Holding in a Sneeze: My weird week without my husband

It was Friday morning and I’m sitting at my desk with my face screwed up and trying to hold in a sneeze that was brewing. I know you aren’t supposed to hold in your sneezes, it’s not healthy. But I knew, if that sneeze came out it would start my nose bleeding again. I see enough of my own blood on a daily basis, I really didn’t need it to start coming out of my face… again.

It had been a weird week already so a perfect way to cap it off was appearing like I was on the verge of tears because that stupid sneeze was trying to form.

Brad was in Canada for work most of the week so I was on my own.

I’m okay with being on my own, I used to have to do it a lot when he was traveling more in a previous position. Now I’m the one who travels most and somehow it feels less strange to be on the road than to be home without my husband.

From the moment he left, weird things started happening. My Dexcom sensor went derp and stopped reading me, then it started reading me low when I wasn’t, then stopped, then started reading me high when I wasn’t… rinse and repeat. When my Dexcom reads me at Urgently Low Brad’s Apple Watch notifies him. So he started texting me. When I got home, I replaced the sensor and hit a blood vessel doing it which made a bit of a mess.

I’d been wearing my sensor on my calf (which is usually an awesome spot). It apparently gained the attention of some teenage girls when I stopped at the store on my way home from work. They were giggling and talking a little too loudly about “that gross thing on her leg.” Well, that gross thing on my leg was ticking me off at the moment (see paragraph above) but it has also literally saved my life on more than one occasion. I should have schooled them a little… but my patience wasn’t there. I knew I couldn’t be nice about it, so I didn’t want to do it.

Then it seems there was an increase in every noise on earth when I’m alone. Our servers and HVAC system started buzzing and clanging at work when I was alone at the office. The construction and airplanes flying over near home seemed to have a volume increase and various activities taking place outside of the house sounded like they were inside the house with me while I was home alone.

Walking into work one morning, my shoe broke. It just completely gave up. Luckily, I keep a spare pair of flats at my desk. They definitely didn’t match my outfit, but I wore them all day anyway. Then the office ran out of decaf coffee. I contacted our supplier who had been in last week to restock and he seemed confused as to why I would contact him. Umm… you’re the man who brings the coffee. We need coffee. You said contact you if I need anything. So, now it’s 3 weeks til my decaf coffee is restocked at the office.

Nothing truly terrible happened the whole week, just little, weird inconveniences. So there I found myself, holding in a sneeze and counting down the hours until I could pick up Brad and my life would return to normal.