A nice day out

Today I braved public transportation and treated myself to some shopping.

After having a much-needed confession of the severity of my anxiety to my doctor, things finally seemed to start looking up. Increase meds here, add a new med there. My doctor said that I was describing a lot of PTSD symptoms, and decided to prescribe me medication. We’ll see how that goes…

Riding on the success of last night’s meeting, I was determined to treat myself to ramen. The timing was perfect, so I packed up my new backpack and headed to the bus stop. The day was beautiful, and I fell into an old routine seamlessly, although not so much emotionally. Pre-pandemic I was public transit king, now I’m like a nervous chihuahua whenever I ride the buses. But I’m trying. It helped(?) that while waiting, two people asked me for directions and which buses to take to get to x. And I was able to help them! So that was nice. Even with all of the advances in local transportation, some routes stay the same.

There weren’t a lot of people at the mall, so I was able to walk around at a snail’s pace. I’ve had trouble with my asthma while walking ever since I could remember, but it feels even harder with the PE. Regrettably I wore my 7-eleven croc sandals and it pinched a vein or something, so the top of my foot started bruising pretty bad. Yeowch! That’s the end of my 7-eleven era I guess.

I got miso ramen, takoyaki and peach iced tea. The way they make it, it looks like beer, doesn’t it? I recently learned about Liquid Death, and how its branding is specifically designed to take pressure off of people who don’t want to drink alcohol. I didn’t realize it until a friend explained it to me, but now I’m in awe that there’s a brand out there filling in such an important niche. I myself don’t drink alcohol much at all (and now really, really shouldn’t due to current medication) and I wish they had something like that back in college and during the con scene. Anything that gets people to drink more water is gpood in my book.

I also brought baby! She’s so tiny and it’s a little hard to photograph, but I love bringing her around. I’m worried about losing her though, so this might be one of her last trips.

The food was amazing, although my only complaint is that the single slice of meat always feels a bit dry and bland.

After lunch I walked around a bit to shop. It’s been so long since I’ve been to the mall by myself – I decided to really make the most of my day. I bought a new shawl that was on sale at Aerie, and ended up getting a crossbody bag at Cotton On for $16!!! It was originally $40. I also got some things at Miniso.

All in all was a somewhat short trip, but it was nice to go out by myself. The breeze felt great, the sun was warm, the sky was blue, and my walk home made my feet feel lighter.