A Little unRavelled Today

I am back from my second sleep study, about which more later.

Go here. [do not pass GO, do not collect $200. I’m moving in four days. Do you think I have $200 to give you?]

Which inspires me to share my own Letter to the Iditor:

1 September 2007

To the Management of Hell’s Half Acre:

I will not be renewing my lease at the end of September. I have reached the limit of my patience, when we had hot water for only 5 days in July, no notice when the water would be cut off for maintenance, potholes in the parking lot, neighbors carrying on at 2:00am, and an endless parade of managers who seem unable or unwilling to make this property a fit place to raise my daughter.

[The next paragraph contained information that is public knowledge and would identify where I live.]

The increase of rent by $150 to cover the electric bill, without written notice, is unconscionable and I suspect illegal. The new policy of not accepting personal checks, when I have lived here for over four years and have never bounced a check, is unprofessional and inconvenient.

I found your most recent notice regarding the long overdue repaving of the parking lot on my stoop Thursday morning. It was not attached to the clip by the door. I picked it up only to remove what I thought was a piece of litter. It was hand-written, partially illegible, and somewhat rude in tone. It also instructed me to park on the street, when both sides of the street are clearly posted “No Parking”.

When I called the manager on Friday night to inquire why the water was turned off, I did receive a satisfactory explanation. I wish I could say the same when I asked when I would be able to move my daughter’s car back onto the property.

I will be moved out of the apartment on or before the 30th of September.

Yours very truly
The Ravelled Sleave

I sign the lease at the new place next Wednesday afternoon. I’ve already signed up for wind-powered energy, which should be simple and abundant with all the hot air emanating from Dallas City Hall, not to mention the Hell’s Half Acre management office, and which makes me wonder if I should think about pooling my resources with others and building a wind farm just north of Austin, where the quantity of hot air is even higher.

I’ve also arranged for an allegedly seamless transfer of the phone service. [Ask me late Wednesday or early Thursday how seamless it was.] After having the same Metro number for 13+ years, I’m exchanging it for a simple land line to support the DSL. No more Call Notes, no call waiting, no answering machine, no long distance service. Also, no calls at dark-thirty from some of LittleBit’s more clueless buddies, when we have a phone curfew of 9:00pip-emma. My monthly bill will decrease by $62 and change. That is nearly three skeins of Cherry Tree Hill or two and a half of Anne and a whole sweater [maybe two] at KnitPicks.

If my children and my sister and my executor are very very nice to me and give me lots of dark chocolate, I will give *them* the new number, in case of emergency. But otherwise, people can just call me on my cell phone or send me an email. I’m not having that the number has changed, the new number is X nonsense.

I am on the phone all day at work, and since I never know when I’m going to bed at night, anywhere from 7:30 if I’m utterly exhausted to 1:00 if I’m stubbornly resisting sleep, and since my friends though brilliant are not psychic, I figure that I’m saving them the embarrassment of waking me at a time when they might reasonably have expected me to be awake.

I may change my mind about that after I’ve had my C-PAP for awhile and am functioning on all four cylinders. And I may not. This is my home, after all [our home for a few more months, but ultimately my home], and within the bounds of commandments and common courtesy, I get to make the rules.

So, as I said at the top of this post, I’m home from my sleep study, and I am pretty much awake. The tech said that people tend to say two things after their first night with a C-PAP. Some see an immediate difference, and others realize around noon that they're not wilting like they usually would. I would appear to be in the latter camp.

When I awoke this morning I did not feel as if I’d had “the best night’s sleep in ages”. I felt as if I had been dragged through the proverbial knothole, proverbially sideways. In order to keep the mask from blowing air into the corners of my eyes, we had to move it so far down on my upper lip that it pressed tightly against my gums. If I tried to sleep on my side, it put additional pressure on the side of my mouth that was away from the mattress. Somewhat counterintuitive, I would say, but then I never took physics in high school.

I learned very quickly not to talk with the mask on. Not only did it suck all the air out of my mouth, but it felt like it was pulling brain cells out through my nose. Not fun, but probably funny to read about.

Oh, and my brand-new manicure?



This is my hand, resting against Box #11 - Dining Room - Fragile. I asked her to take the polish off [to accommodate the fingerpinchythingie – yes, I’m a quarter German, how did you guess? – that measures the oxygen level in my blood] that particular finger because I had messed up the edge a little when I was getting into the car after having my nails done, Thursday night. So I can just smile innocently and give him Bambi eyes when I pop in again sometime today and ask him to fix it.

I spent half an hour this morning, washing electrode goop out of my hair. Now I won't scare people when we go to fit LittleBit for her choir dress, later today. Or not as much as I might have.

I should hear from my sleep specialist within seven to ten working days. If anything like last time, it will be Monday or Tuesday. And no timeline on when I get my own private personal edition of BrainsuckerI. I had a different tech last night than my first study two weeks ago, and this tech has sleep apnea and was able to reassure me that I *will* eventually get used to the mask. I wish it were not necessary, but since I plan on living to be a very old, very feisty lady I will take all the help I can get.

This is what I saw when I pulled into my parking spot this morning.



She left the light on. And she left the C-lock [cheap landlord version of a deadbolt] off, so I could get in. This is why some species don’t eat their young.

Not much knitting yesterday. Not as much exhaustion as the day of the first study, either, so overall it was a good day. Today is all about the packing. I will reward myself with knitting breaks. I know how I am.