, and now he's taking a bath. I'm feeling too sad to play on Twitter tonight, though I might try to peak in and out later...who knows. He'll probably be upset we put that in the blog, about the sulking and stuff, but it's a  part of our day, and people shouldn't think our relationship with him is always perfect. Not that it should be, because perfect relationships don't exist.

Anyway, today was mostly a good day, the village is beautiful that we spent the most time in, and we had a mostly consistent day among ourselves after we stopped feeling sluggish from our adventures last night. The book we have from the pub we went to is sitting here, hopefully we get around to reading it, it is in a terrible state. Damaged on the spine, missing a page inside...but it just makes us love it all the more.

~ Cassandra et al