Leftovers for breakfast

I awoke at dark-thirty with a stuffy head and a crabby cough. First step, after grabbing my glasses: out to the kitchen to nuke a mug of chicken broth, as it was too early to use my inhaler. Reheat the remaining square of cornbread in the microwave, add butter, and zap it for a few seconds to melt said butter. Nuke and polish off yesterday's oatmeal. Grab yesterday's leftover chipotle chicken flatbread pizza to finish the job of wrestling my sinuses into submission.

So now I am more than vaguely full and less than perfectly de-congested, but I am breathing somewhat freely and no longer wobbly from insufficient sleep or low blood sugar.

Yesterday I did a huge restocking of the pantry via Costco, and today I will finish the job via Kroger. I would far rather curl up in bed and aim for another three to five hours of sleep

Just got hit with another wave of the groggies. I'm going to fix some warm milk and go after that nap.

"Foyle's War" and other good distractions

I finished the ninth season last night. Anthony Horowitz is a genius. My sister sent me two of his books several months ago, one of which ("Magpie Murders") finished its TV adaptation on PBS Masterpiece last night. The man is a prolific writer, and I've been so impressed with everything he's touched, that I'm aware of. Michael Kitchen plays Christopher Foyle, a local detective in a small English town beginning in the early years of World War II. Honeysuckle Weeks plays his driver, Sam(antha) Wainwright, nee Stewart. The series gave me a real sense of how ordinary people fared during the war years and immediately thereafter. Answer: not well. Food, petrol, and clothing were rationed. Many people had been bombed out of their houses, and new homes couldn't be built fast enough. Profiteering and the black market were rampant, causing civil and political unrest and a general mistrust of the police and the government.

I spent an hour or two yesterday, unsubscribing to various vendors or newsletters and deleting nearly 300 emails. It's amazing how something so small can boost my mood and lessen my general anxiety.

We've received our updated boosters. The bipolar bears were having some side effects over the weekend. As for myself, I was a bit more tired and a bit more crabby than usual. I spent a lot of yesterday napping.

I also watched a couple of middling movies over the weekend. "Just Like Heaven," with Reese Witherspoon and Mark Ruffalo, two eminently likeable actors, was maybe 3.5 out of 5. "Win A Date with Tad Hamilton" had competent main actors, but three of the sidekicks (one hers, two Tad's) had potty mouths and a generally sleazy attitude. Blergh.

I just put half a dozen small potatoes into the oven to bake. We have just enough sour cream left to grace them nicely. And the dishwasher will be somewhere near the end of its cycle when the timer goes off, so we'll have clean dishes.

So, I'm feeling more than a little overwhelmed.

I knew, going into it, that this month would be hard. It's the first month in which there is no final paycheck to soften the finances. Just my first pension check and Beloved's SS check, which is significantly larger than my own would be, because he worked longer and earned more in his lifetime than I did.

I think I'm feeling mild depression on top of my chronic anxiety. It might be time to ask my doctor to up my dosage. Or maybe I should just grab my Ray Charles CD and boogie until my crabby hip says WHOA!

The bad news is that they took October's and November's Medicare Part B premiums out of my SS check. The good news is that I can set up an automatic reimbursement from the HRA account which is part of my retirement, and that anything leftover in that account rolls over into next year. (This is separate from, and different from, the reimbursement account I had when I was working, in which a set amount was taken from my paychecks to fund future reimbursements, and anything left at the end of the year was lost to me. I never had that problem, between my medical expenses and those of the bipolar bears. I usually exhausted the fund between April and June.)

It's not all doom and gloom. I have a carefully constructed, updated spreadsheet in which the regular expenses are all accounted for. There's very little margin for error, error being groceries and unexpected medical bills. There's also light at the end of the tunnel, in that next year I'll get the generous COLA increase and a decrease in the Part B premium, which will effectively give me a raise of nearly $200 a month.

I'm cooking a lot more, both in frequency and in volume, and I'm grateful for the strength to stand and stir. I'm portioning our servings and saving half in the freezer for a meal the following week, with a reminder on my phone to prevent freezer burn. I'm learning to use the Instant Pot, and I'm doing a lot more cooking from scratch, now that I have the time.

I had tithing settlement yesterday, and I promised the bishop that if it became necessary, I wouldn't be too proud to ask for help.

I don't think it will come to that. Meanwhile I'm going to make a pan of cornbread. Because cornbread plus a mug of milk or buttermilk is a delicious, joy-enhancing meal.

I know that we're in God's hands, and I know that He hasn't dropped me yet.

A month and a bit in.

I'm adjusting. My first pension check arrived last week. I paid as many bills as I sensibly could and will pay the rest when my Social Security check arrives later this week. I'm signed up for Medicare Part B and have received my updated Medicare card. I'm also signed up for a Medicare Advantage plan and am waiting for that card to arrive. I need my card in order to set up a profile with my provider and properly compare Rx prices with those from a couple of GoodRx providers and Mark Cuban's online pharmacy. Every penny I can save there can be applied to the bipolar bears' dental bill payment plans.

If my budgeting is realistic and proceeds forward on schedule, Diana will be paid off by my next birthday and Fourthborn's dental plan by midsummer. Middlest's dental plan should be paid off by the end of next year. And, depending upon how large and how often any additional principal payments are, the mortgage might be paid off in a little over two years from now. All of which are good things, indeed.

Right now I am teetering on the edge of sleep. For a moment, I was standing in the hall of my parents' last house, with one eye looking into their bedroom and the other into the bathroom. This is ordinarily the time I would be lying down for a nap, having stayed up until nearly dawn watching British TV. I'm sure that I'll return to a normal(ish) sleep schedule at some point. And I did go to bed significantly earlier than I have been.

Time to get off the computer and start getting ready for church. Thank goodness for dry shampoo!

Staycation's over

I am sitting here, waiting for the oven to finish warming up so that I may bake a cauliflower pizza. I haven't wanted one for months and months and months.

To bring y'all up to speed, last week I took Middlest to get a couple of fillings and the initial work on replacing two crowns. I also had a checkup with my herpetologist hematologist and another iron infusion two days after that.

I went to see the wound care specialist, who declared that the rogue eczema was technically not a wound and got me a quick referral to a dermatologist. I quite like her, and I now have two steroid creams: one for my forehead and jawline, and another for my legs. All of which are recovering steadily.

I had my appointment for a replacement driver's license, as the one which the state mailed out in March never arrived. The new license came in today's mail, so that's that for several more years.

This week we had Fourthborn's disability hearing and will get the judge's ruling in six to eight weeks, about the time we're gearing up for Middlest's. I had a follow-up appointment with my PCP that afternoon re: the rebound Covid. While there I got my flu shot, brought him up to speed on my eczema and new meds, and left with a prescription plus his signature on the paperwork for a handicap hang-tag. Renewal is in four years, and I will not need another prescription for that. He also X-ray'd my lungs to make sure that there were no clots lurking after the rebound Covid last month, and they're fine.

Yesterday I had a lengthy phone conference with the folks who will be my liaison with the corporation, now that I'm retired. I've spent a handful of hours over the past couple of weeks updating my spreadsheets to reflect the impending financial reality. I've also made double payments on Diana and the two payment plans for the bipolar bears' dental work. If I can keep up the over-payments, Diana will be paid off shortly after my next birthday and I can split that money between savings and the dental payment plans.

Tomorrow I am officially retired, and early next week I should get the form from HR proving that I have been insured up to and including today, which means that I can apply for Medicare Part B. Once that's established, I will then get to choose between a Medicare Advantage plan or a bushel of supplement plans.

In between all of the appointments, I have watched a whale of a lot of British TV. There has been minimal reading, but my overall priority has been to establish a reasonable sleep schedule built around the timing of various medications. I'm sleeping a bit better. I'm sleeping longer at a time. My overall level of anxiety continues to drop. Current plan is to get our boosters in late November.

Tomorrow and Sunday are General Conference. All bets are off as to whether I fall asleep during the sessions. I'd prefer to be awake and hear all of the addresses. My physical health is stabilizing, and it's time to work on my spiritual health.

Later, gators. I have a date with DCI Banks, Annie, Helen, and the rest of the team. I'm fixin' to begin season 4.

Staycation stuff + my farewell address

I've completed week 1 of staycation. Here's what happened:

Monday: pre-hearing meeting with our attorney's paralegal to prepare for Fourthborn's disability hearing later this month and Middlest's in November.

Tuesday: no scheduled appointments, but an impromptu visit to the nearest Social Security hub, only to be told by a gracious and professional clerk that I cannot apply for Medicare part B until I have the L564 form from HR, which will not be mailed out until I am fully retired on October 1.

Wednesday: eye exam (mine) with our friend, whom Fourthborn has christened Dr. Eye-Poky, after his teaching her how to insert her contacts. No significant changes. He had said last year that I'd need to consider cataract surgery in the next five years or so. In discussing that, he said, they were growing slowly. Impairment then was about 8%, which I have not noticed. Impairment now is about 10%. I'll wait.

Thursday: two fillings for me.

Friday: monthly doctor checkups for the bipolar bears, followed by the usual trip to our pharmacist and a Whataburger run.

Saturday: lunch with my bestie at La Madeleine and next month's date, time, and venue decided upon.

Week 2 has fewer appointments.

Tomorrow: Middlest has prep for a replacement crown in the morning. I see my hematologist in the afternoon.  Anybody's guess as to whether there is another iron infusion in my future.

Thursday: I have an appointment to renew my lapsed driver's license, which did not arrive in the mail back in March..

The following is my farewell address to my colleagues, which I had a coworker mail out on Thursday so as not to clog up my inbox on Friday, when I was trying to zero it out preparatory to handing in my WFH hardware, my parking pass, and my office badge.

"I wish we were not in the middle of a pandemic. Some of you will remember [my initial supervisor] in claims. It was she who persuaded me to take a leap of faith and come to work for [the corporation]. Ideally, she would be here today so that I could thank her face to face and give her a retiree-to-retiree hug.

"I have a former attorney [in this office] to thank for my segue to the Dallas [office]. She was in the Arlington claims office on a day when a claims supervisor who shall remain nameless irritated the fire out of me, and I discovered the posting for a receptionist here. I asked her what it was like to work here. She said it was wonderful, and that I would love it. She was right.

"[The office manager] was home nursing her broken ankle and participated via phone conference in my interview with [the former managing attorney]. So she didn’t get a visual until she returned to the office some weeks later. When I interviewed with [the managing attorney], I was luminous from pain, because I drove from the interview to my pre-surgical consultation for the eviction of my gall bladder. I think he was moved to hire me (somewhat unilaterally, as I recall), more because of my genuine vulnerability than because of his penchant for blondes. I was, at that time, exceedingly blonde. It’s important to state that I was not his type, but we did have a disproportionate number of blondes in the office at the time.

"During my drive home to Arlington, I took a call from my then-manager, who said something along the lines of, 'I do not know what you said in your interview, but they will be making an offer.'”

I began work here the day after Labor Day 2001, one week to the day before 9/11. In my four days at the reception desk, I managed to link names to faces, names to phone extensions, and when I came back to work on the 11th, I thought I was ready to take on the week.

"My second daughter and her husband were moving to Boca Raton that day. The original plan was that they would pop up to the office, exchange hugs, and be on their way. But I was up to my neck in fielding phone calls from my coworkers’ loved ones while the building’s PA was instructing us to vacate the building. My kids drove to Florida without a proper goodbye.

"I locked up the switchboard as quickly as possible and headed home. The skies were empty. Ray Charles was singing “God Bless America.” And I have never before, nor since, seen such studied and amazing courtesy from my fellow commuters.

"So I started out at the front desk, fielding phone calls. When [the office manager] discovered that I was a skilled typist, I moved off the front desk and began transcribing dictation from [three attorneys]. [The dictation from two of them] was impeccable. [The third attorney’s] dictation was a perpetual adventure.

"After [two legal secretaries] retired, I then moved up to be SemperFi’s secretary, with the late [former employee] as my trainer and attorney-explainer. I absolutely adored working with him, except when he was in trial prep mode. Then, I could have cheerfully pinched his head off. He and [his former secretary] had had a raucous habit of exchanging curse words between her desk (where [one of our paralegals] now sits) and his office. When he came up to the front desk (where I was filling in for somebody) he was gracious and warned me that his language might be a little rougher than I was used to. I smiled and said. “You’re an officer. And a gentleman. I’m sure there will be no problem.”

"There were a few minor lapses on his part when he was dealing with recalcitrant technology. I would just get up and quietly close the door to his office.

"I took on an additional attorney when [one of the secretaries] had surgery. This was when we discovered that SemperFi routinely did so many of the things that a secretary does (scheduled his own depos and mediations, because he didn’t want anyone other than a judge telling him what to do, or when), that I was not an effective secretary for poor [new attorney]. However, we all worked together to get me up to speed, and for several years I had half-dockets for [several other attorneys in succession] then after SemperFi’s retirement, one full docket and half of another’s.

"I have loved working with my attorneys, and with my fellow secretaries and admins. Not to forget [the office manager and managing attorney]. I’ve learned so much from all of you.

"[Two years ago] I began having ongoing health challenges, about which the less said the better. But they affected my energy levels, my focus, and my ability to remain awake at my desk while engaged in work that I loved. [The office manager] was able to keep me usefully and gainfully employed by transitioning me to serve as your records processor. [The former records processor] has trained me well and continues to be a valuable and greatly appreciated backup. I had felt competent and productive at this monotask until the first bout of bronchitis this year. As some of you know, I had another bout during July, and then I caught Covid. And then I caught another bout of bronchitis with a side order of Covid. I have masked up so often that I feel like the Lone Ranger. Who was that masked ma’am? I don’t know, but she left in that silver Escape.

"I’d spoken with [a trusted colleague], off and on over the years, about my prayers to know when it was time to retire. I had certain financial goals that I wanted to reach first, and I was hoping to make it to 25 years with [the firm] or maybe even longer.

"However, I had my prayers answered the second week of August, and now here we are.

"Thank you all for being my work family. You are, individually and collectively, some of the finest human beings it’s been my privilege to know in my long life, and I will miss seeing you and talking with you and praying with you and asking you to pray for me. You’ve seen me through single parenthood on a small [corporate] beginning salary, which immediately improved once I got here, to remarriage, to widowhood, to being immensely blessed and peaceful, notwithstanding the occasional speed bumps.

"Here's how to keep in touch if you’re so inclined: 1. (personal email address) 2. Contact info on Facebook. I’m a little hard to find. If all else fails, find me among [a coworker's] friends. 3. On Discord, I’m [screen name]. 4. I’ve been blogging since 2006. If you want to follow me there, please email me, and I’ll tell you how to find me.

"You’ve asked me what I plan to do in retirement. There are a bushel of appointments for the bipolar bears and me in my [first three] weeks out of the office. After that, I hope to rediscover my innate biorhythms. I will probably be sleeping like a teenager on summer vacation for several weeks: up until well after midnight and sleeping through the day. I have faith that it will all settle out. There will be lots of reading. There are, as of this writing, 20+ books in my Audible queue, perhaps twice that many in my Kindle queue, and a very tall stack of physical books, plus two magazine subscriptions that are at least a year unread, each. There are two vocal scores that I want to buy: Carmen and Madame Butterfly. Because who doesn’t want to sing grand opera in the shower? And theoretically at least I have the range for both. You might want to check on the bipolar bears’ sanity this time next year.

"And then of course there is the knitting, and the Zentangle, and the desire to learn how to draw representational art. I will be writing and writing and writing. My blog. My memoir. Perhaps more poetry; I haven’t needed to write poetry since meeting and marrying Beloved. I have three self-published chapbooks written during the disintegration of my marriage to the children’s father.

"But first and foremost, there will be naps.

"May God, however you see Him and worship Him, or your higher power if you’re more comfortable with that, bless you all."

*We* have Covid. And also progress towards retirement.

In spite of our best efforts, the bipolar bears also have Covid. We are all recovering and are grateful to have "light" cases. We also sound like the cannons from "1812 Overture" or the Anvil Chorus or maybe just a herd of bull seals barking.

Yesterday I had a quick phone conversation with my office manager, who initiated paperwork on her end for my retirement. And then I spent the better part of an hour in a conference call with a wonderful woman from Corporate who helped me fill out the paperwork which *I* had to initiate. Notwithstanding all of that time on the phone, I managed to remain alert and productive.

I wish I could say that today was equally productive, but I logged off at 12:30 and slept about four hours before logging back on. Thankfully, my OM determined yesterday that I have more than enough PTO to cover today's absence and any needful PTO next week. I am hoping to have the necessary vitality to go into the office each day, because I have a whale of a lot of stuff to pack up and bring home. Also, my trainer last year, who is my emergency backup and will train the new admin when she comes in, is home with Covid.

Right now I'm eating leftover lasagna and swilling orange juice. Our grocery order arrived 45 minutes ago, heavy on liquids in preparation for the long weekend and for the bipolar bears' Prednisone and antibiotics which will be delivered tomorrow. Four cases of water. Two large bottles of Simply Lemonade. Two additional half-gallons of 2%.

I'm sitting here rather like a bump on a log. I've coughed so hard today that I've pulled a muscle in my abdomen. Quelle joie!

I think I'm going to let the lasagna settle and then go back to bed.

I have Covid. Again.

Squishy took me to the ER on Friday night, and a Lyft driver brought me home around 4:00am on Saturday. I am now taking a quadruple dose of Prednisone (they need to figure out a way to make that taste better) for a total of five days, two of which have mercifully passed, and more Cefdinir for the bronchitis which has also returned. They can't determine from my medical records which variant of Covid I've had each time, but logic suggests that it was Omicron which zapped me earlier this month and which has circled back to try to get me again. Perhaps Omicron is the collection agency of coronaviruses?

At any rate, the meds are making me stronger, and wired, and tired. I went to bed after taking my inhaler and, I think, my regular evening meds at 10:00pm. I need to check that before I go back to sleep. I know that I took my Friday meds on Saturday night because I was in the ER when I should have taken them, and they were only letting me have a small amount of soft ice to convince Body that we were not dying of thirst. It would not be a good thing to skip my meds twice in one week, and two days apart. No anxiety meds + the possibility of roid rage is not something which I want to inflict upon my beloved bipolar bears.

I woke up at 1:30-ish, and my next meds are due in a little over an hour, at 6:00am. My feet are swollen because I've been sitting so long without a pair of compression stockings on. But I have loaded and run the dishwasher. (I'm not allowed to touch the clean stuff, except to grab what I need from the periphery, while I have cooties.) And I've washed two loads of laundry, although the second will go into the dryer when I'm up for meds and supplements because I don't currently have the spoons to pull and fold the first load that's in the dryer.

I am basically living on FB at present. Lots of love coming in from many of my friends, and I'm feeling it. I'm also sharing articles that I'm reading elsewhere online, with lengthy preambles. Because Prednisone. And I'm grazing pretty much all day when I'm awake, but it's mostly healthy leftovers from the past few days. I'll send off an Instacart order that's been edited and added to multiple times overnight, when the store's been open a few hours. A recent order was something of a debacle because I hit "send" before the shelves were fully stocked, and there was at least one disastrous substitution because the options were limited. Every item on today's list has explicit directions for acceptable substitutions or what to delete if the original request is unavailable. I can be taught, even when I'm on Prednisone.

Later, gators. ^cough cough^ also Oh Look Shiny.

When I wake up in the morning...

...my line of credit at the credit union will be all paid off.

I looked at my paper calendar yesterday was amused / alarmed / dismayed to be reminded how many doctor or dentist appointments I/we have between September. cramming everything in on my calendar to ensure that they're all done while I'm still on the company's insurance.

I slept well last night, in part because I drank a cup of warm milk before lying down. I drank some tonight and am hoping for a rematch.

That's all I have for y'all tonight.

I am here. (Points to X on physical/mental/emotional/spiritual map.)

 Physical

Ambient stress level has dropped significantly, leading to less tension in my neck, traps, shoulders, and lower back. Redness where the eczema has been, continues to fade. My skin is dry in patches and generally itchy down my spine, across my "saddle," below my collarbones, in the spot behind my left knee where the lesion was, and pretty much all over my hands, wrists, and lower arms. Several times today I have caught myself scratching, once to the point of tiny pinpricks of blood. I have scheduled a massage after work on Wednesday, which means that I will go to bed that night with happy skin and muscles.

The weird thing with my fingers on my left hand continues to pop up, generally when I'm in the parking lot at Braums, preparing to pick up milk, OJ, and buttermilk. Forefinger and thumb form a very tight "G" (in fingerspelling), with thumb occasionally sliding between forefinger and middle finger. Sometimes the contraction involves my whole hand. Sometimes it travels up my forearm, producing a deep ache rather than a stabbing pain. I can usually slip or wedge the four fingers of my right hand into any gap, sometimes one finger at a time, and begin to massage a semblance of reasonableness into my thumb, and from there, to the rest of the hand. The spasm is generally resolved within five minutes. I don't know if it's stress-related or has something to do with electrolytes. When I'm working to reopen my grip, I remind myself that there are people with severe arthritis whose hands are like this all the time.

Now that I'm back in the office most days, I'm starting to have to fight sleepiness again, even on days when I've had a decent amount of sleep. Today I had to log off at 11:45 and take an hour and a half of PTO, which I spent blissfully asleep. I was less drowsy in the afternoon but still far less productive than I would have liked. I was home today because of the massive rainstorms and regional flooding. I expect to be back in the office tomorrow. I don't know if this is long COVID or simply stress about trying to get as much done, on time, as possible before I'm out the door in two and a half weeks.

Mental

I'm easily distracted, and my focus on work tasks has been frequently and significantly interrupted by tasks related to my upcoming retirement. I needed information from my doctors' and dentist's offices regarding which Medicare Advantage plans they accept. Naturally, they have no providers in common. So when I talk to my HR people (from whom I've as yet heard no peep, but Wonderful Office Manager has until September 1 to turn in the paperwork which will get that rolling), I will go with a plan which will cover my doctors and rely on the payment plan available through my dentist to cover Middlest, Fourthborn, and me.

Note to self: follow the link the dental office sent me to get signed up for a second payment plan. The first one covers Fourthborn's second extraction, which happens Wednesday morning at a different facility.

As noted above, my ambient stress level feels significantly less than it's been. Middlest and Fourthborn might say otherwise.

Emotional

I think I'm doing reasonably well. Again, the bipolar bears might argue otherwise. Today I proactively scheduled two massages: a 90-minute one for the evening of my last day in the office, and a 60 minute one for this Wednesday, after Fourthborn's surgery and the end of my workday. It will be interesting to see how long it takes me to get to the spa from home, as opposed to from the office. After the second massage, I intend to pause my membership for a month or two, until I get used to how the lower income shakes out.

I put massages here, because while they definitely include comforting and blessing my physical body, for me it's more about stress management and release of any emotions that bubble up.

Spiritual

My spirituality is off the rails at the moment. My testimony is still unshaken. But putting what I believe and know into action has a hole in it the size of that Sequoia in California which has a road going through it. I haven't studied Come, Follow Me all year. There was the bronchitis in January which exhausted me. I haven't gone to Sunday School in two and a half years. The Zoom versions have been pretty much inaudible, and on those Sundays when I'm well enough, and awake enough, to attend church in person, by the end of sacrament meeting I am DONE in all four of these buckets.

I have a year or more of unread copies of the Liahona, largely because of my tendency to fall asleep when I cease moving, no matter how interested I might be in what I'm reading or hearing. (I also have a year or more of unread copies of the Atlantic, for the same reason.) I can manage short articles from various media outlets which are connected with the Church. And I'm part of two vibrant groups on Facebook, in which we share thoughts, feelings, ideas, spiritual experiences. Most edifying, and I love reading others' perspectives.

I guess it would be fair to say that I'm currently experiencing spiritual anorexia. Sometime in the past few weeks, I got what I still think was inspiration, to switch my Book of Mormon app to French, and to follow along as I listened. I rapidly realized that 1.0 speed was warp-speed too fast for my present level of following along. So I geared it back to 0.7. which is still a little fast for comfort, but I mostly keep up. However, I could no longer listen to Le Livre de Mormon on my morning drive, because the narrator elides the words far more than I've done for the 20 or so years in which I've been reading it. (Basically, I discovered "you're doing it wrong, honey.") And then there's the matter of driving while reading, which is a huge NOPE. So today, I switched it back to English, and then I giggled when the narrator sounded like HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey, when he was dying. I fixed that.

And then I listened to chapters 6-10 of 1 Nephi while driving partway to work in a downpour. I called in to say I'd been late, and my coworker who was handling switchboard told me that a text had gone out telling us all to stay home because of the torrential rain and regional flooding. So now I will be checking my text messages before leaving the house, and after the retirement party I will be switching back to Le Livre de Mormon at 0.7 speed and reading along while sitting up in bed.

Later, gators.

The healing has begun.

For the past couple of years, I have been dealing with eczema. Primarily along my left arm, but some on my right arm, some along my right jaw, and a small patch on my forehead. The repeated doses of steroids have each done their bit to help clear things up.

There have been no bits of peeling skin on my right earlobe for maybe a month and a half. It is soft and supple.

The itching and peeling on my arms has been gone for awhile as well.

And this morning I noticed that the worst patch, on my left arm, is fading fast. The skin is crepey, because I've yet to re-hydrate after waking up. It had been a vivid red-to-purple from where I'd scratched and scratched and scratched. It was visible in the pictures from Lark's wedding last year. Firstborn was able to cover the bits on my face with makeup. But the space from my left cuff to my hand was all too visible.

Those of you who deal with eczema will laugh in recognition. My stress level has dropped so much since last week that it is no longer provoking my skin to scream for help. I may well be my normal little old lady pink in time for our modest office celebration in three and a half weeks!

Wonderful office manager sent the announcement email to my coworkers on Sunday night. I was off yesterday to take the bipolar bears to their monthly appointments and pick up their meds. I had hoped to work from home later in the day, but those two or so hours out and about wiped me out. I went to bed and slept for several hours. I noticed when I emailed my OM that I would not be WFH, that my inbox was jammed with messages from my coworkers.

I made the announcement on Facebook last night, and that has blown up as well. It's a lovely "problem" to have.

Later today, Fourthborn has her second pre-surgical consultation for a wisdom tooth which will soon be evicted. Her disability hearing is next month. We are hoping for the best.

We also got word yesterday that Middlest's disability hearing is set for early November. The court had been mysteriously and aggravatingly silent on that for months.

Retiring, but not shy

The announcement will go out on Facebook after it goes to the office sometime this week.

I've prayed off and on, for the past several years, to know when it was time to hang up my spurs. The answer came midweek. I was having a spectacularly frustrating day, verging upon a meltdown, because of some tasks that I'd inadvertently neglected that resulted in a terrifying round of emails and IMs from my office manager and our managing attorney.

I've mentioned here the cascade of physical symptoms I've been experiencing over the past couple of years, which resulted in my office manager graciously finding a way for me to continue working and keeping us medicated and fed, not necessarily in that order. Anemia requiring iron infusions. The distressing tendency to fall asleep while sitting bolt upright, but thankfully not while behind the wheel. Behind the wheel, I was consistently blessed to feel it coming on and to enact countermeasures until I was safely off the road.

I've had two lengthy tangos with bronchitis this year, both of which required multiple rounds of antibiotics and/or steroids. The most recent episode took up much of July and was followed almost immediately by my trip to the ER, overnight stay, and Covid diagnosis. I had successfully dodged the pandemic for nearly two and a half years. I finished the last dose of those meds on Friday but am still using my inhaler every four hours as prescribed.

My energy level and focus, as you might imagine, are fluctuating wildly. Twice last week, while working from home, I had to log off and take a nap. I'll be typing along, checking off boxes and updating files, and then I'll hit a wall.

(Good news is that, probably because of all the steroids I've been on, for several weeks I haven't tipped over sideways in bed while reading, playing games, or watching TV.)

And in the midst of that near-meltdown a few days ago, I suddenly had the answer (mixed with a healthy side order of panic) to those intermittent prayers. Time for the next part of my life to begin. My official retirement date is October 1, and I am now peaceful and calm about that. Phrases from my patriarchal blessing have been wafting over my mind recently. We will be OK financially.

My last day in the office will be Friday, September 9, and at first I was excited to have a retirement event with friends and family invited. But after a thoughtful exchange with Middlest, I realized that I didn't want to be the vector of a super-spreader experience. Covid is rampant in this county. (Witness my own personal gotcha.) So we will have a small, private family party after the fact. The in-house celebration will be limited to whomever happens to be in the office that day.

After the dust settles, there will be a family executive meeting in which we lay the groundwork for providing that my money does not run out before my days do. But that's a whole 'nuther blog post.

Good Sabbath, all y'all.

Fridge and pantry archaeology

Chez nous, we have among us an astonishing number of condiments and seasonings. We could probably use a double-fridge or smaller industrial fridge (assuming there is room, which there probably is not) to keep everything neatly corralled, segregated by type, and used or disposed of in a timely fashion. There is simply not enough space in the door of the fridge. Items in the back of the fridge get lost, sometimes for months. That's the back story. Here's the post.

What I wanted for dinner is a pint of Ben & Jerry's. What I made for dinner was a smoothie from bits and bobs in the pantry and fridge. As I inspected the use-by dates, the list of ingredients grew smaller and smaller. I have sent a carton and a half of Greek yogurt through the garbage disposal, one dated for June of last year and the other (unopened) from November. I'm definitely willing to consume food past its use-by date, within reason. This just seemed on the unreasonable side of the line. A couple of tablespoons of coconut oil, gently warmed in the microwave to encourage it to bond with the other ingredients and not with the sides of the Vitamix. A tablespoon of chia seeds. I am hoping for extra "body" but no slime. A quarter-cup of almond slices, to go with the almond milk that was also, sadly, past its prime. A generous splash of orange juice to join the bottled pineapple chunks with their juice. Half of an extremely overripe banana, which turned everything a lovely shade of grey. I think that's it. Between the gathering and the reading of labels and the running of the garbage disposal (twice) and the running of the Vitamix, it probably took me the better part of half an hour to accomplish a task which under ordinary circumstances would have required five, maybe ten.

At any rate, the smoothie is tucked to one side of a counter, hopefully out of the way of Middlest's upcoming food prep. And I am fixin' to take the last of the refrigerated black truffle Alfredo pasta out of the microwave and chow down.

I worked today. Not quite as impressive as yesterday's accomplishments, but I think productive, given that I logged out mid-day and slept for nearly three hours. (Last night was not a good one for sleep quality or quantity, but the nap was immensely helpful.)

That's what-all is floating around top-of-mind today. Later, gators.

Eating. All. The. Things.

So: I'm a bit over one week past diagnosis, and this was my first day back at my work-from-home desk. By the grace of Heaven, I killed it today. It will take me the rest of the week, again by the grace of Heaven, to get something like caught up, but if tomorrow is like today I'll make good strides toward that.

I've finished my Prednisone. I could feel a bit of roid rage coming on Sunday afternoon, so I sent myself to my room. When I was less agitated, I went out to the kitchen and baked a pan of brownies. The bipolar bears had their share. I divvied mine in thirds, so as to impersonate a sensible diabetic. They were wonderful.

The munchies came on yesterday. I ended up making myself a four-egg-yolk omelette with cheese for a late dinner, because I wanted some serious protein, and because the eggs had been in the fridge so long that they were thinking of becoming petrified. I stirred a little buttermilk in to improve the texture. It was wonderful.

Today I was miraculously alert until about an hour before time to log off. I never once felt drowsy, just bone-weary. Throughout the day I ate: simple cheese quesadillas, nuked in the microwave. A fat mug full of the almond-based granola with a splash of milk. A small glass of juice. Once the Costco order arrived on our porch, two slices of Dave's Killer Bread slathered with guacamole, plus a fat handful of sweet cherries. A little later, small bowl of cottage cheese and half a dozen triple ginger cookies. Before that, a larger bowl of the chicken black truffle Alfredo pasta gloop that I made on Sunday night. There's one serving of that left in the fridge, and another three or four servings in the freezer for next week. And an alarm on my phone to remind me to thaw and eat it before it becomes freezer-burned.

After work, I noodled around on my phone for awhile, reading one article or another, and then I pulled on my galaxy leggings, purloined the water shoes that I gave Fourthborn some time back, and drove to Panera to get dinner for me and to In N Out (conveniently next door to Panera) to get shakes for the three of us. Over the course of three and a half hours, I managed to eat my sandwich (wonderful); drink my shake (wonderful), eat my portion of baguette, warmed in the microwave and slathered with butter (wonderful), and inhale my salad (you guessed it, wonderful).

The bill came from the radiologist at the hospital. $10.76. I am so thankful for good insurance. Had a good post-hospital virtual visit with my PCP yesterday. Have I mentioned that I got my labs back from my regular checkup, and my cholesterol was normal in all ranges for the first time in maybe ten years? Even my HDL, which has always been slightly-to-significantly low. Maybe it's all the steroids that I've been on since the first of July? Does that have any effect on cholesterol? I know that it does a number on blood glucose levels.

We have a consult booked for next week for a second oral surgery for Fourthborn. I am hoping they have a payment plan and I can break it up into two or three chunks this time without my credit rating taking a hit. Good news / bad news on the Middlest front: he needs two crowns replaced, but in speaking with the staff at our dentist's office today, they will be signing up with a company that will handle their payment plan, allegedly without affecting one's credit, and I'll find out more about that in the next couple of days and book Middlest's appointments. I just did not want to gut my 401K to pay for all of this. My financial anxiety, which spiked yesterday morning when I got the tab for the bipolar bears' cleaning and then the treatment plan for Middlest, is still there, but quieter, like when you've turned the burner off but the pot's still tossing up the odd bubble or two.

The dishwasher is humming. It's almost time for the Atlantic crossword to drop. Pretty sure that I won't be staying up to play Wordle when it drops at midnight.

I'm grateful for the friends who have been praying for me. I'm sure that that's why I'm recovering as quickly as I seem to be. I'm trying to listen to my body. I'm thankful that my sense of smell and taste have been unaffected. I'm downright amazed at the resilience of this aging body.

Night, y'all.

In which your intrepid heroine has yet another adventure.

Betook myself to the ER last night because my lungs were mocking my inhaler. The bipolar bears were asleep (and anyway, neither of them can drive). I messaged them once I was settled in a room at the ER. (It was weird when the nice triage-man announces that he was heading to room X with a 70 year old woman, and I realized that that woman is me.)

X-ray, EKG, CT of lungs to rule out pneumonia and other bad stuff. Hospital-strength Covid test to follow up on the negative one I took at home before leaving the house. Two IV tubes in my non-dominant arm. Steroid into one of the IV tubes, anti-coagulant magic into my belly, various tubes of blood drawn throughout the evening, oxygen flowing in through a cannula (leave the gun; take the cannula).

About 3am, transfer to my own room with a real commode; shortly thereafter a CPAP. Got three hours of deep, uninterrupted sleep before my bladder woke me and the tech had to come unhook me from the CPAP.  Then the nurse came in to check my glucose and something else.

This morning into this afternoon, more stabs for glucose level, two shots of insulin several hours apart, echocardiogram to definitively rule out blood clots, second visit from wonderful ER doctor, wherein he countermands the ER's "nothing by mouth" order (although I'd been able to wheedle small amounts of ice chips). A meal, finally, in the early afternoon. And the most marvelous collection of kind, competent human beings I've met in one place in a very long time (almost like going to church, it was, without the music or the prayers).

Communicating via Discord with my bipolar bears and Squishy. Communicating via Marco Polo with the non-resident blessings. (Squishy brought a charger for my cell phone to the ER last night and waited in their waiting room until 11, in case I needed anything.)

Restraining myself from an announcement on FB until I had a diagnosis and was safely home, which I am, with a couple of new Rx's due for pickup in the next hour or two, and I already feel a thousand percent better than when I walked into the ER last night.

After 2.5 years and full vaccinations + booster, Covid has finally caught up with me. This explains why my inhaler wasn't all that helpful (I forgot to mention the two nebulizer treatments I had today). It also explains the multitude of six hour naps that have occurred over the past two or three weeks.

Upshot? I feel loved and cherished and oh-so-blessed. Heavenly Father knows who I am and where I've been for the past 24 hours or so. He sent me where I needed to be, and he got me home safely.

Booboo

The bronchitis appears to be well and truly gone. I saw my PCP this morning for regular diabetic blood work and also because I have a booboo in the crease of my left leg which came on about the time I started the Prednisone. Said Prednisone made most of my eczema go away, although there are signs it wants to come back along my right jawline. I was thinking this might be a patch of eczema trying to go rogue. There is a swathe about 2" tall above the crease which is weeping lymph. It doesn't hurt, but it's sticky and annoying as you know what. Other than that, I'm feeling pretty good. Well, other than having been a little crabby and unfocused because of the fasting.

Ah, the abbreviations I have learned because I work in a law office. Dx (diagnosis), Fx (fracture), Hx (history), Rx (pretty much everyone knows that one), Tx (which I am amused to know is not an abbreviation for a minuscule map of the Lone Star State, but treatment).

I'm glad that I went when I did. The booboo is a precursor to a diabetic ulcer (ick!), and I have an Rx for an ointment which targets that. I will also be acquiring a wound care specialist. I hope he's as cute as my hematologist (think Neil Patrick Harris) or she's as witty as Dorothy Parker.

In other news, the bipolar bears were both sleeping when I got home, so I had to bring in the grocery order. That's something that Fourthborn usually handles, given her "freaking [surname] man-strength." Well, I overbalanced while bringing in a 32-pack of DP and fell. My exasperated yell woke both of them up. Nothing's damaged except my dignity, although the shock of it wore off at 3:00pm, and I emailed the office manager and took what turned out to be a six hour nap. I've been up for awhile, and I feel fine. (Also very blessed to not have broken my tailbone or my bad hip.)

I will, of course, report this to my doctor, and the automatic check-in feature will ask me about recent falls for the next year and a half or so. A small but annoying price to pay.

Later, gators. My Trader Joe's Hatch chili mac & cheese is growing cold, and the alarm for my evening meds is going off as we speak.

I got a haircut???

Last one was at some point before the pandemic, so it's been at least two and a half years. Since then I've just twisted it up and clipped it. I think tomorrow there may be some foofing and barrette-ing.

My old Supercuts had closed since my last trim, so I had to consult the Google and Thummim to find a new one. I liked the stylist, who shares her given name with Firstborn.

I wore the new striped shirt with the old flowy pants and was well-pleased. I need to make a pair of earrings to go with. I think I have a string of semiprecious beads that would do.

Didn't sleep as well last night. Just shy of four hours, then up for long enough to do today's Wordle and the daily games on the AARP website, then back to bed for an hour and a half.

I've resumed watching the second season of an Irish legal show on Acorn, and the plot is definitely thickening. I think (another) minor character just got murdered off-screen. I'm about ready to gather up the things I will need in the morning, put on a nightshirt, and watch until it's time to take my evening meds.

I love posh British accents. I love Scots and Welsh and Australian accents (the latter, particularly, if spoken by a certain Aboriginal actor who's really something). And I think my favorite has to be Irish accents. I could sit at a table with the actors in this series and just listen to them natter on about anything and nothing. It's the linguistic equivalent of wind chimes or the oboe or the cello. Strikes something deep within my soul.

My hair feels like silk. I wish Beloved were here to mess it up.

A stellar day at work.

It helps to have one of those, every once in awhile, especially after illness and backlogs. Today I got almost all the way through my resource mailbox, which is where the correspondence comes (and goes, just like the karma chameleon) related to my record orders. There were almost 50 invoices to sort out. I got them all organized and fifteen or more of them sent off for payment. I plan to polish those off tomorrow morning.

With my office manager's help, I untangled and updated my timesheet for last week.

I got a little over five hours of sleep last night and awoke with just the merest hint of fever. Not enough that I had to stay home, but enough to make my thermometer chirp at me like an angry hummingbird.

Last week's Gudrun order arrived today, at least a week earlier than I was expecting. They must have solved the distribution problem in Germany while I was out of pocket. I have a new stripedy shirt which goes with a pair of pants I bought a couple of years ago that didn't really go with anything else. And I have a crazy-cute tunic bright red tunic with all kinds of warm-toned flowers on it. I wish I hadn't waited so long that the copper (bright orange) petticoat was sold out when I went to buy it. Maybe there will be a similar color in the fall catalogue. I'd also like a bubblegum pink petticoat, but I'm not holding my breath on that. Gudrun's colors are usually softer than that.

I have less than an hour until my final dose of antibiotic. Time to grab a nightshirt and prepare to grab some Z's.

That's four days in a row!

That's one! ah-ah-ah!

Two! ah-ah-ah!

Three! ah-ah-ah!

Four! Four days without using my inhaler ah-ah-ah-ah-ah! [lightning flashes, thunder crashes, and The Count rolls his eyes in glee] 

I have, indeed, spent the bulk of this weekend asleep. I might have been awake all of five or six hours yesterday. I am feeling suspiciously and remarkably human at the moment. I've not needed a nap all day, although I did get a bit drowsy at the very end of Zoom church. In an hour, I'll take my meds and call it a day.

I'm hoping to be productive tomorrow and each day this coming week. It would have been nice to have been able to work on Friday afternoon, but Body said NOPE! in no uncertain terms, and I was in no position to argue.

I've not had the focus to read anything substantial, aside of my scriptures. I discovered a bug in the audio for my French BOM and dug around until I found out how to report it. That was my bit for building the kingdom of God today. By reading along while listening at 70% speed, I am catching subtleties of pronunciation that I'd been missing for the past 20 years.

I watched the 2015 adaptation of "And Then There Were None" and have come to the conclusion that I don't care for Agatha Christie's stories. Have I read the actual books? No, and I don't intend to. I don't like the "closed room" format. Over the past year or so I've watched adaptations of three of her stories and a modern movie styled along the same principles, all of them with actors I ordinarily enjoy, and my lingering reaction is meh.

Nor did I need my inhaler today.

What I did need, however, was buckets and buckets of sleep. It's becoming apparent to me that the Prednisone has worked its magic. I'm not coughing. I can breathe easily. and I caught nearly five hours of sleep last night. It's also becoming apparent that the sleep deficit caused by the Prednisone is catching up with me.

I got the bipolar bears to their monthly checkup and on to the pharmacy. Came home, logged on, and fought sleep for the next hour and a quarter. Emailed the powers that be and lay down for a nap. Six hours later, I bubbled to the surface again.

Since arising, I've polished off my leftover chicken alfredo, one unadorned hamburger patty, a mug of milk, and the last of the triple ginger cookies. I've read the transcript of Carolyn Hax's weekly chat, played a handful of computer games with varying degrees of success, and checked my FB notifications. And now I'm trying to hang on for another half hour so that I may take my medicines and go back to bed.

I suspect that much of this weekend will be spent horizontal and unconscious. For the present I am fine with that, as I have the attention span of a flea.

Please send postcards from whatever adventures y'all are having while I am out like the proverbial light.

Later, gators!

I did not need my inhaler today.

And I slept nearly six hours last night. I've been reasonably clear-headed all day, which is always a welcome thing, although the drive to work was unnecessarily complicated. From my post on FB:

"One of the great things about being my age is that things which once would have frustrated, angered, or embarrassed me now just make me laugh.

 

• Lunch? Check.
• Meds? Check.
• New Fluevog boots (designed in collaboration with Zandra Rhodes)? Check.
• Carefully coordinated petticoats, shirt, earrings? Check.
• Laptop? [crickets] I realized three miles from home that I'd forgotten something essential.

 

I made a (legal) U-turn, drove home, and started over. And, even with a stop at La Madeleine to pick up some comfort food, I was only 35 minutes late to work. Our office manager gave me the option of working late rather than burning my PTO.

The bipolar bears have their monthly doctor appointments tomorrow morning, and I'll WFH in the afternoon. I've asked, since I gave up three full days of PTO to attempt to catch up my desk from Bronchitisfest, if I may work a few hours of OT on Saturday. I'd like to start next week more or less timely with my To-Do's.

Middlest is 39 today, just like Jack Benny. How on earth can I be the mother of two 40-somethings and three 30-somethings?

This is the part where I change my sheets and try to stay awake until 11:00 for tomorrow's Atlantic crossword. Later, gators!

Eyedrops are my new BFF

I had watery, itchy eyes before I went on these new meds. Maybe about ten days' worth, and really annoying, and I kept forgetting to do anything about it. Tonight at Costco I bought a megabox of eyedrops, read the instructions, marked the first bottle with its 90-day discard date, and four and a half hours later remembered to put the drops into my eyes.

And the angels sang. I also put an alarm on my phone for that discard date.

While I got maybe half an hour more sleep last night than I did the night before, it took forever to tall asleep, and I actually had to break out the Cherry Coke to keep myself alert and focused throughout the day. I'm hoping that that means I will be able to fall asleep more easily tonight and stay asleep longer. One can only hope. Tomorrow is my fifth and final dose of Prednisone.

Fourthborn's oral surgery is tomorrow morning, and I'll be WFH once I get her settled in here afterwards.

This is the part where I guzzle some water and call it a day. Wish me luck.

On my second course of meds

And actually beginning to feel somewhat human, but that may only be the Prednisone talking. I went back to the after-hours clinic on Friday night, because Friday was frankly a slog. I could barely catch my breath. I was still needing my inhaler almost every four hours, when I should already have been able to taper off to a more normal every six hours. (When I'm feeling well, I may not need to use the inhaler for several days in a row, but that is not my current reality.)

This morning was my third dose of three Prednisone tabs. How can anything taste that vile? I mean, do they do that on purpose? I took this morning's allotment roughly three hours after I woke up. Yes. It took me a bit to figure out that that is my body on Prednisone. On the other hand, there was not one single instance of feeling drowsy, and I was wonderfully productive at work in spite of having had maybe three and a half hours of sleep last night.

My dreams, what there were of them, seemed to be about police procedurals where the folks in the observation room could hear the thoughts of the perps being interviewed, as well as being incapable of keeping their own opinions to themselves. Lots of embarrassing self-revelations going on, but nobody seemed to be aware of what they themselves, or their coworkers, were saying. Just me, standing there blushing redder and redder and redder.

The bipolar bears have recently gotten me onto Discord, because its notifications do not strike daggers straight into Middlest's cerebral cortex when he has a migraine, which he usually does. I finally decided on a screen name, and Middlest found me an avatar I adore.

I worked from home today, because I didn't know if I'd remain lucid and safe to drive on so little sleep. I have to drive in tomorrow, as there are things I need to do ASAP, that I can only do when I'm there. Plus I have five four days of work to shoehorn into two one if I want to be off all day on Wednesday after Fourthborn's oral surgery, maybe off on Thursday, and off all day on Friday after taking the bipolar bears to their monthly checkup and picking up their refills. In addition to that major miracle, I need to clear up my backlog before I can take more than the absolute minimum PTO necessary to get them where they need to be.

I'm hoping that the Prednisone is going to be my spiritual and physical ace in the hole to get me through the rest of this week, and then I can sleep all weekend. Maybe.

In less me-focused news, I tried something on my phone when I drove into work last Friday. I switched my Book of Mormon app to read to me in French and quickly realized that there's no way in hell (sorry, Sir!) that I can catch more than one word in ten at normal speed, so I geared it down to 70% of that and am planning to read along as I listen. Which I haven't done since Friday. Because bronchitis.

My phone tells me it's time for evening meds. I need to stay up for an hour after that in order to take my antibiotic. But y'all? I'm definitely tired and I'm definitely not sleepy. This could be interesting.

I think I've caught all of the typos and the weird grammar, but I'm typing faster than I have in years, and I'm hoping this all more or less makes sense, and I could probably draft another chapter or two of memoir before bedtime, but also probably better not.

Your intrepid heroine, Ms. Ravelled, on performance-somewhat-enhancing drugs. Yeehaw!

A*gain*??? (Return of the Bronchitis Fairy)

This afternoon I took Fourthborn to her consultation with the oral surgeon. Her hang-y-down tooth will make like Elvis and leave the building in a couple of weeks. We swung through Arby's for sandwiches, and then I dropped her off at home and headed for the after-hours clinic.

I've been droopier than usual, coughing harder and longer than usual: so hard yesterday afternoon that I pulled something in my back and then something in my abdomen as I schlepped down the hallway at the clinic. I am back on Doxycycline for ten days with a steroid shot in my rump. I'm to take my inhaler every four hours for the next couple of days and to seriously watch my carbs and stay out of the sun.

In the words of Simon and Garfunkel, I'm dappled and drowsy and ready to sleep.

I think "groovy" might be that tiny spark I see on the far horizon.

Things and Stuff

I really needed my massage tonight. It hasn't been a bad day, or a bad week. However, the air quality is low, at least in my lungs' opinion, and I'm using my rescue inhaler more than usual. I haven't slept long for the past two nights, or particularly well.

So I ate a Happy Meal homeopathically as I drove to the spa. This was my first time with a new therapist, as the one I'd seen the first three times is trying something new. She was good, very good, and I liked her personality. I absolutely adore my new therapist.

I could not get comfortable lying on my belly, even with a boob pillow. First the belly wasn't happy. Then I couldn't get my face comfortable. I ended up propping myself on my elbows while she worked on my legs. Any time I even thought about lying flat, my lungs said,"Sure, try it. That'll be fun." Finally I asked her if it would get in her way if I were to lie on my side. Bingo!

Next time we're going to try a prenatal massage from the get-go, given the glorious Buddha-ness of the first curve I ever had.

My legs are happy for the first time in months. She was able to reverse some of the edema in my ankles that is resulting from insufficient sleep. Nobody had touched my mid-back in years, because it's not one of the parts that stamps and throws hissy-fits like my traps and deltoids and hips.

Ordinarily I prefer firm massage with plenty of work on trigger points. Tonight I knew in advance that that would make me feel worse, not better. So we went with a lighter but still significant pressure. Swedish massage, which many people find comforting, just feels to me as if I'm being mugged by butterflies.

 On the drive home from my massage, I listened to the classical station, which was playing the last bit of the Emperor Concerto, then followed it with this as the pianist's encore. I almost wept with joy.

I'm crazy-tired but not sleepy. Time to make up my nest and call it a day.

And sometimes we catch more bronchitis???

I'm feeling rather as I did five months ago, except now I have an inhaler, and it's definitely helping. I'm also nuking chicken broth and popping Ricola, and I'm thinking that a trip to the after-hours clinic may be in order. And another blessing after church on Sunday.

Now for some comic relief: I worked remotely yesterday so that I could keep an appointment mid-day for a replacement drivers license. I proactively renewed it in March, and it was allegedly delivered before the calendar ticked over into April. I've been lugging around the receipt from that order in case I get pulled over. I carefully collected all of the supporting documents and showed up at the proper hour, only to be gently informed that my appointment is for September 22, not yesterday.

More comic relief: yesterday I accidentally knocked my glasses off their perch onto the floor behind a stack of plastic shoeboxes in my room. Thankfully, I have a spare pair that are good enough but not wonderful. I fired up the flashlight on my phone, moved a few boxes, and couldn't find the first pair. So after work I carefully disassembled my shoebox fort, found my glasses, and put the emergency pair back in their drawer.

Non-comic relief: yesterday was the 9th anniversary of my sealing to Beloved. He's been rather more on my mind of late. What a wonderful man, and I get to be with him ad infinitum but thankfully not ad nauseam.

I slept reasonably well last night, if insufficiently long. I'm working remotely again today in the interest of public safety as well as my own.

One last bit of good news: we have a date for Fourthborn's disability hearing. When I called their attorney's office to touch base yesterday, our contact said that Middlest's notice should arrive soon. The courts have finally opened up and are scheduling live hearings.

There's probably more, but I need to dock my laptop and start encouraging it to wake up. Maybe I'll finish waking up, myself, in the process.

And sometimes we catch a break.

After I posted on Saturday, we had a bit of adventure Chez Ravelled. I was washing my hands when the stream of water from the hot tap dwindled down to nothing. It was the same for all three faucets. Plenty of cold water and not even a mist of hot water. I informed the bipolar bears and made plans to call Wonderful Plumber early this morning.

Since I was Not In The Mood for a cold shower, and I had no idea when the plumber could get to us this week, I opted to spare my good brothers and sisters this increasingly fragrant body and do Zoom church, combining it with a dash to the office to retrieve my laptop and headphones. Thus, it was the first time in months that I did not doze off midway through Zoom church, and my drive was rather more edifying than usual.

When I called Wonderful Plumber this morning, he informed me that the most likely cause was dead batteries in the flood prevention system, and four AA batteries should fix the problem. I ran a couple of quick errands before work, picking up milk and orange juice and buttermilk and ice cream at Braum's, then batteries and a big bag of caramel M&Ms at Walgreens, which is half a block from the dairy store.

I had to rely on Fourthborn's younger hands to open the sensor box and swap out the batteries. Then I fixed myself a slightly larger than sensible portion of German chocolate, since it's currently out of rotation at the drive-thru.

I had a reasonably productive day, working from home. My laptop is bagged up and ready to go tomorrow morning. I'm still a bit sticky and undoubtedly more fragrant than yesterday, but I've loaded and run the dishwasher, and that still comes under the heading of progress.

And I have German chocolate ice cream in my freezer.

Huge financial burden on board. And a work anniversary.

If we are friends on FB, you might have seen the picture I posted yesterday of a window sticker on the car in front of me. It read "huge financial burden on board," and I laughed and commented that the owner of the car might want to acquire a new car before said HFB is old enough to read; otherwise they may not like the nursing home they find themselves in, 40 to 50 years from now.

My wise and thoughtful friend Karen commented that in her experience raising children had been nowhere near as expensive as the commonly published estimates, and nobody had gone hungry. I'm always glad to learn that my friends and their children have never had that experience. I certainly didn't, growing up, and I was gobsmacked when it happened to us when the children's father went back to school.

I lost 21 pounds in approximately three weeks, because I gave part of my portion to the kids, but I had it to lose. Firstborn lost ten pounds in the same period, because she inherited a healthy portion of my stubbornness and refused to eat much of what was available. Thankfully, her fifth-grade teacher noticed and brought it to my increasingly-stupefied attention; we went on WIC, for which the government and Heaven be praised.

In looking back, the real HFB was the children's father. We made incredibly wonderful human beings together, and I learned or honed a lot of baseline virtues while married to him. But boy howdy, was it ever hard!

Which brings me to something that happened earlier this week. On Wednesday I celebrated 23 years at my job. My initial goal was to hold the job longer than the children's father had ever held a job. My next goal was to earn more annually than the children's father had done. I have now worked there longer than I was married to him and nearly eight times as long as his longest stretch of employment. I now earn approximately twice his annual salary. It long ago ceased to be a matter of bitter contempt, but it continues to be a source of quiet satisfaction.

There are only a handful of people with greater tenure there than I. I've seen a lot of people come and go. I have reserved parking! But I still have a ways to go before I can safely retire. The mortgage needs to be paid off. We need to get Middlest and Fourthborn on disability so they will have means to live on when I go Home.

I have no doubt that this is all doable. I look back to where I was, and compare it to where I am, and it's so evident that Heaven has watched over me and blessed me one hundred-fold.

I had a really great day at work yesterday. All of my To-Do's were current by the end of the day, and I had both inboxes under control. I'm looking forward to Monday morning.

If at first you don't succeed, take a muscle relaxer.

Last night's massage was good. It built on the progress from last week. And my neck is reacting to the release of multiple trigger points in my back with all the grace and flexibility of a Buckingham Palace guard. I realized this midday and wrote myself a sticky note to bring home so that I would remember to add the muscle relaxer, which I take only rarely, to the regular assortment of evening meds.

I am now just waiting for the clock to tick over to midnight in order to pounce upon tomorrow's Wordle.

I have another massage booked for Friday week, this time for an hour and a half. Eventually I want to try the hot stone massage, just because I can. It would probably be best to time it for winter and not as an unnecessary addition to August's blast-furnace days.

Bleagh.

I have returned Love in the Time of Cholera to Audible. It got too dark for me, and too sexual. I also returned I'll Show Myself Out, because there were two F-bombs in the first 13 minutes, which did not bode well. I've fired up another book by Arthur C. Brooks, because I liked the first one so much.

In other reading news, I've begun the second volume in the Hell's Library trilogy, after having re-read the first, and I am enjoying it immensely. After work last night, I betook myself to Rockfish for a celebratory dinner. While I got drowsy several times during the day, I didn't actually nod off. I had crab cakes with remoulade sauce, a cup of clam chowder, and garlic bread with marinara sauce to dip it in (which concept had never occurred to me, and it is definitely an upgrade to an old favorite).

I am waiting for a text from the yard dudes, who are swinging by sometime this morning to give me an estimate on removing several volunteer trees from the front yard. I'm putting off getting fully dressed until I get that text. The pecan tree will need trimming before the end of the summer; otherwise the weight of the pecans will cause at least one limb to impede access to the sidewalk.

What I would *really* like to do, right now, is to turn off the lights and go back to sleep. I did sleep reasonably well last night, and I'm still tired.

I had to laugh at myself the other day. The supporting information arrived so that I could re-submit a couple of expenses which were denied for reimbursement. My doctor included "hypertension" in his notes, and I said to myself, "I don't have high blood pressure. I have low blood pressure." And then I remembered that the last several times my BP has been measured, it has been elevated. Ergo, hypertension. Of course, it came right back down again.

Time to go stick my nose in a book.                                            

Somewhere between a demitasse spoon and a mason jar's worth.

Of what? you ask. Relief. Pure, sweet, simple relief. I noticed after the fact that the eight steps up from the parking level to the entry into our building had not caused my crabby hip to burst into flames. Same for the eight steps down at the end of the day, although historically down is hard on my ankles and knees, while up is hard on my hip and my lungs. I called the facility and left a quick message for my therapist.

In reading news, I've completed the re-read of The Library of the Unwritten. Tomorrow I'll begin the second book in the series, The Archive of the Forgotten. Theoretically, I could go back out to Diana and read until it gets dark, but that would involve putting on pants and a bra and shoes, and I'd rather not.

What I need to be doing, is beginning my talk for church on Sunday. A member of the bishopric caught me as I was leaving the facility last night and asked if I would speak on meekness and humility. I roared with laughter. Apparently I will be standing at the pulpit, talking to myself.

I love my Heavenly Father's sense of humor.

MMMassage!

I have another one booked for next week. As I drove home in a downpour, I could feel all the little freshly-released trigger points itching because of improved circulation. I think I'll be going every week to ten days for awhile, and then back off to twice a month. Eventually I'd like to only need it once a month. And at some point I want to try a facial. Maybe that will be an extra treat, beyond the dinner out for the three of us that is scheduled when the mortgage drops below $15K. I would also like to try the hot stone session. That will have to be after my muscles and joints are behaving as properly as they can given my mileage. She worked quite a bit on the hand that went into spasm yesterday. It threatened to cramp up on me again this morning, and I can still feel some residual crabbiness there.

Work was pleasant and productive today. I got most of the emails wrangled and a number of To-Do's to-did. I heated a can of white bean chili for dinner and can feel my body happily winding down for the day. Second load of laundry is in the washer. I'm torn between reading for an hour and watching something on Prime. Plus, I need to drink a ridiculous amount of water before crashing, which will guarantee at least one skip to the loo in the middle of the night.

Night, y'all.

 

Today was deliberately restful.

I took Middlest to his dental appointment, then dashed up to my PCP's to pick up additional documentation for a reimbursement claim which was denied. I brought him home and took Fourthborn to upgrade her phone.

I cooked the meatloaf and mashed potato dinner from Costco and savored half of my share while finishing my online friend Ashley's new novel on my Kindle.

I went on to read a short story by Margaret Atwood. I greatly enjoyed the first 95% of it and was disgusted by the completely unnecessary F-bombs in the last few pages. I have since returned the book.

I took a lengthy nap, have worked tomorrow's Atlantic crossword, and am waiting for midnight to play Wordle. After which, I intend to go back to bed.

I realize that some of you may not think this a particularly restful day, but all of the outside errands were completed before noon, and I have been a happy introvert since then.

Catching up, more or less

I'm about halfway through Love in the Time of Cholera and still enjoying it. I'll warn you: there's some wedding-night sensuality, and my blushing mechanism is still running at 100%.

Had my third iron infusion on Monday afternoon, and I'm starting to perk up again. Today I went to in-person church, and I only started getting drowsy toward the very end of the hour.

Best thing before church (other than making it there on time, by the skin of my teeth) was being greeted by a young friend whose face lit up when she saw me, and the toddler girl two rows ahead of me who grinned and said, "HI!" even though she's never seen me before. Best thing after church was visiting with my friends Sarah and Jacob. I love them both *so much* for no particular reason other than they are great kids, and the love is mutual. There are just people who get you, and you get them, and it makes a bright spot in the road which we call life. We chatted there, all of us masked out of mutual respect, and I told them that I wished I could scoop both of them up and tuck them into my heart.

Thursday night I got to see the dress rehearsal of the play that Sarah is in. She's currently playing Truvy in a local production of Steel Magnolias, and every member of the cast was as brilliant and perfect as she. I have been wanting to see her act for several years, but the plague got in the way, and last summer there was Lark's wedding.

I read this article this afternoon and posted it on FB with some commentary. ("I've done personal therapy, couples therapy, family therapy, and more personal therapy, all of which helped and blessed me in one way or another. I had a couple of booster-shot sessions just before the pandemic which reassured me that I had my head on straight. It might be time for another couple of sessions, to help me put my past and present health challenges and their effects on my life as a whole, into context.")  In proof-reading before posting, I had that brief prickle of tears that is one way in which the Spirit speaks to me. And then the brief impression that even more than a therapy booster shot, I need a massage, and I need it SOON. So I pulled up another window, found a Massage Envy that is on my way home from work, and booked a massage for Tuesday immediately after work.

Hugs from the bipolar bears and my other children are wonderful and they do not begin to address my hunger for touch. Since Beloved is not allowed to make conjugal visits ~ he did show up in one of my dreams yesterday, but as usual we were working together on some project, and while I was attempting to get him alone for something a little more personal, he was focused on the task at hand, and then he walked out of the dream and I woke up.

a veryquickpost (I hope)

Because it's nearly 9:30, and I'm just finishing dinner, and I want to watch the conclusion of a series which is fascinating and well-made, and I'm not going to recommend it because of the F-bombs, of which there are a plethora. I just want to watch them de-fang the bad guys before I go to bed.

Foodie review: (1) the spinach and cheese cannelloni from Costco is delicious. Fourthborn and I both liked it for dinner last night, and I had my leftovers for lunch today. There's too much spinach in it for Middlest's taste. (2) the meatloaf and mashed potatoes from Costco are even better. That was tonight's dinner and will be my lunch tomorrow. (3) Middlest and Fourthborn tried the pasta salad today, and both enjoyed the flavor; however, something in there gave Fourthborn an achy mouth afterwards. I haven't tried it yet, but I suspect that it will be something for Middlest and me to split as a karma-balancer against the cannelloni.

I'm enjoying Love in the Time of Cholera. I commented elsewhere that so far it feels rather like Jane-Austen-goes-to-Bogota-instead-of-Bath. Lots of irony. More than a few laugh-out-loud moments. The descriptions of the sanitary conditions which I heard on tonight's drive home were almost enough to put me off my feed for the evening. You might want to skip that part if you're reading ~ it's brief, but realistic and gross ~ or go la-la-la-I-can't-hear-you if you're listening to the audio version.

No more typing for me tonight. I'm officially *done* with hyphens for one day.

Toujours, et al

One of the side effects of bingeing four seasons of Balthazar is that random French words and phrases pop into my head often and out of my mouth more frequently than usual, to the bewilderment of my bipolar bears.

Toujours = always, but it can mean ever or still

Tous les jours = every day, or everyday

Toute la journée = all day

I don't remember thinking about these subtleties when I was learning French in high school, or when I was resurrecting it after 9-1-1.

I have to wait until next March for the fifth and final series of Balthazar.  Insert crabby growl ici.

In Mother's Day news, zero zip zilch nada sign of the usual yearly neurosis regarding same. Fourthborn and I had dinner at Firstborn's with 1BDH, Willow, and my BFF'S eldest, who has just returned from a girls' trip to Paris with her siblings, aunt, niece, and BFF

I've slept a lot this weekend. I'll be resuming the position shortly, but the Atlantic daily crossword puzzle drops in about two minutes, and I'm hoping to end the day in a blaze of glory.

 

Wednesday was not a good day.

I successfully fought drowsiness while driving through fog to work, arriving in the garage at ten minutes past the hour. Backed Diana into her parking space, turned off the engine, gathered up my stuff to exit, and woke up half an hour later.

I continued to fend off drowsiness for much of my workday, waking thoroughly just in time for a blessedly uneventful drive home.

I'd had labs drawn on Tuesday morning for yesterday's appointment with my hematologist. Reviewed the results with him, and I'll be getting a third iron infusion. Hemoglobin and hematocrit are about where they were last August. I also have thrombocytosis (elevated platelets). I envision my weary red blood cells as emaciated French waiters, each bearing aloft a tray loaded with platelets.

From the doctor's office I drove down to La Madeleine, where I was meeting a work friend for lunch, which was lovely. I came home and went almost immediately back to bed, where I slept for several hours. Got up and ate half of my share of Caesar salad. Watched an episode or two of Balthazar. Went back to bed a little after midnight and slept fitfully for maybe four hours.

I've taken my vitamins and eaten some breakfast and finished a partial bottle of water. The French waiters are demanding a post-prandial nap.

 

From Strength to Strength

This is a magnificent book, read by the author, who is most engaging. He's one of my favorite columnists in Atlantic, and I will be referring back to this book often. I've also put a couple more on my wishlist for later.

Next audiobook, however, will be Love in the Time of Cholera. I've heard it praised for years but until now had little to no interest in reading a translation.

Last night I ordered the most recent, most comprehensive editions of French for Dummies and Spanish for Dummies. Have I mentioned that one of my young friends at work is fascinated by other languages, French in particular? He is fluent in Spanish and English. I asked him if he'd be open to our teaching one another. He is. The books will make sure that I don't inadvertently teach him something incorrect just because it's been more than half a century since I studied French in high school and more than twenty years since I decided to resurrect my high school French by reading Le Livre du Mormon and singing Les Cantiques. I also need to acquire Spanish editions of the scriptures for my study here at home.

But tonight I'm going to hide in my room and watch at least two episodes of Balthazar. It's very French. Occasional flashes of the odd breast here and there, and loving expositions of the good doctor working out in at least every other episode. Whatever the French equivalent of "a six-pack" is, he has it, vraiment! Also, zut alors!

I really should be asleep now (again).

I finished Reading Lolita in Tehran Friday night. My next non-digital book will be volume two in the Hell's Library trilogy, The Archive of the Forgotten. I'd planned on beginning it yesterday, but I needed to swap out the lamps in my bedroom, both of which have ceased to function. I extricated the two in the living room which have stood idle since we set up my work-from-home office two years ago and needed the outlets for my laptop and peripherals.

They provide less light than the bare 100W bulbs of the other lamps. (I like BRIGHT! So sue me.) And the base of one has begun to disintegrate. But they will do for now.

Sleep has been problematic. I went to bed about 1:00am yesterday and slept fitfully until 9:00. While playing my usual AARP wake-up games at this computer, I kept dozing off. I finally gave up and went back to bed and slept until about 5:00. Woke up with an extremely full bladder after a series of bizarre and inappropriate dreams. We were living in the old house. The kids were mostly adults but also kids, and their father was in and out of the house (just enough to be annoying), although we were no longer married and I was widowed from Beloved. In the dream, I went clubbing with friends and started feeling frisky and ended up engaging in consensual romps with thankfully nobody I know in real life, to their content but not my own. A bunch of us drove back to the house, coming in around 5:00, and I sent the guys off to a nonexistent spare room to sleep it off while I chased a toddler who refused to stay in bed.

The last thought I remember from that dream was, "I'm going to have to explain this to Beloved and to my bishop."

I miss the daily, incidental touch even more than I miss playing mommy and daddy with Beloved. The bipolar bears are good about giving hugs if I ask, and sometimes they will say, "I think you need a hug. Is now a good time, or do you want a rain check?" One of the blessings of living with empaths. I'm not feeling lonesome at the moment, but my skin is hungry for him. And I miss his laughter and his mischief and his cooking.

Right now I feel as if I am serving a senior mission, and my mission field is a party of two: my beloved bipolar bears. I am so grateful that Heavenly Father has entrusted them to me. I have several temporal goals that I want to achieve in the years that remain to me. And I am feeling this mortal body slow, and my thoughts go deeper, and Home seems just a bit nearer.

I really should be asleep right now.

Finished the Anne Tyler book last night, shortly after getting home. Read another 20 pages in the memoir by the Iranian professor. Another hour or so should do it.

No reading today, because our attorneys catered a Tex-Mex spread to celebrate Administrative Professionals Day. It was seriously yummy, and there are leftovers for tomorrow. There were cards handmade by one of my former attorneys and signed by all of them.

I'm about halfway through Hope Street, a comedy/mystery/drama (or so it bills itself on BritBox) set in Northern Ireland in modern times. Great casting. Good acting. Interesting story arcs. Having lived in a tiny town in the Texas Hill Country, the small-town feel in this show runs true.

After more than 20 years in the office with prescribed working hours, I learned today that our office hours are changing effective next Monday. I had the option of keeping my current hours, starting earlier, or starting later. I'm going to try going in at 9:00 and working until 5:30. My only concern is how difficult it may be to back into my reserved parking space if the opposite spaces are filled. I'm anticipating that both morning and evening commutes will be less crowded. We shall see.

Done for the night, because Wordle ticks over in two minutes. Later, gators!

Side quests.

Last year I bought a T-shirt on Etsy which reads, I'm not procrastinating. I'm doing side quests.

While working AARP's daily crossword puzzle, I became curious about one of the answers: stampede. How did we come by this useful and colorful word? So I consulted the Google and Thummim, which informed me that it arrived via American Spanish estampida from the Spanish word for crash and goes back through German as far as the Old High German (what was that old German high on, you ask?) stampfōn, to stamp. So basically, you have a bunch of ancient Germans stamping around, and their descendants stamping their way to Spain, and their descendants escaping to the Americas with visions of Tex-Mex dancing in their heads.

Starters. The current word for things to spoil your appetite before the main course arrives.  See also: appetizers, hors d'oeuvres, amuse-bouche, antipasto, finger food, munchies. As a young adult in the 70's, munchies suggests to me the crazed combination of foods which follow partaking of a once-illegal herb which is now sold in mom and pop CBD shops.

The AARP daily jigsaw puzzle has three speeds: easy, regular, and expert. You get eight minutes to solve it on the regular and easy levels. I always start with the regular level. If I can't solve it in eight minutes, and I have time to try again, I'll switch to the easy level, which has no more than 36 pieces. (I think the regular format averages 64 pieces.) I suppose I ought to try the expert level, just once, to see how many pieces there are and if you're given more time. I always solve the edge pieces first ~ you can sort for that, and then fill in toward the center. I like this game OK, and I prefer the app on my phone, which does track the time it takes me to solve a puzzle but doesn't lock me out if I don't finish at some predetermined point.

I fired up the puzzle I'd just completed. Same eight minutes for the expert level. That is, as my kids would say, ridonkulous.

My wonderful sister sent me a box of boutique chocolates for my birthday. It arrived on Tuesday, and I took it to work yesterday. Yesterday a card arrived, which I did not get around to opening until today. I'm going to frame the card; it's two classic Japanese women in kimono. And there was an Amazon card inside. I am currently browsing a sample of a book which popped up on my Facebook feed. If I continue to enjoy this teaser until its end, that will be one of my purchases.

Great gifts require great thank-you notes, and I recently exhausted my stash. That was my excuse to stop at Half Price Books' flagship store on my way home from work tonight. Long ago, in a universe far, far away I used to write long letters to friends and family. And I've always had a weakness for beautiful or unusual stationery and cards. Hallmark shops were a particular downfall. In recent years, I've made a lot of my own cards, but when I can buy them ready-made at half price? Time value of money means more time to read or knit or watch British TV or eat Nutella.

May I just state for the record that I'm not enamored of square cards which come with rectangular envelopes whose excess space is glued shut? Give me a rectangular card or a square envelope. Pick one.

Taco salad. A wonderfully Tex-Mex thing (see how I circle back to the beginning?) that is neither taco nor salad. Just enough sliced or shredded lettuce to lighten up a bowl full of hamburger meat, spicy seasoning, sour cream, grated cheese, and a liberal lashing of queso, all of it resting upon or reposing under rather too many round tortilla chips of inconvenient size or saltiness. OCD-me has to spend five to ten minutes crudely quartering the chips and hoping not to break my plastic fork before I can moosh things around and achieve a fairly uniform consistency that will adhere to my fork so I may hold my book in my left hand and read while delivering bites to my mouth and not the front of my shirt.

Words which are not my own, are calling my name. Later, gators!

Dates on which my birthday has fallen on Easter Sunday.

1650, 1661, 1672, 1718, 1729, 1740, 1808, 1870, 1881, 1892, 1927, 1938, 1949, 1960, 2022. 2033, 2044. Source.

So this is the second time it has happened during the mortal phase of my life, although I could have sworn it had been more than twice.

I went to church. I fell asleep in sacrament meeting. I brought my ministering brother up to date and got another priesthood blessing.

I'm going to finish the German movie that I began last night, and then I'm going to take a nap. Or maybe vice versa.

My cup got filled today.

Lunch with bestie followed by an early dinner with friends from the widows and widowers group. I told Middlest just before I walked out the door that I'd probably be gone until after dinner. I know me. If I had come home and changed into my PJs during the break, I wouldn't have left the house again.

I started the new audiobook yesterday, and after listening to it again today, I'm returning it for something that isn't peppered with F-bombs. I have a higher tolerance for them than I did a year ago, and I don't want to get any more comfortable with them. I'm trying the newest Anne Tyler. I've loved some of her books and felt meh about the others.

The clock has ticked over to Easter morning and my 70th birthday. Time to dig out the chocolate bunnies that I smuggled into the house and put into a "safe place" while I still remember where that safe place is. Then the new Wordle, then make the bed, brush my teeth, and crash.

Well, *that* was weird

Today was a good Friday (yeah, I know; bear with me) in that I took the bipolar bears to their monthly doctor appointment and then to pick up their monthly meds. On the way home, we stopped at Whataburger for the traditional reward: breakfast. Because nothing says love like greasy potatoes. And the Dr. Pepper milkshake is back.

Middlest has attempted to explain to me why I like the Dr. Pepper milkshake when, try as hard as I could over the 40-plus years of being a naturalized Texan, I've continued to loathe Dr. Pepper. (No need to recap here, Middlest. Your explanation is perfectly logical, and my inner four year old refuses to accept it, as if it were broccoli or a demand that I go to bed right now because I'm a growing kid and I need my sleep.)

Sleep. That is a major component of the current weirdness. I have fought drowsiness at work for several days running. I was due to see my hematologist next week, but he's had a death in the family, so we've rescheduled for early May. My color is fairly good: a little pale, but not ashen. I may not need another iron infusion this time around. My mental acuity seems normal, at least for the parts where I'm fully conscious.

After we got home from this morning's errands, I noodled around to let breakfast settle, watched the first two installments of "Why Didn't They Asks Evans?" and lay down for a nap, waking to an alarm on my phone. At first I thought I'd slept through to my Saturday morning alarm. I'm glad that my smart phone is significantly smarter than I am when I first wake up. It informed me that the alarm was for my evening meds and not my Saturday morning wake-up.

The dreams. Oh, the dreams. I was sitting in a cafeteria of sorts, eating I don't remember what, when a gentleman two tables over mentioned my name. I got up, wandered over, and asked him why he would. He showed me a list in which I was the new first counselor in a restructured ward Primary presidency. That's not how we do things in the Church. In the dream, I couldn't text our bishop to ask, "Is there something you want to talk to me about?"

The next scene that I remember is that of pulling up in front of an old friend's house to take her mysteriously disabled adult son to a medical appointment, because she had other commitments she couldn't get out of. In that part of the dream I was young, svelte, and inexplicably a ginger. The car I was driving was not Diana or any of the other cars that I've owned or driven in the past half-century. It was like unto Fred Flintstone's car, in that it was unwieldy to maneuver and frustratingly slow.

Yabba-dabba-don't.

When I woke at the alarm an hour ago, nature was calling. I was also slightly chilled, as it had been warm when I lay down, and I didn't want to get overheated, so I left off the top layer of bedding. I am now properly relieved, optimally warm, and momentarily rested. Heading back to bed now. Not sure for what, or how it will turn out. Could be enlightening. Or merely restful.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

It's one of two books written by Helen Simonson, who needs to get busy and write a third one at the very least. The audiobook is impeccably narrated by Peter Altschuler, who is brilliant. Loved, loved, loved this book. The Major, though British, reminds me a bit of my father, but I suspect the Major's inner monologue is significantly more snarky than my father's. More like my own. Mrs. Ali is a quiet woman who is underestimated and unappreciated by the small village in which she runs the local shop.

Stories about people who find love in their autumn years are not flooding the market. Movies with older actors are generally played for laughs: ah, look at the old people, aren't they silly ... or sweet ... or irrelevant ... or whatever.

This brought back a lot of good memories for me, from when Beloved and I were first getting to know one another, through courtship, and during our one precious year as man and wife. The parallel between the hunting lodge in the book and the bed and breakfast where we honeymooned. The time or two that Mrs. Ali caused the Major to blush. My memories of saying something unexpected to Beloved and watching his ears turn red. And vice versa.

What else am I reading, you ask? Reading Lolita in Tehran in paperback. I'm starting to get a feel for the author's voice. I think I've mentioned that I bought this book when I moved to Fort Worth in 2008, and it's been waiting patiently for me to become interested in it, ever since. Tomorrow I'll begin listening to I have Been Buried Under Years of Dust: A Memoir of Autism and Hope.

But for now I'm firing up the next episode of House, and then I am going to bed.