Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Yoga is the bomb.

Russell and I tried out yoga today.

Russell, the inflexible boy, was shown by the yoga teacher a position, she claimed it had taken her 26 years to be able to do, smiled and pulled his legs up in the lotus position. I hardly think that's fair at all.

I actually had an hour with reduced chest pain, but it hurts like hell again and while I tried to assume the assisted fish pose, it was to no avail. I was all propped up on pillows and it helped for a bit and I felt much more relaxed and everything, just that the bronchitis is really embedded and I'm not so sure that the antibiotics are helping tons. If I don't start experiencing improvement, I'm going to take the prednisone, take the insulin and just suck it up.

I'm hoping that riding in the car most of tomorrow will give me an opportunity to rest and relax. I busted my hump today doing laundry and running errands. However, clothes are washed, bags are packed, and the house looks like a laundry bomb went off in the livingroom, but thankfully, it's all clean!

Monday, March 28, 2005

Easter was soo cool. I was just happy to go to church. I was also happy to watch the kids find eggs.

However, I was sad about Russell's loss of childhood. He asked me point blank this week, if there's really a Tooth Fairy. I told him the truth and told him some of the things we'd done when we messed up. He was laughing hysterically in disbelief at how clownish we are -- forgetting and then one of us distracting him while the other stuck a dollar under his pillow one morning, for example. I also told him if he spilled the beans on his sister that he wouldn't get any more tooth fairy money. Period. He seemed to take that to heart.

He asked, "So you've kept my teeth all this time?"
I said,"Yes, of course!"
"Are you going to give me money for my wisdom teeth?"
I said rather superiorly,"I'll send you money for those, when you're older, if you send me your teeth."
He giggled.

Then came the inevitable question about the Easter Bunny. He seemed disheartened about that. He then asked about Santa Claus, but no one has answered him yet. Genny came in the room and interrupted, so it just didn't happen and he let it lay. We've already had a conversation about being Santa Claus for other people and how that's an important part of Christmas. He gets that really well. I'm going to tell him that as long as he believes in Santa Claus, he'll get a gift from Santa, in order to keep it going for Genny. Mike said this year that he thought the Bear might just be going along with the whole Santa thing because he figured he was getting more gifts, so I don't think it's a big surprise.

I just felt sad to have it all fall apart at the same time for him. However, I also think it lets him in on a grown up secret, with Genny still around and he will enjoy that, given time. He also is very clear about how loved he is because we have gone through such tremendous charades for him for such a long time, which is also cool.

I guess I'm projecting how I felt -- I was devastated at 5 years old to my mother's chagrin to find out that there's no Santa from my two evil and older cousins. Harold's dead from a motorcycle wreck, so I don't feel like I can stay mad at him after decorating his grave next to my grandfather's, but I would still rather chew glass than see Sharon again.

---

The shelves of several weeks ago are FINALLY up. It's a freakin' miracle. Now, I'm sure it'll be several weeks before we actually get the lamps on them in the right places and the plug set up, but I dunno. Mike also installed the light in the kitchen for me. It's beautiful. It's lovely. It's FINALLY installed!

I took the kids shopping today at Walmart. I wondered what the hell I was thinking afterwards, but I did manage to buy snacks and juices for our little trip to San Francisco coming up on Wednesday. (Psst -- that means I won't be posting.) I came home and flung the Genny Bug into bed and then crawled there myself. I've got bronchitis and it just sucks ass.

I've got so much laundry and so little time.

Thursday, March 24, 2005

Boy, everything hurt today from working out yesterday, and on top of it all, I've started snoring while wearing my mask, according to Mike. Or he said,"It could just be a strange sucking sound from your mask fitting funny or something." Being that I have a good seal on my mask, I would like to take this opportunity to SCREAM in frustration, but I'm too damned tired.

I guess it's not a bad thing that my butt and thighs hurt -- it just meant I wasn't up to the same workout today, so I just did 12 minutes and stretched for 20, and my muscles feel better. With the lack of good sleep, however, my recovery was less than ideal anyhow. Today, I tried the bikes, but it just wasn't working for me and I finally gave up and went back to the ass-kicking of the elliptical trainer. I ran Bear to school, informed teachers of his therapy schedule, and then came home and went back to bed. For. Three. Hours.

Panicked, I called and apologized to LaDawn for not being there sooner, but Genny was already asleep, so she said to just come at 4PM. Thankfully, I paid her a lot this week, so she wasn't mad. Somewhere in this, I just realized that I had an oatmeal cookie for lunch. Geez!

Tomorrow, if I'm not hurting too awfully, I'll go walk around the hill a little.

In my head, I'm supposed to have done all this stuff and I'm tired enough to where it didn't get done, so I'm guilty and cranky with myself. The kitchen looks horrid. The bedroom looks like a nuclear wasteland, but on the bright side, the livingroom is picked up.

Miracles *can* happen. :)

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Russell started physical therapy yesterday. It happens to occur at a place that has a gym. I can visit said gym. This morning, I spent 20 whole minutes, cursing my big fat ass on an elliptical trainer.

Now, I'm only cursing my thighs. And my shoulders. And my ankles. A little.

My husband, however, made me mp3's on my pda, which I listened to, while cursing my big fat ass, and humming along.

Red Hot Chili Peppers makes some good workout music, I tell you wot.

Tomorrow is another day of that. Then I may even get motivated to walk up the hill. Pigs also might fly out of my butt, but I can dream, right?

I have two months of Russell's therapy, which gives me two months to feel comfortable hiking my big fat butt over the hillside with less than embarrassing effort.

Oh, today, I've been calling all over God's creation for Mell, getting in Public Service Announcements for the play and asking to see if I can con any of them into running a promotion for us, so we can get more chairs filled at the Community Center.

I can DREAM, can't I?

Wait, the apnea is better. I CAN dream.

Thanks.

Friday, March 18, 2005

One vicodan later, my agony is gone and is replaced with sore spots -- a much better place!

Genny's got a bad cold. I kind of heard it brewing last night, told Mike to crank up the vaporizer and today, she sounds like she's coughing up a raptor. I fully expect feathers to come out of her mouth -- she's thick with it. I'm getting her at noon, already told her I'd throw her in bed, so she could recover, and I feel really really guilty, because I'd have liked to keep her home, but I know she loves school, even when she's sick and I really need to get about an hour longer of make-up sleep.

Basically, this means I have three hours to make some sense of the jumble that is my house and try to fix the shelves, though my shoulders are still achy, so I'm considering blowing that off. I should do floors. I should also be a beautiful princess with handsome masseuses massaging me at whim.

Shoulda. Woulda. Coulda.

Thursday, March 17, 2005

All the stress of Russell's botox and Mike's tooth took it's toll.

I haven't slept well the past couple nights and yesterday, I woke out of bed with a gigantic back crick that makes me want to own a hot tub like NOW. My shoulders were so bad yesterday that I begged Mike NOT to rub them. I slept on a balled up pair of socks last night to try to slide the worry rib back, but that didn't help tons.

Russell is walking around differently -- his heels are already showing signs of relaxing. Mike's tooth?

Yeah...it's gross. So be warned.

Saturday night, Mike's gum had a gigantic zit. We were instructed after a call to the dentist to drain said zit and I ran to town to get antibiotics and vicodan. I sent Mike into the bathroom with one of my diabetic finger poker needles because it's sharper than heck and sterile. He came into the room looking all sheepish and asked if I'd do it because it hurts so much that he couldn't bring himself to do it. I laid across him, made him promise not to smack me involuntarily, and got that sucker. Weirdly enough, he didn't feel it at all!

Yuck! I told him that pays him back for childbirth. Yesterday, he had the root canal with medicine dropped in and he goes back in a few weeks to fix it all.

My back is a bit better tonight, but 800 mg of ibuprofen is barely making a dent, so I'm thinking seriously about begging Mike for a vicodan to sleep with, just to get the pain to subside while I'm sleeping, so the swelling can go down in my neck, shoulders, and back.

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Well, I have a draft of a post that was actually kind of nice and then blogger won't give it back to me and it's late, so maybe some day, I'll actually get around to editing it and putting it here. It involves the shelves I spent the week working on and braining my husband with a fry pan after he screwed up said shelves by doing something stupid involving a jig saw.

Russ's thing is tomorrow and it just has me up worrying. I worry that I'm just not going to be able to keep at all the stuff I should be to keep on top of his appointments. As it is, I'm already booked like hell because I have stuff I told Mel I'd do for her, plus appointments for Leann, Genny, and Mike.

Mike's got to have a root canal on Wednesday, which essentially puts our savings to work -- $1100 gone! Kiss and wave bye-bye! Buh-bye! We'll get most of it back in our flexible spending account(FSA), but that means there's nothing left in there, which is kind of scary. We'd hoped it would scoot us through the year. To have used it up by Mid-April is kind of scary. It also means that we better get back the rest of the money we're paying out for daycare come Christmas and that we can't run anything up right now until things improve. It also means that we can feel pretty comfortable about increasing the limit in the FSA come next year.

I'm yawning, so I'm officially tired. I have to get up in 4.5 hours, so off to bed I go.

Friday, March 11, 2005

I did laundry, floors, and stained shelf boards today. I also took a half hour nap and things hurt in new places, but the house looks less "ohmigoshcallthehealthdepartment" and more "Wow, what a nice house."

And that's after Genny and Lulu terrorized the house and thoroughly went through Genny's drawers looking for stuff to wear around to play "baby." Just. Don't. Ask.

We also have a $300 septic problem. I paid $54 to have things snaked and have the toilet fixed. The guy was fabulously nice and I gave him a jar of jam because he didn't charge us nearly what we got charged last time by the thief, I mean plumber who was here last.

It's really weird though how when I'm having a good day how I still feel the exhaustion in my body. It's like a hangover of sorts. Being patient sucks eggs.

--

The bummer of the day was that I called Leann and she was having problems. Then, I went and saw her. Her room was a mess -- no one had cleaned up for her. She didn't have enough space to put her stuff on a bedside table -- they'd given her a small stool which wasn't nearly big enough to hold a phone, her meds, water, food, etc. And worst, she was alone and sad and scared. I laid on the bed next to her and rubbed her back while she cried. I told her I was sorry she was suffering and then got to work. I felt bad that I couldn't stay longer, but I picked up her room, brought her one of the kid's tables from the livingroom to put her stuff on, brought her fresh water, and cut her fresh fruit to eat.

Then I went home and made her potato leek soup and called the relief society person from her church and told the gal that we needed to set something up where someone visited her around lunch time to make sure that she ate and had company during the week. When I visited with the soup, that person was there, and she had grabbed laundry to do some at her house and had told the teenage son to run the vacuum. I got Leann to eat a half cup of soup, which was more solid food than she'd had since she'd been home from what I could gather. I gave instructions to the teenager that he was to make her a half cup in a couple hours and bring it into her and have her eat.

Leann has a bladder infection and she's not improving with the antibiotics and in fact, has gotten worse. We called the doctor's office repeatedly with little luck. I am very worried about her. I'm calling her tomorrow to find out what's going on. I'm afraid that they'll readmit her to the hospital!

If you're a praying person, say one for her or think good thoughts in her general direction. She's someone who really needs them.

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

By talking about this, I realize I may be jinxing it, but I've had two (count 'em) good days (nights) in a row. I didn't actually get to making dinner tonight -- I got home too late from taking Genny to dance, dropping Lulu and Tibby off, and then had to stop at the store and it just took too long to get dinner on in a reasonable amount of time after getting home at 645. So I had the fixings all ready for lasagna and am pulling the second pan out now. We had tacos at the little deli place here in town. They were definitely white people tacos, but at least they had hot sauce and specifically, I didn't have to cook 'em.

I can actually visualize myself staining boards tomorrow or making garlic bread and salad for dinner or even chicken enchiladas. I even bought papayas, mangoes, peppers, and cilantro for fruit salsa to go with the enchiladas. A week ago, that was nearly unfathomable that I'd actually have shopped ahead and planned meals -- even vaguely. I did stretch last night, take vitamins, and no, I didn't get to walking today because I was busy catching up.

I ran Bear to school, talked to his teachers about how he's doing, his grades, his future, etc. I dropped his application at the Montessori school. I got calls made. I got Genny to dance (heck, I forgot that a couple weeks ago) and talked to Mel briefly. I also made a friend at the dance group, though several of the mom's are very clique-ish and hide in the "other room." We visit and talk about canning, cooking, and kids. It's fun. The new friend and I also have talked about going together to pick fruit in California together. She makes baked goods and I can, so I figure we can have fun.

The house isn't cleaner. But I'm stuck here between 12 and 3 tomorrow waiting on a delivery, so that sounds like 3 hours of cleaning to me. We'll see how tonight goes.

I have to stretch, take my vitamins, and pray.

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

So Leann came home from the hospital today. I happened to be visiting her and they said they could discharge her, so I offered and then drove her home. She cried. She said she didn't know if she was ready for home. Tomorrow, I go to visit her and see what she needs, if anything. I wish I knew someone at her church to coordinate efforts better.

--

Today was a good day. It felt like 50% most of the day, but much better than the -50% I felt yesterday. And then tonight, I got my groove back and Mike and I cleaned the health disaster scuzz-pit, also known as the kitchen. I had nearly forgotten that my countertops are white. My floor remains a shade of gray with spots, but will await my efforts tomorrow. I've also got to get shelves stained for the bedroom and let them dry. It's gonna be gorgeous through the weekend, so I have to hit it while the weather holds.

--

The pulmonologist says that while I have Restless Leg Syndrome that it doesn't wake me up more than usual and that it should not be a concern for me. I told him that I still feel like crapola and that I didn't think that was a good thing.

He agreed and told me to take vitamin E, stretch before bed, take warm baths before bed, and exercise soon after getting up, even if that's 10 or 11 AM and even if I feel like warmed over dog poo. He also wrote me a script for clonipin to try. He also said that I needed to make up sleep debt and that was going to take time. He compared it to money debt and said that unless I win the lottery, I'm going to have to make small payments like everyone else.

*sigh*

He said that losing weight is the best thing I can do to get better. So I'm going to start small walking tours just to the end of our very long block. It's about a 20 minute walk. It ain't much, but it's a start.

He's going to see me in a month and see if there's improvement. If not, we'll pursue other things. He said it's possible I have some kind of narcolepsy or other sleep disorder. I don't have any symptoms of narcolepsy, so I doubt it, and I just think that I am going to have to suck it up and work on being patient, which is not a skill I have in my repertoire, even when I'm well-rested. I'm sick of being sick and that's all there is to it.

I told him I didn't want to die. He said that my apnea wasn't bad enough for dying and that he'd only ever had one patient die from it and there were a lot of complicating issues. I guess I don't want to develop those issues because the treatment hasn't been working, you know?

Oh, and he said not to worry. When I told Mike, he snorted.

Monday, March 07, 2005

Well, Bear is going to get botox injections in his legs to see if we can't get him to walk heel-to-toe instead of on his toes from the "spastic dysplagia" aka cerebral palsy. It's five injections in his legs and two months of physical therapy. I basically told the school that they'll have to work with us while we get him through this. I said it nicely, but I think the kid being physically capable of staying on his own two feet is more important than academics. It's a matter of safety when you consider that we had to teach him to put his hands out when he falls and he still sometimes forgets and goes down hard. Any more stability that we can give the kid is very important.

--

I saw my doctor today, too. We talked about all the health crap that's going on and I asked for her help in keeping track of all of it. She agreed and wants to see me once a month until my health issues settle down a bit. I was mad as hell that none of the specialists' office had sent records to my regular doctor and I asked at EVERY one of them. Fuckerheads. (Damn, I love that word!)

I explained to the doctor because I am so sleep deprived and so mentally horked (yes, I made that up), that I need help keeping track of all the crap that is going on and what is being checked and not checked and whether I need help above and beyond. I'm writing down everything and sometimes, I still forget.

I can only liken it to a nightmare that I am in the beginning stages of Alzheimer's -- I know I'm forgetting, but I'm not sure what I'm forgetting or how often I'm doing it, and I keep thinking it's something life or death that I'm forgetting. And then I wake up.

__

Tomorrow, I see the pulmonologist to talk about my restless legs syndrome and see if there's much to be done for it. I also have to ask why would there be such a huge difference between the settings on my machine in July and my numbers today when there's only a 10 lb weight difference. What does that mean? Should we have a follow-up study in the next three months? Should I go to UC Davis Med Center or Stanford and see what they know?

I'm overwhelmed and not surprisingly, I'm tired.

And today, I found out that caffeine can raise your sugars and make you depressed. My sugars usually run low and I'm so tired I'm bound to be depressed. But, what I thought immediately: "Is nothing sacred?"

Sunday, March 06, 2005

Yesterday, actually turned out to be a bad sleep day. I often don't know until I get going just how good or bad it is. It always seems like the first couple hours go okay and then WHAMMO! I've crawled into bed and conked out cold.

I don't remember much of yesterday. Mostly, that I got to rest for a couple hours and that Mike was hounding me to get up and out, which I simply wasn't able to do.

Last night, we finally went to town and had pizza. We stopped and got some shelving boards and then crossed the street to go to Krispy Kremes, so that Mike could try the WiFi on the PDA. I do not understand why someone would be driven to use their WiFi at Krispy Kremes, but the other thing we found on the way home is just how many people have wireless LANS as we drove by their houses. Mike was all gleeful about how one could just drive around and mooch off someone's wireless to get a net connection. He's such a computer slut.

This morning was better. I got up and made breakfast. I did laundry. The whole family went outside in the gorgeous weather and collected rocks from various places on our acre and we started a stone wall out front. Eventually, I'm going to make small terraced beds with cement and gravel underneath the stonewalls, so we can manage the erosion on our hill. I'm sure we'll have to buy some rock, but I'm going to start by snagging rocks on the side of the road. We're going to put in some pathways with red decorative rock, too, like what we have on the side of the garage.

Everything is sore on my body and I got a sunburn. I also think I might have found a stain I can use in the kitchen that will go with what we already have for trim in the house. We have some of the boards outside because it's supposed to be sunny and gorgeous for the next week, so I'm going to sand and stain the boards as I feel good and go on my merry way to getting stuff organized.

Okay, and today, I bought onion and potato sets. I also bought clippers and trimmed out the front flower beds a bit. If I'm doing okay tomorrow, I'm going to rake out the dead poppies.

Someone was buying seeds at the hardware store, while I was buying stains and brushes. Apparently, no one has warned him about the April 15th and May 15th snows yet. Hope he plans to grow them inside.

Mike and I discussed yard planning. I'm jonesing for an apricot tree. Then I went hunting around and now, I want all manner of fruit trees -- apple, cherry, pear.

I wonder how many fruit trees our well can support?

Saturday, March 05, 2005

Also, I've had two days of not perfect sleep (I keep leaving my big fat mouth open), but much improved sleep. I'm having dreams. I tell everyone that the surest sign that I'm feeling good is that laundry is getting done. As lousy as I've felt, it's a miracle that my kids aren't running around naked, though we are running dangerously low on towels at the moment. I need to have a convo with the dryer.

Apparently, however, going to the garage may be a dangerous thing because there's a bird trapped in there. I shudder to think what the bird has shat upon. *sigh* We asked Russell to open the door, but he got scared. We reminded him that he could use the remote in the car and hopefully, the poor bird is out.

One of the chickens passed away. I think we have to do a serious demiting of them either tonight or tomorrow night. The best thing is to just go in while they're roosting and dust them. The problem is that with 50 birds, that's a whole lot of dusting. It also means you have to toss all the eggs from it. I'm sure that commercial places don't, but we're not commercial and I don't want to eat that stuff. I can't recall what it's name is, but it's the highly toxic stuff they make from chrysanthemums that the natural food places claims is *organic." It's a serious toxin.

No heart condition! WHEEEEEEE! Thus, the reason for the following.

Last night, I made the best damned bad thing for Sarah's birthday cake ever. I made her a Mocha Toasted Pecan Torte. The recipe I used called for semi sweet chocolate and honestly, that was a little bitter with the coffee stuff in it. I think it'd be better with milk chocolate or those swirled white and milk chocolate chips. I've reproduced the recipe below with my own comments and suggested substitutions.

Mocha Pecan Torte

1 1/3 c. of chocolate chips
1 cup of butter

melt these together til smooth on low.

6 eggs
1 c. of sugar/splenda
1.5 c. of pecans that have been toasted in the oven. (Just stick them on a cookie sheet until they make your kitchen start to smell yummy -- you actually should put an extra cup on for the prettying up later)

Blend these in a blender or food processor for a minute or two untile they're fully combined, i.e., until the nuts are chopped.

Take your chocolate mixture above, AND 1/4 c. of expresso or kahlua, one cup of sifted cocoa and mix everything together. Put a piece of parchment paper in the bottom of a spring form pan and grease and flour it. Pour the mixture on top.

Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes. (Depends on your elevation) They said to do it until the edges were two inches taller than the sides, but it didn't work for me, but I also live at 5100 feet. *shrug* I just did it till the edges started to crackle.

Then you make the glaze.

Mocha Glaze: In a medium heavy saucepan heat 3 tablespoons butter and 1 tablespoon light-colored corn syrup over low heat, stirring occasionally until butter melts. Add one cup chocolate pieces; stir till melted and smooth. Remove from heat. Add 3 tablespoons butter and 2 tablespoons coffee liqueur or strong coffee; whisk until smooth. Again on the chocolate, they call for semi sweet, but it makes for a really bitter thing -- don't do it unless you're into dark chocolate. While it's still warm, get it frosted onto your cooled torte.

The final thing is that you take a chunk of baker's white chocolate and put it in a baggy and melt it in the microwave. I used the defrost mode for about 2 minutes, which melts it without hurting the bag. You snip a corner off and then squeeze white chocolate in a big circle in the middle. Then you do concentric circles coming off the center. Then take a toothpick and pull the white chocolate -- it'll look like a spiderweb and very FANCY.

Then you're supposed to take another cup of roasted pecans and chop them up and put them on the sides. What I did instead was just to press pecans on the sides because it was prettier.

I personally think that if I had this recipe to do again, I'd replace the coffee flavor with frangelico and replace the pecans w/hazelnuts, and I'd use milk and/or white chocolates. For something fancy, I might see if I can find Godiva cocoa, too.

This stuff is so rich, it'd make Howard Hughes look poor, baby, so not for the low-cholesterol diet, though perfectly fabulous as a flour-free recipe, though I tell myself because I'm using brown homegrown eggs, it's okay.

It's really good with a scoop of coffee ice cream, but probably better with a glass of skim milk. ;) I'd really like to try it with splenda to have the reduced sugar version. I happen to think it would also be nice with a small snifter of port or a glass of nice fruity red zinfandel. That would also help clear your arteries afterwards!

Martha Stewart may be back, but I'm still wiping the floor with that witch.

Thursday, March 03, 2005

I had a second sleep study last night and I should know more later today, but in the interim, I'm so viciously depressed.

I feel so worthless because I'm so wiped out all the time. I forget to do things -- yesterday, I went to the store to buy the fixings for meatballs to include meat, parsley, bread crumbs, and cheese, and I remembered the parsley. I had to send Mike to get the stuff I forgot. But this is how it is all the time.

With all this lack of sleep, my emotional boundaries are gone. I feel positively senile and rambling and retarded. I couldn't believe I couldn't find the car the other night, when I went out with Sarah and Mel. They laughed, but I was trying not to bawl uncontrollably.

I don't work not because I don't want to but because I really can't hold a job right now. I want to fix my incompletes, but I don't think I could begin to handle what I'd have to do to deal with it. I'm so embarrased and horrified at my body and my lack of brains and my complete inability to function day-to-day.

My legs hurt all the time because anything I do physically basically means I get no recovery from sleep. In the sleep study, I had a hard time sleeping because they were spasming because I haven't had a decent night's sleep in several weeks now.

I'm terrified to drive anywhere because I keep remembering the statistic that people with sleep apnea are 11 times more likely to have a car wreck. I'm terrified to put my kids in the car with me. If I go shopping, I usually have to make several trips because I forget everything and I'm too confused to write a list down because I can't remember what I need until I've walked past it three times.

The house is a mess; I haven't been able to do laundry because it's more than I can tolerate to try to pull heavy wet stuff out of the washer to put it in the dryer. It sounds so stupid and lazy to say that, but it's what's going on. I have to gather strength to do laundry because my muscles are sore and tired all the time and it seems so very far away to walk out to the garage to do it, which sounds insane, but it's where I'm at.

I can't even take care of my own daughter right now and I'm so embarrassed. Half the time, I drop her in front of cartoons and try to sleep. I wanted to be the one to teach her how to read and do math. And I want to read to her, but I can barely handle reading for some reason right now and I don't know why. I know my concentration is completely gone. And it seems weird because every so often I'll say the right thing, and then it feels like a random event that I have no control over -- like it didn't happen because of anything smart or self-possessed I might have thought.

I want desperately to be able to offer Russell the option to homeschool him and I'm so messed up I can't.

And then I worry about everything -- like weirdly and possessedly. I worry at night and I break into tears for no apparent reason like today. The worst thing is that I have been worrying about dying. First, I was worried Mike would wake up to a corpse and then I worry about the children and what would happen. Then I worry about driving, and then I was so sad because I haven't thought of killing myself in a long time, but I feel so worthless right now that occasionally, it seems like a really good idea. Yesterday, I was worrying about Mel because she drinks like the bottle has not bottom and my alcoholic grandmother used to do that and it just upset me incoherently and it shouldn't have, but it did.

Last night, the sleep study said that the pressure was way too high, so they fixed it for me. They also say my restless leg syndrome, which is something that can also cause lots of awakenings has gotten worse, not better. I see the doctor next week.

The scariest thing was the note from the tech on the forms -- she worries that I have arythmia. Cardiac disease is the thing that all diabetics dread -- myself included.

The really cool thing though, is that now, I might actually get some sleep, and tomorrow is another day.