A Timeline

I've done quite a bit of globe-trotting for someone my age, and I have NEVER had jetlag as severe as I do this week. My body is acting like some kind of insomniac two-year-old that refuses to get with the program.

Granted, this was one of the more challenging trips I've taken. When I visited Tropical Research Country (TRC) last year, I had just one layover and was ending my journey on the east coast of the US. Now "home" (ie where my parents and dog are) is farther west, and I had two layovers, including one that was hundreds of miles west of home, meaning I had to backtrack against a significant portion of the country.  If all of that sounds confusing, this is how the trip went:

At what was 23:30h in Eastern time on Monday, I left my house in TRC for the 6 hour drive to TRC's capital city. I was hitching with an undergrad field course that was heading out the same day. We had lunch in the city, killed some time in the afternoon shopping, and had way too much time stuck in the stuffy, dark airport.

At the equivalent of 14:45 on Tuesday in Eastern time, I took off for an 8.5 hour overnight (left at 23:45 TRC time) flight to European Hub City.

Landed in European Hub City at 6:30 local time on Wednesday, 23:30 Tuesday night in eastern time.

Had a 3 hour layover there, then boarded a 10 hour flight to American Hub City (which is farther west than my final destination). Landed at 13:30 local time on Wednesday, which was 20:30 for the time my body was used to.

Scheduled for a 5 hour layover. Did customs and all that jazz, stressed over what to eat and made a few false starts at procuring a meal. Ended up doing well with food, but only because I got scared at how weak/fuzzyheaded I felt.

Huge thunderstorms hit, delaying the flight another 3 hours.

At 22:00 Eastern timeWednesday night, board final flight. Land at 23:45 local time at Regional Hub City. Greet family, gather bags, embark on one hour drive home and finally walk in the door at 1:00 Thursday morning (eastern), about 49 hours after I left my house in TRC.

Discover my dad has moved all of my clothes into storage while I was gone, have exhausted emotional meltdown about lack of immediately accessible clean underwear.

Call Match at 2 AM having said emotional meltdown about underwear.

Am calmed from hysterics to hiccuping sobs by Match, hang up and cry myself to sleep around 3:00 Thursday morning.

Wretched body is wide awake at 5:30 Thursday morning.

Am more numb that sleepy for all of Thursday. Notice on my drive home from lunch with Mom that I REALLY was too bleary to be on the road.

Put myself to bed at 21:15 Thursday night.

Proceed to sleep, but with wake-ups at midnight, 2:00, and finally wide awake at 2:45.

Kill time on the internet (y'all, do you realize how FAST the internet is in this country???). Try to log into HBOGo only to realize the online account I'd been "borrowing" was canceled at some point while I was gone.  Switch to catching up on magazines until 5:00 Friday morning.

Log in to write rambling and only arguably coherent blog post at 5:05.

And here we meet.

Oh, and I DO have clean underwear now. Just in case you were worried.

EDs in Novels?

Thanks so much for the support you ladies have shown me after I went AWOL for a few months; every single comment on the last post absolutely brightened my day.

Question:

Can anyone think of a novel that features a character that has/had an eating disorder, but sort of as a subplot (ie, not a traditional "sickness and then recovery" narrative a la Hunger Point, The Best Little Girl in the World, etc)? I guess the caveat here is that I have in mind books that treat the issue as a serious but not ridiculed component of someone's life (not the "oh that flakey skinny chick must anorexic, ick" approach that seems to provide some sick comic relief in occasional books and movies).

Not sure if I explained that quite right, but let me know if you can think of any titles? I much appreciate your input.

Flying home tomorrow...love y'all.

Been a while

So . . . I don't really feel like I deserve to have anyone reading this blog anymore, since I went completely AWOL from writing and reading ED blogs during this field research session. I've stayed in touch with a few people, but feel a lot of guilt about avoiding the blogosphere. I can't explain it exactly, but I try *so* hard to compartmentalize and be purely in "researcher/scientist" mode when I'm in the field. I guess I worry that if I keep up with ED blogs during my time out here, I don't give myself a chance to shed those obsessions and end up distracting myself from my research.

I don't know if that actually works. Things have been okay; could have been better and could have been worse. So I'm sorry if I haven't been as supportive as I should have in the blog world.

I'm going home in three days, and even though I've been here in Tropical Research Country for four months now, the time has flown by. As I'm inching closer to "real life" again (whatever that is, right?), I can already feel my anxiety about food/exercise stuff ratcheting up.

I have no idea where my weight is. Okay, by "no idea" I mean I don't know a finely measured number, but I guess I do have some idea. I suspect it edged down a bit, judging by the fit of my pants/belt, but not dramatically, and I did do better with keeping up calories than pretty much any other field session. This was mostly because this time I was living in a house, with access to a full kitchen and my own meal prep (as opposed to relying upon dining hall offerings). My formal exercise has been a bit lower than in the States, going to try to push it down a bit farther in re-establishing my routines Stateside.

Remote field stations are such weird places from a sociological/psychological standpoint. You have a small group of 20-somethings thousands of miles from home, hundreds of miles from a city, dealing with a foreign setting and culture, isolated with only each other for company 24/7. It's almost like being in a spaceship, except with really awesome tropical birds in the background.

Anyone who has ever watched a reality TV show knows better than to underestimate the drama that a small group of 20-somethings can generate with virtually no outside stimuli.

I've been lucky enough to get along with pretty much everybody, although there are a few people whom I try to minimize my time with. My housemate is pretty moody, but I've learned not to take it personally. I'm pretty sure another PhD student here is bulimic. I got very, very close to one person here over the past few months (that's a long story), and am still moping about them leaving for another job last week. It's also the "lull period" between spring and summer waves of researchers, so the place feels kind of empty overall. I'm pretty lonely and will be ready to go home on Tuesday/Wednesday (yes, two full days in trucks and trains and planes to get from here to home).

So I guess this is just my reintro post; I plan to be back to reading/updating in the blog world more regularly again. I hope you all know how much your support has always meant to me, and hope my hiatus didn't lose too many people--although that definitely wouldn't be undeserved.

Love y'all.