November 19, 2004

• Warning –
  whining ahead
  (and possibly a little Too Much Information)

  It’s snowing again.  Wet, fluffy snow, melting on our warm
  roof and dripping down through at least three holes.  I hope it’s only
  three, because I have cans under three.  One of those cans is now
  overhanging the edge of the computer desk.  It has been inching
  toward me ever since I sat down here.  When I came over here to
  post the second of today’s past life readings on KaiOaty’s site this
  evening, I discovered a drip hitting the front of the monitor.  I
  moved the monitor back a bit and put a can under the drip.  The
  drip has been gradually moving southward.  The trailer leans and
  its floor and roof slope gently toward the south, which can be a good
  thing when it rains and we want water to drain from the flat
  roof.  Snow doesn’t drain off.  It stays there and finds
  holes to leak through.  If that drip keeps migrating, I’ll have to
  move the can down onto the keyboard shelf and put the keyboard
  somewhere else.  If the roof HAS to leak, I prefer drips that stay
  over the cans I put under them.

  When I got home from town a week ago, I breathed a sigh of relief,
  thankful that I had two weeks to recover before I had to go back
  again.  Then Seph called.  I wanted to see him.  We’ve
  heard from him only infrequently while he’s been in Iraq, and he IS one
  of our favorite people.  The morning two days ago that I drove
  down the valley to pick him up for our lunch date was HELL.  I
  hadn’t recovered fully from the last trip to town.  I got all
  dressed and went out to warm up the car and scrape the ice off the
  windows.  The cold, the exhaust fumes and the exertion of scraping
  precipitated a severe asthma attack.  I headed toward the house
  for my nebulizer and — here comes the TMI — wet my pants. 
  Incontinence is another of the damned symptoms of the damned
  neuromuscular disease.  It comes along with the shortness of
  breath sometimes, adding insult to injury.

  After puffing on the nebulizer a while, I changed my pants.  We
  were fifteen minutes late picking Seph up, but the car was certainly
  nice and warm when we left here.  Our lunch was enjoyable. 
  He told us some stories and he and Greyfox got into a little low-key
  NPD duel, talking over each other, ignoring what anyone else was
  saying, etc.   Then he wanted to go to the card shop. 
  While he spent about $200 on Yu-Gi-Oh cards, I browsed in the packed
  aisles of action figures (bought a Ron Weesley for myself), leaned on
  the shoulder of the life-size Yoda figure and had a little one-sided
  convo with him, removed the baseball cap someone had put on Yoda’s head
  backwards… and hung it from one of his ears.

  We finally got out of there.  I needed some groceries, so that was
  another couple of miles of walking — supermarkets are VAST, especially
  when I’m exhausted.

  [DAMN!  A drip just hit the "S"
  key, so I had to move the can down.  The keyboard is now hanging
  off the right side of the shelf, and I'm shouldering up against the
  bookshelf to type.  Next time the drip moves, it'll be on my lap.]

  …exhausted, I said.  On the way out of town, Seph wanted to stop
  at the pawn shop.  He bought two wrenches and a screwdriver to
  replace ones missing from his tool kit back in Iraq.  As the guys
  were leaving on leave, the sergeant suggested they replace their lost
  tools.  When a humvee or truck has been bombed, the first five
  times, they repair it.  After six times, it’s automatically
  redlined and replaced.  The army can replace vehicles, but not
  tools.  Anyhow, I found a chair and waited while Seph picked out
  tools and Doug found an anime DVD and a PS2 game.

  We stopped at Greyfox’s cabin a while on the way out of town, then in
  Willow for gas and at the spring to fill some water jugs before we got
  home.  I needed to bake muffins, because I’d eaten all of the
  previous batch.  Before doing my muffins, I made a pan of bar
  cookies for the guys.  I’d planned to cook tuna and noodles after
  the baking was done, but by then I was done in.  I told the guys
  to fix themselves sandwiches, but I think they made do with cookies and
  milk.

  I went to bed, but not to sleep.  Seph has this squeaky, shiny new
  coat.  The tag on it when he bought it said, “body-snug unisex
  polypropylene jacket.”  He wore it all night.  First he
  talked on the phone to the girl who wants to be his girlfriend (I’m
  going no further into that one).  Then he lay down for a while and
  fidgeted, adding the creak of the couch to the squeak of his
  coat.  Then he got up and paced around some, replacing couch creak
  with boot-clomp.  I had asked him if he was jet lagged when I saw
  him yawning in town.  There’s a 12-hour time difference between
  here and Iraq.  He said no.  Deep in denial, that young man.

  He slept most of the next day, and then got his not-girlfriend’s mother
  to come get him.  He was to meet her at the mailboxes up by the
  highway, but he gave her the wrong milepost number and she waited for
  him a mile up the highway, while the wannbe girlfriend called here
  frantically leaving messages on my internet answering machine warning
  Seph that her mother was only going to wait five more minutes before
  leaving without him.  I called her back, gave her proper
  directions, she relayed them to her mother, and Seph departed.  He
  called this morning, early, bored because he was the only person awake
  in the house.  Doug was up, and they schmoozed a while. 
  He’ll probably get over his jet lag just in time to go back to Iraq.

  So I’d lost two nights’ sleep, from fatigue and disturbances. 
  It’s a downward spiral when I get sleep-deprived.  The longer I go
  without sleep the harder it is to get uninterrupted sleep.  Today,
  I wasn’t up to doing any readings.  I transcribed two readings
  that Greyfox did, and can only hope I got them right.  I’m not
  going to list everything that hurts or is malfunctioning.  Too
  discouraging, that, and probably easier to list what’s working right,
  if only my brain were working well enough to discern what’s working
  right.  Unfortunately, the damn brain needs to keep focusing on
  what’s hurting in order to shut off the pain.   I’m going to quit
  whining and get out of the way of this migrating drip.

  Be well, everyone.  If you are well, be grateful.
  

  • 1:11 am
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