Last week my body freaked out on me. Even though the week felt to me like most other weeks, my body didn’t think so. It must have felt as though it was under attack because it produced a shitload of histamines and covered me with hives. Generally I think my body is pretty smart and does a great job looking after me, so obviously it was trying to tell me to chill the fuck out!!! The hives started out small then joined together into plaques (according to google, my dear friend). Soon enough hives were in my ears and through my hair, all over my torso and legs, and when I thought it was done, I woke up with swollen and beet red hands. They were ON FIRE.

Yes there was a lot going on – my Superintendent came to talk to me about my goals for the year (it’s an evaluation year), I had a busy schedule in the evenings with doctors appointments for the girls and shuttling to extra curriculars, there were lots of calls to various agencies about Bree, a situation with a student who ran away from a school trip and police had to be involved … and a 1/2 day Professional Development day to plan. It was a lot. Oh and a pot luck. Oh and a whole school trip to help coordinate. Not too much.

But then I worked with staff on the PA day in an ice cold room. As I worked with them, my stress melted away. I think I gained so much peace and goodwill from them on Friday that my hives went away. I love my staff. We talked about First Nations peoples and the importance of recognizing the First Nations land that our school is on, our beliefs about our awesome little school, we marvelled over our students’ math thinking. It was all pretty great.

By the weekend I was hive free and thinking about how to prevent that from happening again. I think I need to get outside and breath in the air. I should be able to fit that in.

And so I had a fairly peaceful weekend – after getting Bree some new shoes and running the girls to various events, I managed to have a tea date with my good friend Alison, have dinner with Paul, do some baking and join a “traditional family dinner” at my mom’s. Paul got a ton of wood brought in (I helped a tiny bit…). Quite stress free!!

Now I’m well into another work week and despite the fact that today I was short 2/3 of my teaching staff, the Grade 7/8 kids had immunization shots, it was a Blue Jays theme day and the Director of our Board visited the school … no hives. So far so good!