I used to have stamina, right? Right.

Gotta love the days when you have just enough energy to be high-functioning while getting ready in the morning and then crash as soon as you leave the house for a 10-hour day of work. Have I mentioned that I hate chronic fatigue? I feel like it's the only thing I blog about these days, but this level of exhaustion is all-consuming -- mentally, physically, emotionally -- and it's the only thing I can think about when I even have the energy to think. At least the newest chapter of Atlas was mostly already written when this latest flare-up hit and I only need to blurt out a few remaining sections.

Scoot Jr.? Zip?

I bought an EZ Lite folding power wheelchair last week. It's a weird thing to be self-conscious of considering that I already have a mobility scooter, but it feels like a step that I don't deserve to take somehow, like disability is something I'm just playing dress-up in instead of something that hugely affects my life and the choices I make every day and will definitely affect my experience on the trip that I'm going on in May. Maybe it's that being a part-time ambulatory wheelchair user is so much scarier than being a part-time ambulatory scooter user and I'm afraid that people will think I'm faking and get angry at me when  I stand up and walk a bit. I don't think my family is very supportive of it, even though I've explained that taking Scoot on public transit is awful and it breaks down into pieces but can't lift them in and out of a car by myself and thus the circumstances in which Scoot is really useable are limited.

I guess I can comfort myself with the fact that the chair is a $2,300 model that I got for $150 plus another $100 to repair the left wheel motor and get new tires, which is objectively a fantastic deal and I can probably resell it if it turns out that I don't/can't use it -- it's not a terribly powerful motor and it's really designed more for indoor use than the outdoor use I need it for, but I'll take it for a proper test drive once the new motor gets here and we'll see.