Life Viewed Through an Amber Focus

At least it feels that way. I just managed a major cold after Disneyland. Then Spring Cleaning happened without my permission or authorization. Plus getting the garden ready, taking care of the chickens, taking care of the rabbits, and shoveling more manure than I ever knew such little creatures could produce, is taking up time. I hope to actually manage to write fiction tomorrow.

I am slowly adapting to my C-PAP machine. The first few days I had clearly yanked off the mask and thrown it in my sleep, judging from where I found it in the morning. I did the same thing with my mouth guard when I first got it. I'd always spit it out in my sleep and find it somewhere in the covers the next day. The last couple of days I've woken up with the mask still on, so that's progress. I'm not sure if it's doing me any actual good or not. Rose says I am not snoring, but I don't feel anymore rested than before. So exhausted in point of fact. And still somewhat insomniac, unfortunately.

I am so glad it was spring break this week. I don't think I could have handled homeschooling on top of everything else.

It has been a crazy week for me. I had physical therapy, a consult with the sleep doctor, and a visit with my new doctor, and a trip to the airport. Between that and homeschooling, I've barely had a chance to look at LJ since Tuesday. As it is, I'm posting and running, but hopefully will get to catch up later tonight.

I've sent ch. 6 off to Amy and thetesh will look it over as well. It's looking like I'll have some time to write this weekend though. There has been no writer's block on this story at all, it's just been a question of getting my time in. Not so easy when I'm trying to deal with my sleep phase displacement that is causing a lot of my insomnia issues, but at least that treatment looks like it might be working. Of course it won't be until I have my sleep study that I'll know whether or not I have sleep apnea. Dad had it and it tends to run in families.

Anyway, don't know if I'll end up posting the story tonight or tomorrow but just thought I'd let you know it is forthcoming relatively soonish.

...I love this medication. Love it. I fell asleep by 9:30 last night and slept straight through until 5:00. I felt incredibly well rested when I got up. And having a couple of hours to myself is nothing to be sneezed at. I can't believe how much better I feel in just a week on this stuff. My sleeping pattern has been so wrecked up until now. It is great to be back on a normal one again.

Well, I suppose I should go do my math homework. I am teaching myself the Fundamentals of Algebra and Geometry, trying to stay one day ahead of my son's learning. Today is the unit test. I figure if I go through it with him this year, and do more algebra with him next year I will learn the stuff pretty thoroughly again. I am considering going back to college at some point in the future and I'd like to test out of the math if I can. Since it has been 22 years since I took college algebra, I don't remember a lot.

I have a degree in accounting, because it was practical, but I always wanted to get a liberal arts degree, too, just for fun. Well, mostly I want to take creative writing classes, art, history, and more science. I have taken environmental biology, geology 101 and 102, and glacial geology. I'd like to take marine biology, astronomy, agronomy, archeology, chemistry, and possibly physics (which I never had the math for before). It'd be slow going, maybe one class a semester, which would be all I'd have time for until the kids are grown. Not to mention afford, since R will be going to college in two years and T in six. I have no intention of taking out student loans for them or me.

Okay, back to math...

Edited to add: Got 40 out of 42 problems right. The two I got wrong were careless errors with negative numbers. My bugaboo. Oh, well, it's still 95%.

Do you know what life is like with enough sleep? It is freaking amazing. I think I forgot what it was like not to have a constant sleep debt. This new medicine is a Godsend. If this continues I am going to be very happy. I will actually be able to stay up between 7 a.m. when I drop my daughter off at school and 9 a.m. when I get my son up for breakfast and homeschooling, instead of going back to bed for a nap. That's about an hour and 40 minutes to myself in which I can be writing. Hopefully that will mean an end to the writer's block. I might even consider doing NaNo this year.

Changing bandages should not still be knocking me for a loop.  It's a simple enough process, remove the old bandage and tape, try not to scratch all my skin off, cleanse the area, dry it, try not to scratch all my skin off, put on the antibiotic cream, put on the new bandages, tape the drainage tube back in place, curse the blasted, itchy tape, try not to scratch all my skin off, go and collapse for three hours to recover.  Is it Tuesday yet?

I did get some writing done today, earlier when I was feeling better.  Not as much as I had hoped for.  Hopefully I will sleep enough tonight to have good writer's brain tomorrow.  I really want to finish this chapter.  And I have nothing to watch and I finished my book Immunity, which took me two weeks to read, mostly because I had to keep looking stuff up (like monoclonal antibodies and stuff that a degree in genetics might have helped with.  It should not be that hard to read a medical thriller.  And the stack of library books sitting on my dresser look completely uninteresting when three weeks ago they looked really good, (oh, three weeks, better renew online).

For the most part it was a low pain day until about an hour ago when I moved wrong so I am sitting with an icepack over the incision site now and debating if it is worth the chance of throwing up to take a pain pill.  Probably not.  I even made a meal that didn't come out of a can.  Admittedly I made two that did come out of cans.  Trader Joe cans, but still cans.  Yesterday was far better.  I guess it's two steps forward one step back.  I know I shouldn't be impatient.  It's only been 2 weeks and 1 day since the surgery, but I am.  I hate not being able to do stuff for myself.  The kids are being great little troopers.  My eleven-year-old boy now knows how to do laundry from start to finish.  If I don't feel better tomorrow I guess my daughter will be making lunch and dinner.  My son can do breakfast (pancakes and eggs) as long as someone watches.  Plus there's cereal.

Some of that sleeping medicine they gave me in the hospital would be nice right about now.