Biking the wrong way down West Nanjing Road

There’s a typhoon landing in Shanghai tomorrow evening. I know this is the sort of thing that should leave me trembling, but I’m not. In fact, this is kind of exhilarating (ask me again when I’m clinging to a raft in the French Concession). I am getting the kid of giddiness I used to get when New Haven would get snowed in late February and we’d have to wade through two-feet piles of snow for weeks in search for Hot Toddies. It was also the kinds of snowstorms during which I always insisted on riding my bike even if the result was dislocating (or tearing) my MCL.

Perhaps I should be panicking. A typhoon is the Pacific Ocean (we live by the Pacific Ocean, it’s kind of neat) term for Hurricane and this looks to be like something in the range of a Category 3 or 4 in Hurricane terms. In comparison, Katrina was a 5 when it hit New Orleans and both Irene & Sandy were downgraded to Tropical Storms (or was it Super Storm?) when they landed on the East Coast (although Irene still managed to take out the power on most of Lynwood for nearly a week).

According to the forecast, we may end up being rained-in inside our apartments for days, but I have enough Chips & Salsa to keep me going for a solid weekend. Perhaps I’m just in a state of panicked denial.

Panicked denial is a feeling I’ve been getting a lot lately. I got some not-so-pleasant medical news last week that I’ve been dealing both physically and emotionally over the last few days (I feel much better physically, because it’s a wonder how much worse we can make ourselves feel just by simply.. not knowing what is going on with ourselves, isn’t it? ). I tried writing about it during the last week, but the thing is, I just.. couldn’t find the right words. I know I’ve been groggier and grouchier this week, simply because I haven’t been sleeping well and I haven’t been sleeping well, well, because living with a condition that can get worse at any moment (as it did last week) is rarely fun (especially when the Chinese doctor just tells you to ‘deal with the pain’ the next few months).

But I keep thinking, this is the sort of thing where it’s easy to moan about the pain or just simply ‘not do things’ just because I have a great excuse not to. What’s been more important is to keep pushing myself through this (to the extent that I can of course), because I don’t want to feel like someone who uses this excuse to act sick or frail. Even if to keep going feels like biking the wrong way down a large intersection.  And I realize that my act of venting into an internet void (without being specific) is sort of moaning about the pain, but these are also parts of my life that are important to write down. After all, life is something beautiful and this is helping me keep realizing that.