Yes, I am no longer in Australia but in beautiful central Oregon. My silence over the past month has been due to the fact that I’ve been on an epic voyage (well, epic for someone with CFS!)
I was a university student a Kansas University 15 years ago, and it’s where I got sick. I never thought I’d be able to come back to the US but a few opportunities opened up, and the trip planned itself in about 30 mins. (It’s always a good sign when things fall together as easily as that.)
Firstly, Centrelink (the Australia Govt body that gives me my disability pension) allowed me to go to stay in a number of countries around the world, mostly 1st world countries, for as long as I liked. Then, the Australian dollar reached parity with the US dollar – so I could afford to stay here. Then, a friend of mine moved to the little town of Sisters, in central Oregon, and said, ‘come on over…I think you’d like it.’
So I came – and I do like it!
I didn’t write anything about the on my blog before I left because the lead-up to the trip was stressful. A lot of feelings that I’d blocked from the time I first got sick started to re-surface. It was emotionally and physically draining, I felt like I could only take one day at a time, and was never entirely confident I would make it onto the plane.
I had hoped I would have had all my crying out of the way before getting on the plane (that was my plan anyway. Plans, schmans! I don’t know why I bother making them!) So, I cried on every flight I was on, then cried in the airport, in the supermarket, in the café, in the… well, you get the idea. I single-handedly (or single-nosedly) bumped Kleenex’s sales up 10% over the past month.
I broke my flight up in Hawaii, which was so beautiful. I even had a good energy day and the woman I was staying with grabbed me and said, ‘get in the car…you need to see at least SOME of Hawaii!’ So she got her big plastic cup of rum and coke and we jumped into her jalopy and drove around the island with the rum sloshing around and Christian music blaring from the radio. The coast-line was spectacular…I can see why tourism is their biggest industry.
Then I flew straight to Oregon, and am in Sisters which is a small town on the edge of the high desert, with beautiful mountains in the background. Here are some photos taken just down the end of my street. Lucky me!
I’m not sure how often I’ll be writing blog posts from here. I’m just going to take it easy, and write whenever the urge grabs me, rather than trying to keep to a schedule.
Hope this finds you, my lovely reader, happy and having a day with at least a few sweet things in it. (I have apple-pie fudge in my fridge, so that will be my sweet-thing.)
