Salty Zebra

Hey there! I'm an Amazon Associate, which means I earn a commission when you click one of these links and buy something. This does not change your cost at all.  In recent posts like, " When the World Is Just Too Loud " and " Seeing the World Through Rose Colored Glasses " I've talked about being a Highly Sensitive Person (an HSP). Just in case this is new to you, like it was to me a few years ago, I thought I'd share a bit about it today.  How long have I been a Highly Sensitive Person? Probably since I was born, maybe before that! How long have I known it? Only for a few years now.  I don't remember the exact circumstances where I learned about HSPs, but the more I learned about it, the more sure I was that this explained my whole life!   You see, about 15-20% of the population is born different from the rest. Some are introverts while others are extroverts.  What they all have in common though is that things affect them differently.  Everything fro...

Hey there! I'm an Amazon Associate, which means I earn a commission when you click one of these links and buy something. This does not change your cost at all.  I don't know about you, but I can totally identify with the family in this picture! Now, I would certainly never sit where they're sitting, but sometimes the world can feel like this in even common situations. I mentioned in a post a few days ago that I struggle with light sensitivity. I also have a hard time with noise. This can be an extreme thing, like a concert (or any given Sunday at our church), or something as simple as a fan or water running. It takes on two presentations: I can't hear or process things well if there is background noise and lots of noise tends to overwhelm me and make me shut down.   What do I mean by shut down? It was really extreme before my brain surgery last year. We were at Disney World celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary and the noise/stimulation got to be so much that my bra...

   I've always been a bit of a, "glass is half full" gal. My default is to find the positive in a situation, which sometimes annoys my family, but I hope overall has given them a better experience. One common phrase we use about this is, "Seeing the world through rose colored glasses." This phrase is not always intended positively as some people perceive this outlook as a negative. They would contend that I am not adequately preparing for the trouble that might come my way or that I'm getting my hopes up unjustifiably. My husband, for example, is more of a preparer.   One of the big shifts that came to our household from Covid was the backup pantry. Many, if not most, people have a pantry. In ours we mostly store backups for open items in our kitchen. For example, if there's an open bottle of ketchup in the fridge, there should be a sealed one waiting to replace it in the pantry. When scarcity came to town in March of 2020, the backup pantry was born. It...

Ok, guys. We’re going to get real today. This is a post I’ve avoided writing. Or maybe I have written it. Oh dear. That’s the issue. It’s about memory. I thought I was getting personal on Monday when I wrote about our marriage, but this is the inside of the inside of the inside of me. This is the stuff I don’t want to talk about with my husband, or my counselor, or even myself. Forget my upcoming surgery, this is the really scary stuff in my life. It started a long time ago, well before my brain surgeries. In fact, this was one of the symptoms that I hoped would be cured by them, but it wasn’t. The most dramatic incident took place just before we found out I had a tumor when we were in Disney World. As you can imagine, it’s a very over stimulating place and I struggled with that a lot. At a couple of points in the trip it hit a tipping point and I “blanked out” as my husband put it. In the middle of a sentence, I froze. I stopped talking, moving, anything. I stayed that way for a ful...

  It seems like such a simple question.  It's polite to ask, but we all expect the "fine" answer and a quick move on to the conversation. My answer is not so simple.  I can say, "fine," and have it be mostly true, but it wouldn't even begin to tell people how I'm doing. If I were to start with the most intrusive, it would be my vision. Having double vision affects EVERYTHING in my life.  What I see. What I feel.  Going from inside to outside, or simply through a doorway sets me off kilter.  It's like a whole new set of inputs comes rushing at me, often leaving me mentally swirling.  Terrifying to those around me, I recently started driving again.  I avoid driving after dark or in super stimulating places like our main street or a Costco parking lot.  I've stuck to side roads in the day time and I've done pretty good.  To my knowledge, I haven't even had any close calls.  But it's NOT like driving before my surgery.  I have to l...

      Last week my husband and I went on an Alaskan cruise.  The primary motivation was to see if I COULD cruise.  After my brain surgeries I've dealt with quite a bit of nausea, double vision, depth perception issues and overall disorientation. As I write this everything on the screen is overlapping on top of each other and dancing around to some degree.  We weren't certain whether the additional disorientation from the movement of the boat would do me in.  I am happy to report that it did not!     I actually rather enjoyed the movement of the ship.  The gentle rocking was very soothing and made me sleepy, that was my only side effect.  I did not have any increase in nausea and while there were people all around me using sea sickness bags I did not even feel the need to hold one - that says a lot after the last year!     The challenges I DID bump up against had more to do with pride and learning to live within m...