(No) Problem

School started today. Only one class, a very quiet group, but they smiled easily and sweetly. We're going to get along just fine. I meet the rest of my charges over the next couple of days, but I expect nothing but fun.

Over the course of the entire day, it was interesting to see what was easy and what was hard.

• Talking to the ninth graders: Easy. First day is always tough and a little strange, but it was, by and large, not just easy, but fun.
• Standing while talking to the ninth graders: Not so easy, but doable. I took my shoes off, that makes it better.
• Walking from one end of the campus to the other: Definitely not easy. Five round trips from my office to the main office is mile (I measured it a couple of years ago) and I made at least three, maybe more.
• Working at the computer in my office at school: Easy.
• Talking to colleagues: Easy.
• Driving home: Harder than I wish it had been. My feet don't interact with the pedals as cleanly as I wish they would.
• Changing direction (for example, getting a phone call and suddenly I have to stop what I'm doing and do something else): Hard. Upsettingly hard.
• Getting up/dressed/out of the house so I could hit the store and get my wife some congratulatory flowers and supplies for quiche-making: Surprisingly hard.
• Dealing with Trader Joe's--a nice store, a quiet store, this particular store I've been visiting something like every three days for more than ten years: Very hard; hard to drive there, hard to take emotionally once I got there. This had nothing to do with the other people, nobody was annoying/vexing/anything me, but I was having something very akin to a panic attack--except it was closer to a grief attack.

I'm sure this means something. Or means nothing. I guess not knowing what it means (or whether it means anything) is symptomatic of not really knowing how to live with MS.

I'm definitely not sure how to live with things either being a huge deal or absolutely no problem. At least the things that are central to making my living are still easy and a whole lot of fun. It's just ... at the very least, so annoying, that so many ancillary, and in many ways (at least on paper) easier, activities turn out to be so damnably difficult.

There has to be a reason, right? Or else it wouldn't happen... I don't know if knowing the reason would make any functional difference in how I experience it, but it sure would be nice just to know it.