My mid and lower back aches--it's a combination of the good kind of soreness from going back to yoga after not practicing during my trip, but it's also the sensitive, feverish kind of ache that starts in the skin (not just the muscle) and moves all the way to my bones. I'm either getting sick or this is just menstrual. My PMS and MS "symptoms" are varied and unexpected. When I was in high school I could anticipate things by a definite ache in my hips and lower back (this one mostly in the bones, not the muscles and skin) as well as a cliched craving for chocolate, but now it's much more complicated. In short, it's difficult to know which aches and sensitivities to connect to shifts in hormones, and which don't.

Yesterday evening the water from the tap tasted and smelled moldy.

I'm still congested, mostly on the right side of my sinuses.

This morning we went for a walk around Batiquitos lagoon--it actually rained (it's still raining now!) Rain does sharpen the smells of plants--so the eucalyptus and decaying goldenrod were very strong. A cloudy SoCal sky is unusual--they sky above Batiquitos was filled with high clouds, some from the smoke, and some from the rain. It was both clear and cloudy. It had the sharp contrasts of a desert sky, but with clouds.

I've been sneezing all day. We had lunch in Oceanside. The smoke is still noticeable there, and a few times I smelled it and felt my lungs bunching up. My pressed Cuban sandwich with roast pork and cured ham (and pickles and swiss cheese) was perfect. Not too salty.

For dinner, I roasted a chicken with potatoes, parsnips, onions, and lemons. It started smelling good immediately--a little bit sweet--maybe a combination of the parsnips, onions, and lemons as they caramelized.

I want to change my living space. Rearrange objects.

Since Tuesday, allergies, specifically a stuffy nose, sneezing, tightness in my chest--familiar feelings I associate with DC fall and spring, and also heating. The Santa Annas are almost gone, but I'm still waking up with dry mouth and lungs, again a feeling I associate with dry DC heating, the kind that rats scurry out of. I was going to write "crawl," but I've never seen a rat crawl.

My joints feel like someone poured concrete into them and so my femurs and shoulders are set at odd angles. My left hamstring hurts, and I'm sitting lopsided, leaning to the left.

There was a marine layer this morning, and it's cool. Some of the ash has settled. I could smell smoke on Carlsbad Avenue when I rode home from yoga this morning at 10, but only briefly. I can't smell it here at the apt. on Acacia avenue, where there is almost always a sea breeze.

It was hard to get warm during yoga because we were doing a restorative, gentle practice. But I have trouble moving into restorative poses when I'm cold and feel like my hip sockets are frozen. Several people mentioned that they'd been unable to do much of anything this week except eat and watch TV, but that at the end of each day they were exhausted. I've felt the same way. Being uptight is exhausting. I know that it's just my body naturally contracting and protecting itself, getting ready to run if it needs to.

When I pulled the clothes out of the washing machine, they seemed overly saturated. Too heavy.