Any other insomniacs out there?

OH HOLY CATS.

Tomorrow is the neuro appointment for me, complete with EEG. The nurse called today with a whole huge laundry list of things I need to do to prep for it. Check it out.

• Don't get more than 4 hours of sleep. They need you sleep-deprived.
• Take your meds, but log them all.
• NO CAFFEINE. No coffee, no tea, no energy drinks, no meds containing caffeine.
• Wash and dried hair. No styling products whatsoever.
• No sugar. Eat one meal exactly 1 1/2 hours before the test.

I think this looks like the recipe for a migraine. All they missed were bright lights, strong smells, and Period Week.

I did get special dispensation to skip the meal, which is going to kill me even worse, but it beats eating something and getting into some big machine only to have tummy trouble.

So here I sit, tired of surfing the web and having played every game I know on MSN Games. I'm not into painting tonight, and I'm too tired to formulate a thought, so I can't work on my manuscript. I'm down to blogging (and that should tell you what kind of grand and intelligent ideas I'm committed to putting out into the ether for posterity), and listening to music. In an effort to keep myself awake, I put on my most energetic music. Bless your handsome little hearts, Gabe Saporta and Cobra Starship. I'm feeling pretty punchy. I've been air-drumming since track number 3. It's track number 11 now and we're moving on to Katy Perry soon. Hmmmm. That song has a pretty kicking little drum line too. I may be on to something...

B's been in bed since 8. He's not feeling well today. I noticed this morning he had the sniffles; tonight his sinuses are hurting and he has a sore throat. I hope he feels well enough to go tomorrow. If not, I can drive myself. It wouldn't be the first time I've done it. It's only an hour and 15 minutes away.

My poor baby... how I wish I could go in there and curl up next to him, but I have an hour and a half to go. The morning alarm's set for 5:30. I CAN DO THIS. Heck, I can remember pulling all-nighters as a young'un. Am I getting THAT old? At 39, have I drifted into decrepitude, or is it just that over the last year my body's adjusted its sleep rhythm to B's?

In other news, the cat is up here giving me a kiss while trying to sit on the laptop. Maybe that's all I need: some sandpaper kitty nose-kissies.

Lordy. I had something interesting to post earlier, and it's totally slipped me. I feel like a science experiment.

Sure looking forward to Saturday morning.

The womanly arts

FALL'S here, boys and girls! Bringing back to school, which means.... Homecoming Ball!

The girl's fit to be tied. Her best friend (recipient of pink castle cake of the previous post) didn't have a date, so my daughter talked her little brother (um... shall I say YOUNGER brother. As he points out, at 6'1", he's got 9" on her) into taking her. It was all fun and games when she was cooking up ways for my son to ask her friend to the dance, but now that it's a done deal... shall we say she's having second thoughts? :-)

Maybe it was the night that her friend came over while she wasn't home.... to ask her brother for help with her homework. And stayed for three hours. LOL

I think it's hilarious. My son, as worldly as he'd like to think he is at the precious age of 14 1/2, is still oblivious about some things regarding the fairer sex. After they'd hammered at the homework for two hours and she was still saying things like "Umm... I still don't understand. Can you show me again?" he was getting irritated. He said "I'm not going to do your homework FOR you..."

Later in the kitchen as we were rustling around for an evening snack, I said "Did you *really* think she was here for homework help??" He just looked at me, and I watched the lightbulb slowly glow. Left a little bit o' blush as it did, too. ;-)

And his sister says "Ugh, GROSS!!" But she's driving them in to meet me after work today to go pick out a shirt, some slacks and a tie. What fun! My baby is growing up....
____________________________________________

We had good news yesterday at the doctor's appointments. The girl saw the neuro, who she'd been seeing about migraines. She's been having a lot of trouble with tachycardia, and I think it's from the desipramine that she's been taking for her headaches. The neuro was going to blow me off, but then I showed him the log we'd been keeping... she's been waking up in the morning with a 140 heart rate! Definitely not normal. So he had to acknowledge that maybe it was the drug, and we'll be slowly discontinuing it to see what happens.

The boy went for his yearly checkup at the dermatologist. He is a 'mole kid' and has a lot of them all over his body. We'd been monitoring them for melanoma, but the good news is there hasn't been significant change in a year and a half, so we don't have to go back unless there's a change. Yay!

B saw his neuro yesterday too. Coincidentally, it's the same guy my daughter sees. He's mostly let B run his own treatment plan for the Parkinson's without a whole lot of interference. B goes back every six months to get an evaluation and a new batch of scrips, but other than that, it's pretty low maintenance. He did get some good news. The neuro feels like he's had very little progression in the 10 years since his diagnosis. He's been on meds for 8 of those, and the dosage hasn't increased significantly. Plus, the doc said that the fact that he has very few episodes of dyskinesia is encouraging. B gets very quiet when we talk about those. I think that's what he fears the worst. But it will be okay. We will get through those too.
______________________________________________________

The girl and I picked up some fabric while we were out of town. She is very into rockabilly style, so we picked up some very cool fabric and some retro patterns. We're going to make a couple of dresses this fall. This is the dress she found online, and wants me to copy:


It's very simple, actually. I think it'll be fun. I bought some polka dot fabric for her, and some print for me, and I think now's the time for her to learn the womanly art of sewing!

Speaking of womanly arts, with a rockabilly skirt and a cute pair of high heels, a woman could rule the world. ;-)

Hmmmmmmmm......

Almost forgot...

THIS is my new painting, freshly finished. Needs a mat and frame yet, but here's the basic product.

For my B, forever.

I love you, honey.

Back for the attack!

WELL, it's been a pretty nice weekend. We came off the summer weather into some nice crispy fall weather beginning Saturday morning. It was overcast and breezy; just the kind of cool that makes me want to tuck blissfully into the weekend. We slept in deliciously late, then got started on our day. I would like to say it was uneventful, but of course you know *that* wouldn't be the case! What fun would it be if things were quiet? LOL

Here's a piece of advice for all you boys and girls at home. If you, like many other households with balance-challenged occupants, use one of those plastic bath mats in your tub (the kind with the octopus-sticky discs on the bottomside), take note!



Looks innocent, doesn't it?

• Valuable Lesson of the Day #1: IF the bath mat migrates to a part of the tub necessitating its removal and replacement, MAKE SURE YOU PUSH DOWN HARD on the little sticky discs when you put it back, thus ensuring that it is COMPLETELY STUCK DOWN.


• Valuable Lesson of the Day #2: Always let the balance-challenged person go LAST. You, my non-Parky friend, are the Guy in the Red Shirt. The canary in ye olde coal mine. The trailblazer. You test the water to make sure it's just the right temperature. You offer an arm over the slippery dippery sides of the tub (which, if you have kids in the house, can feature coatings of all sorts of fun things left by the last occupant: Mr. Bubble, soap chips, bath oil, conditioner residue, or even Plastic Tub Toys!). You make the world safe for democracy... or maybe just your beloved partner.
  
• Valuable Lesson of the Day #3: When sallying forth into the Great White Basin, remember this: Unsecured plastic bath mats can also double as boogie boards under the right set of circumstances. Surf's up!


• Valuable Lesson of the Day #4: If, in the course of daily events, you break one of your toes, there's nothing they can do about it but buddy-tape it to the other ones. Stopyerwhinin.

LOLOL I would show you a picture of it, but it's pretty ugly looking. My only consolation is that I went first; it could have been B, and then I would have been devastated. I'm actually finding it really amusing, once the pain was tolerable. Who else but me could break a toe in the bathtub??

So, since I can't get my tennies on anymore, since my foot's still pretty swollen up front, my new goal of taking a 3 mile bike ride with the neighbor lady has had to be postponed. Oh well... Time to stay at home and do other things.

Things like....



Take a nap.






Some people should be prohibited from operating a camera while OTHER people sleep. Talk about your undignified positions! Although it IS pretty cute....

Well, Monsty is cute anyway.
____________________________________________________

In other news, it was our 'borrowed girl's birthday last week (she is actually my daughter's best friend, who is over at the house every day and night).

The daughter made her a really cool cake. It was all her idea, and she did most of the work herself. She called on me to do the lining on the windows and doors, since we didn't have a proper deco bag and tip, and had to use a baggie.
I think it came out spectacular. So did everyone at the party. Woo hoo!
Too cool.

Last but not least, I have a funny.

When you've been together a while, you know pretty much all there is to know about your mate. I'm not talking about where they went to school, or how many sibs they have, or even who their first kiss was. I'm talking about the little details, the intimate ones. What size are his jeans? Does he favor pocket Tee shirts or no pockets? Coke or Pepsi? Tighty whities or boxer briefs? Beatles or the Stones? Cuddle or sprawl?

But in the beginning, those were all things you had to learn. Some things you learned by asking, other things just by osmosis.

I thought I had it made. I was doing so well. When his socks got tatty, I went out and replaced them; like magic they appeared in his drawer. I always remember to pick up his favorite kind of mixed nuts when I'm at the supermarket. I keep an eye on the level of the mouthwash in the bathroom so that he never runs out. I consider myself an attentive sort of mate. After all, it's what he would do for me. Right?

So, when the toothpaste ran low this week I put it on my grocery list. At the store, I was delighted to find that they were having a two for one sale! How fortuitous! This way I could make sure he didn't run out for quite some time! B would be so pleased.

When I got home and put groceries away, I half expected him to mention it. After all, the old tube still had a couple uses in it, so the new ones were standing in readiness at the counterside, erect soldiers of cinnamony flouride goodness. I assumed that he was pleased with my 'good-wife resourcefulness'.

We were walking through another grocery store this weekend, looking for a couple of items that I'd not picked up. I asked him his opinion on which one of two different brands of some item we were looking at, and he said he didn't care. I said "Surely you must have SOME preference. You know... I really do value your input."

"Weeeeeeellllll...." he said rather carefully, "there is the matter of the toothpaste."

I looked at him like he was speaking Swahili. "I just bought toothpaste."

"I know," he said, rather sheepishly. "I actually really HATE cinnamon toothpaste."

I stood there a moment, till I realized that passersby must think I was out to catch flies in my mouth. "You...you HATE cinnamon toothpaste?? But... you've been using it all this time! Why didn't you say something?!?"

He just looked at me and I looked back at him, and we burst out laughing. I was seized by the giggle fit monster, right there in the aisles of Safeway. The hold your sides, laugh until you cry, pants wetting, snorking sort of giggle fit. Grand mal. It was just SO FUNNY.

"You... you... you've been using it for NINE MONTHS!" I shrieked. "We must have gone through FIVE tubes! I can't believe you didn't tell me!"

"Well, you kept buying it!" he laughed.

"Because YOU KEPT USING IT!"

We had to leave the store.

And... I'm still giggling.

Mars and Venus. In the toothpaste aisle.

I'm happy to report that B has his own tube of minty fresh Colgate now. Thank God we weren't playing "The Newlywed Game". ;-)

Signing out, folks. I'm off to find out if my side of the bed's still warm. See you on the flip side.

Aster

September 13: Nine Months

Relief in sight

AKA "Light at the end of the tunnel".

The good news: my inspection job should be over soon. The main crew is going back home tomorrow, and the sub-crew is coming later in the week. We should have a few days of blessed peace in between. *sigh* This means at least a half hour of extra sleep in the mornings. Maybe I will be able to find the coffeemaker tomorrow morning with my eyes OPEN. lol

The not so good news: the sub-crew may work all weekend. Not looking forward to breaking that news to B. Thank heavens they only have about four days worth of work and then the whole job will be done.

We went to lunch today with another couple from here at work. It was pretty nice. And B seems to be feeling better today. Thank you, God.

Nothing planned tonight except meeting the crew supervisor to clean up the paperwork for the end of the job. Hopefully it will go quick.

It's September, it's sunny and cool, and it's beautiful outside. Fall is the time for new beginnings. May it be blessed for us. :-D

Sex, lies and gross dyskinesias

ALRIGHT, the first one is a tease. Not that we hadn't *planned* it. We'd actually planned to stop at Victoria's Secret while we were out of town by ourselves for a change, picking up the Krispy Kremes for our daughter's fundraiser, but the trip ended up being too quick to waste the time.

It was a terrible weekend, and on the way home it got worse. His cell phone rang and it was his ex. First of the month, should have expected it. I knew she'd be calling wanting money sometime soon. He put her off by telling her he'd call her back later. We tried not to let it ruin our day, but it was pretty much impossible.

When we got home, it was a runaround to deliver the donuts, the daughter was still in a tizzy about ordering her new cell phone, and there was a crisis in between involving my ex and some information we needed to provide for him. I made dinner while he went out to call her back to see what she'd wanted, figuring we'd get it out of the way early. Dinner came and went, but no B. Finally, when he came in, I could see that it had been a doozy. He came in and ate while I kept him company. We sat in silence while I waited for him to open up.

No matter the motive for her phone call, it had the desired result. B crashed hard. Last night was incredibly difficult. The crushing fatigue. The depression. The shuffle. Emotions that were all over the board. Insomnia when he did try to go to bed, his body wracked with pain. And when I came to bed and we tried to snuggle, the tremor, this time not little fine jitters, but big shuddering muscle jerks all up and down his legs, causing him great distress. He paced around the house for hours, up and down, back and forth. We got less than four hours of sleep last night, to cap off the four the night before. At one point we stood in the silence of the garage and I held him, head drooped on my shoulder in defeat, stroking his hair as I felt the back and forth movement of his lower body, as if he were swaying to music only he could hear. He took another Sinemet, and finally he was able to sleep.

This morning I'm discouraged. I'm sure most of it is from lack of sleep. But I'm angry too. For all the progress we've made, for all the good time we've spent, the last month between my work schedule and all of our household crises has put a distance between us that is incredibly painful. I know a lot of it is the disease. We're still weathering these storms in each other's harbor, clinging together for dear life. But it has to stop. I can't bear the way it's tearing him apart. Last night he was so depressed he talked about giving up his job, just retiring right now. And he was getting so much satisfaction out of it...

I want to know how to change things for him, and I feel so helpless. He spoke his greatest fear last night when he got up distraught over the dyskinesia. I heard the weight with which it dropped from his lips. "These are signs of things to come."

Not necessarily. Not sooner. Hopefully later. God only knows.

Please, God. Hold my husband's heart in your hands and soothe his soul. Let us have some peace. This is my prayer for a Tuesday morning.

Perspective

WELL, I was going to come in here tonight to spill some of the pent up frustration of the last week's events, but the universe must be looking out for me. Instead of venting, I had the pleasure of chatting with a long-term and very dear friend whom I hadn't talked to in quite awhile. We had a few minutes of catching up, and he had me in giggles within the first five minutes. That's exactly what I needed today; a dose of perspective. What a blessing! It was good to find out he and his family are doing okay.

B's in bed early again tonight. It's been a rough week, and the fatigue has really gotten to him all week long. Seems like it's been non-stop crises every day. I'm hoping it ends soon. He was withstanding it for the first few days, but this time it's tipped him over and he's very depressed. I'm wondering how much of the long sleeping/frequent napping is fatigue, and how much is depression. Going to ask him about upping his antidepressant dosage.

He talked about going back to see his counselor for the first time since we've been together. Part of me knows that's a great idea, especially given the circumstances of the divorce. And part of me feels like I've failed him somehow. He was doing so good when we were first together. He said he felt great. And now that we've all settled into our busy, normal, bustling, two-teenager-household lives, the stress is killing him. I wish it could be different, but it won't. And he's handling them so well. He claims it's just the disease.

God, I hope that's true.

I'm a little depressed myself tonight. I'm lonely and I miss my husband. I'm off to bed.

What, me worry??

WELL, in a stunning trade up of events, it seems that I'm now going to be the one seeing the neuro. I've had some unexplained fainting events in the last year or so, and after doing some rule-out (did the blood sugar monitoring thing, saw the cardiologist for a stress test, did a thyroid test) they've decided to send me to a neuro for a possible seizure workup. Niiiiiiiiiiiiice. While the fainting episodes are disturbing, possibly more disturbing is the concept of something being wrong with my brain. Maybe even something requiring me to take meds for the rest of my life. Or even disrupting the things I need to do.

It also occurs to me that this is an incredibly hypocritical way to feel, given the fact that I tell B all the time that his PD won't affect us as a couple. I guess what I really meant to say is that it was okay if he was sick, because one of us was healthy, and that meant we could compensate.

What happens if I'm sick too?

In the context of my own health, there is always this undercurrent of thought. "I need to make sure this neck problem doesn't get worse... someday I may have to lift him." "I have to make sure my memory stays sharp... so someone can remind him to take his meds on time." "I can't get sick... B has PD." Upon further thought, maybe this is less an altruistic thought than a selfish one. Am I really saying "I have to be perfect for both of us"?

The odd part of all of it is that for some reason, my being weak really makes B rise to the occasion. Being able to worry about me takes the focus off his own problems... it makes him feel strong. What I wish I could tell him is that he was strong all along. That's how he's made it so far with so many obstacles. I'm not the kind of person who likes to be fussed over, but it seems to please him. And I'm grateful that he's there.

Because truth be told, although I know that there's probably some stupid reason for all of this, it frightens me.
_______________________________________________________

And for your funny of the day:

I've gained a few more pounds in the last several months than I'd like, so the daughter and her friend and I have been walking in the evenings with the dogs. It's somewhat disconcerting that the dachschund with her little three-inch legs fares better on a three mile hike than I do! lol

But I've also been adding yoga to the workout, thanks to a little freebie dvd from McDonalds. A couple of nights ago, I was doing the 'moderate' exercises for balance, and found that either I'm the most uncoordinated person on the face of the planet, or that these standing-on-one-leg maneuvers are more difficult than they look. Last night we were all standing around in the garage chatting, and I made a funny comment about how loud it must have been from the other room during my yoga workout, what with me falling over every couple of minutes. He laughed, so I challenged him to do the poses. And in the twinkling of a starry blue eye, he'd pulled one foot up onto the other thigh, lifted his arms to the ceiling, and stood there perfectly poised in the crane position, grinning at me.

"So, what's your problem again?" he asked.

Sheesh. Go figure. The parkie's got better balance than I do. ;-)

For now I'm simply claiming that us *ahem* shapely girls have built-in, top-heavy overbalancing issues that prevent us from standing on one leg like a great blue heron. I'll leave the advanced poses to the little flat boy-girls and my smarty-pants Requip-poppin, Baryshnikov-emulating, overly talented, cheesily-grinning DH. God bless 'im.

The hidden tiger roars

GOOD morning, sweet blog.

We had quite a weekend here. I had to work on both Saturday and Monday of the holiday, so it didn't seem quite like such a day off, but it meant double time and a half on Monday, so it was definitely worth it. The house was turned upside down with a visit from the kids' father on Saturday. He drove up here from his city, five hours away, to stay the night and see them. It's been several months since he's seen them.

EX was his usual self. It's hard to explain. He's always been 'all about him', and as a result, he's been estranged from his kids for a long time, despite my efforts to keep them engaged. The kids don't approve of his alcoholism, nor of his abuse when he gets drunk, even if he is charming when he's sober. I can't blame them. As for him, he can't see why they don't want to communicate with him. He'd rather see them as 'selfish' and 'self-absorbed'. I bite my tongue a lot.

I should have known how it would go when he showed up a day late on the doorstep, with a half rack of beer and a grin. He was somewhat surprised to find that everyone had made other plans. My daughter had taken the previous day off her job to spend some time while he was here, and so was working late into the evening Saturday, irritated at having missed a full day's wages on the very last paycheck of her summer job. I was in between callbacks for my inspection job, so had only a couple of hours to spare, and definitely DIDN'T want B to have to entertain him all by himself. And B, unlike him, was pretty darn cold. As they'd gotten along fairly well the last time EX showed up for a visit, I was rather surprised. EX usually snows everyone he meets for awhile, before they finally get 'on' to him and his modus operandi.

True to form, EX spent the whole time he was there totally ignoring my son and trying to butter B and I up. When he finally left it was only 20 minutes before my daughter was scheduled to get home, but he didn't want to wait. EX promised to be back the next morning to take everyone out to breakfast before we had to be to work, so he could spend some time with the kids before he had to get back home. He went off to get a motel room, and we breathed a sigh of relief.

B was uncharacteristically quiet, and I figured it was just the stress.

Morning came and went with no word from the EX, and I went off to work and back. Finally, at 10 o'clock EX showed back up, bearing McDonalds. "I couldn't afford to take you to breakfast, so I brought something." he said. B turned around when he saw the car pulling into the driveway, and went out to the garage with the weed trimmer, where he stayed for nearly two hours. EX chatted with the kids and I for awhile, then he left. I thought it had been a fairly quiet visit, considering.
__________________________________________________________

LAST night I was coming home with take out, so I rang my daughter inside the house from the driveway so she could come out to help carry things in. When she came out, a neighbor woman, surrounded by a pack of kids, accosted her in the driveway. "Did you just call my son a (foul name)??" My daughter and I stopped short, amazed. "No!!" she said, with surprise. The woman turned to her son and asked if she was the girl who had cursed at him, and he shrugged. After a few more awkward comments, they went their way and we went ours.

I was upset. "What was that all about? Did you talk to those little kids??" I grilled her. She and her friend had just come in from out walking the dogs, and the kids in question included one little pot-stirring troublemaker that we've had trouble with before. "What DID you say?" I asked them, knowing it very well could have been something.

It turned out that the girls had been laughing about something between themselves, and the sentence they provided could possibly have been misheard, if someone wasn't listening to the whole conversation. But as she was defending herself, my daughter got loud and strident, and let some cusswords fly at the dinner table where we were all seated. The conversation disintegrated when I told her to watch her language. She got more and more upset, getting flippant with me. We played verbal volleyball for no more than a minute or two when she was close to tears. B jumped up out of his seat and flew to her defense.

"You're right." he told her. "This IS your house, and nobody has the right to come in here and accuse you of something you didn't do. This is OUR house, and this is our safe place, and we don't need to tolerate anyone threatening that. And I won't let them." The look on her face was priceless. If anyone's ever stood up for her like that before, I've not heard it. I still thought she should have watched her mouth, but I couldn't interfere with this moment. At that moment, B was her hero.

And he was mine, even if I hadn't agreed with him on the original issue.

Then he looked at all the kids and said "I love you all, and I love your mother. Nobody's here because they don't want to be."
__________________________________________________________

Later when we were alone, he told me that the EX had been overstepping his bounds when I wasn't looking, ogling me from behind. It was something I'd gotten used to, I suppose. No one's ever stood up for me before, told me I had value to them.

When he finally told me all that had been going on in his mind, he was as erect and snarling as a tiger. The blue eyes flashed when he told me that no one was ever going to disrespect the woman he loved, and that he would enforce safety in this house for our little family. And I was in awe, seeing the B that he had been before he'd been beaten down by life, seeing the self-assured man, the proud man, the pack leader, the mate that he'd always been meant to be. He told me he felt like he was changing, back to how he felt when he was young. I see it.

We decided that it would be best for all of us if the EX had traditional visitation from now on, picking up the kids and bringing them back but not hanging around our house. They will benefit from not having the distraction of other people around so they can have his undivided attention, and our house will remain our sanctuary. I will go pick them up in an emergency if things go south, but he is no longer welcome in my house. In our house. In B's house. The sense of relief I felt at hearing him say those words was overwhelming, making me want to laugh and cry at the same time.

The Bible says that in a marriage, a woman is to follow the man, the leader of the pack. She is his helpmate, his partner, his equal, but he is the head of the household, the alpha. I have been so tired all these years, trying to be the head of the home and still be a mother. I have never felt like I could lay down that trust in someone to lead our family, and follow in faith. I have never been able to trust that the man I've been with would have our best interests at heart, that come down to crunch time, he would not sell us out for a handful of beans.

These new seedlings of faith are painful, fearful, timorous. But the healing feels so blessed. The tiger roars as he breaks these hard baked acres of new ground, but where he's passed is fertile and fruitful. And I walk beside, thankful.