Month: November 2013

This was a banner day for getting stuff done before 8:30 am.  I’m still struggling with insomnia – I’ve cleared out a lot of what I think was causing it, but still I wake with a start at 3 or 4 am everyday and then it’s hard to go back to sleep.  I don’t seem tired during the day, so maybe now I only need 6 hours of sleep everyday.   Since I’m up, I usually take Edda duty, which after 7 or 8 years of alternating nights tending to her, Jeremy is luxuriating in a long string of sleeping through the night which he greatly appreciates.

So at 4 am, I’m with Edda in her bed and she launches into her triweekly (once every three weeks or so – not three times a week) Rett episode where she shakes and shivers and breath holds and has jerky movements which I refuse to call a seizure because how can we not medicate these episodes if they are actually seizures?  And also, who has every heard of a seizure lasting for an hour? I hold her and sing to her – I need to learn more lyrics to songs, not just the choruses.  So this episode lasts for an hour and we both fall asleep at 5 am for another hour.  I count this as the first thing I’ve checked off my to-do list for the day.

By 7 am, I have made final edits to a PowerPoint presentation due at 10 am and printed 8 copies of it all to distribute.  Then I indulge Vince in a ride to school because it’s so cold outside and notice that the BRAKE warning light is on and off in rhythm to the turns I’m making with the car.  So I wonder if that means that the brakes are going to fail on me right then and there with the two of us in the car.  So then I drive to the auto repair shop and buy a can of brake fluid ($3.29) and top it off at 7:45 am in the parking lot.  The BRAKE light is fixed.  I’m feeling very pleased with myself that I’ve repaired the car for less than 10 dollars.

Drive back home in my perfectly running car and take the dogs for a walk in the woods.  Get back by 8:30 am.

What happened the rest of the day?  Nothing much.  And then the day is over.

Do you know how to become the most uninteresting person? Tell your best friend the mile-by-mile account of the half-marathon you ran on Sunday.  I think, in the past, she has patiently listened to me  talk about how to stop the dogs from puking, how to put up baby gates in the kitchen, how to decide what shoes to wear and how to pick the perfect paint out from Home Depot (all of these conversations must have lasted at least 20 minutes, perhaps maybe even up to 45 minutes per conversation).  By the time I got to mile 8 of the half marathon she declared – OK Doris, I’m really happy for you, but I’m not the right person to talk to about this.  It’s so boring and I have no idea what you are talking about.  I just had to laugh and say OK, OK, I’m done telling you, but I haven’t yet gotten to the best part!  But if you insist, let’s talk about something else.