Happy Halloween!

So we are handing out candy tonight and that’s about all the celebrating we’re going to be doing. I worked at home today so I didn’t even dress up in costume. My youngest dressed up for school–she went as a Griffyndor wizard. She dug the uniform and scarf out of our costume stash in our storage space so she was happy about that.

Bob is feeling awful. He never recovered from the football game and had to stay away from church yesterday because his lungs were so painful to breathe if he left the house. He went in to work but doesn’t feel well at all. He is up to take his mother to her cataract surgery tomorrow, and I just hope he doesn’t get COVID at the hospital. He’s not coughing or feverish himself–it just hurts to breathe in the damp air.

I feel pretty good. Had a hard time getting out of bed but not as bad as it could have been. I’ve been working today and just finished up my day. I go in tomorrow and Wednesday, then home again Thursday, then I go to see my CPAP doctor and find out what we’ll be doing.

Speaking of church, our senior pastor is going to move to pastor emeritus and bring back a fellow who was on staff here but went to get more experience at another church in Arkansas. That fellow will take over senior pastor position in January 2024. So it was an interesting business meeting last night in that we had to amend the bylaws of the church to do things this way. No one else has ever been pastor emeritus before–they either just moved on to another church or more often, were run out of town on a rail. 🙂 I think this arrangement will work well–not nearly as much uncertainty and transition.

I need to run to the grocery store and get a few things. We will see how the rest of the day goes. Hope everyone has a happy holiday, whatever you celebrate.

Advertisement

Roof Leak

Bob went into his comic book room and discovered that my daughter’s bedroom plumbing is leaking into the ceiling of that room. So we have to call a plumber and a contractor likely to fix it. But it’s a pretty severe leak so we need to get on it.

I got up and went to church today. It was a fight to wake up and go, but once I got to the service I did better than I have been. We had a guest preacher (a guy who used to be on staff here) come in and preach. So that was interesting. He preached on God is the same today, yesterday, and forever and we need to remind future generations of that. I’m going back to church tonight for a business meeting and the service so we can stay on top of what’s going on.

My aimless movements seem to have settled down completely, which I am glad for. Now to see if I can get my sleep back on track and take better care of myself and wake up when I need to tomorrow to work. I hope so.

Looking forward to seeing trick-or-treaters tomorrow. We always have a good turnout because we are an easy street to navigate and have lots of houses in a small space. I love seeing all the little people in costumes. We got pictures over Facebook of our grandson in his dinosaur costume so that was nice. We had fun seeing that.

Well, soon I will run and get going cooking on lunch. Hope everyone is doing well today and has a good start to their week. Godspeed.

Cloudy Day

It looks like it could pour any minute outside; they do have rain predicted so we will see if it materializes.

Had a good time last night at the ballgame–it was Senior Night where the seniors involved with all aspects of the football program are recognized. So since band is considered a sport now, we were on the field with our youngest as her band director wished her well. I told him, “You’re our LAST band director.” I gigged the assistant band director, who has been there for ALL of our girls and said that we had gone a LONG time with the band, and she agreed. We spent all of the lineup time talking to a guy that Bob graduated high school with whose youngest daughter is also a senior; they had a good time reminiscing and whatnot.

My mom woke us up calling to see how we were doing. I hope she doesn’t go back to making that a habit–it used to happen almost every weekend when we first got married until Bob answered the phone one time and said, “We’re still asleep,” and hung up. So I got up and Bob is still in the bed. He stayed up to see our daughter home so I don’t mind.

I feel a lot better with the cut-down Abilify dose. I don’t have that terrifying agitation anymore. So that’s good. I go to the sleep doctor next Friday and hopefully get my prescription for the CPAP and get it calibrated. I go back to my psychiatrist in December and see how I am doing then. I see Tillie again the week before Thanksgiving so that’s good, too.

I guess that’s all I have to say today. Hope everyone has a good weekend and all.

Slept in Today

But I don’t feel as bad as I did yesterday. Hopefully the med change will help what’s been going on. We will see.

I have a basically clear schedule today so I will see what all I can get done. I’m going to do laundry and then go meet my friend Anita for lunch. So not sure what else I will get done. Listening to Harry Connick Jr. again and enjoying going through all my CD’s of his music. I know no one listens to CD’s anymore except me, but that’s okay. I am thinking about doing a story for The Girlfriend, an AARP publication, on how I just don’t care what people think of me anymore. 🙂 My kids getting out of grade school has accelerated this process for me, and I no longer have to keep up appearances for anyone. Very freeing.

We have College Gameday coming to Jackson this weekend, so we are going to mostly stay in the house this weekend so as to avoid all the traffic and whatnot. I just hope nothing grim happens to anyone as a result of the excitement. But it certainly is coup for Jackson, which has gotten a lot of bad press the past few months.

I suppose that’s all for me today. Pray the medication works like it’s supposed to, and I stop having this terrible agitation all day. Thanks. Godspeed.

Learned a New Word Today

I have been feeling very, very sluggish about getting out of bed, yet as the day moves along, I’ve been getting more and more agitated, unable to concentrate and sit still. So today I hauled myself to Dr. Bishop, and he diagnosed me with akathisia–a neuropsychiatric side effect of my Abilify. So now my Abilify is cut down and we’ll see how I do until I can get my CPAP eventually. That should take care of the sluggishness and the inability to get out of bed. So we will see what happens. The worry with cutting back the Abilify is that I would go manic. But the time of year, etc. is all wrong for that. So it’s going to be balancing the two and seeing how I come out once my sleep debt is caught up after I get the CPAP.

Pretty good day today aside from the agitation. I got some stuff done and have all next week to catch up on things that have been left undone and then prepare for pre-orders for the next season and a November sale the press has every year. So some breathing room until those things happen. My bosses seem to think I am doing them a good job and staying on top of items. I am doing my best.

Senior Band Night is this weekend and signals the end of an era–next year, for the first time in many, many years, we won’t have a kid in Band. This will be her last home game as a band member. The last senior night we did was with my middle one and a different band director, and we thought he was going to cry when he got to us in line shaking hands. So we will see how tomorrow night goes.

I suppose that is all I have to say tonight. Pray I can get this restlessness under control without getting manic. I hope things will be okay. Thanks for reading. Godspeed/

Luncheon

We had a nice day at work today–we had a team luncheon with everyone at the press that wanted to come being treated to Nick Wallace Catering. (yes, the Nick Wallace from TV) They had so much food that we were all invited to get lunch to-go plates to carry it off–I made Bob a plate and he will enjoy it for lunch tomorrow.

I sat with one of the publicists, one of the acquiring editors, and one of the book designers. We had great conversation and enjoyed ourselves. Some people dressed up in costumes, and there were door prizes of UPM promotional items for best costumes. If anyone asked, I just said I was there as a Long-Suffering Mississippi State Fan, since I was wearing a maroon-and-white-and-neutral combo. I did get work done and we had a zoom meeting beforehand so work did occur. But it was a fun day.

Bob had inventory today and they had lunch brought in, too but I don’t know what. I’ve tried not to interrupt him today. So I will call in a while though and see if he is going to run late tonight, as he sometimes does with inventory.

We will see how the rest of the day goes. But this was one of my better days. I will be home tomorrow and finish up my week, then next week I will go and see if I can catch up on jobs that were left undone from before I was hired. I plan to spend the whole of next week doing that. I think i will make a lot of progress. Godspeed to all.

Sick Kid

My youngest has come down with something that is bothering her stomach so I stayed home and we are going to the doctor in just a bit. She seems to be feeling much better than she did this morning, but I’m still going to take her in and see what is going on. So that has been my day.

I am going to run an errand or two after the appointment so we will see what happens. I have felt really good today so I didn’t call Dr. Bishop. I will have to see how it goes tomorrow before I see about calling him again.

My youngest one’s car parts came in today so hopefully she will be back in her car by the end of the week. At least we really hope so. But we trust the guys doing the work to do it right so we’re not too worried about it. And her senior portraits are finally ready to be picked up so I may do that this afternoon depending on when we get free from the doctor’s office.

It’s been a long day, even though I started work about a half-hour late and ended a half-hour early so as to keep my stats sheet straight at work. I need to write down that I left off an hour today because I will not remember come time to fill out my timesheet for the next month.

I guess that’s all I have to say today. Hope everyone is continuing to do well today and heading into the middle of the week. Godspeed to all.

So Very Slow

Today was a slow day. I just couldn’t get going well. I drug around all day long. Not sleepy, exactly. Just lethargic. Uncaring. I am seriously wondering if I don’t need to go in to see my psychiatrist to try to head this off at the pass. I don’t want to be a basketcase during Christmas.

I got a lot of blog things done–I redid my writing blog theme this afternoon. I just didn’t like the white-print-on-black background format of the other one. So I picked something else that looks clean and neat and looks good on a mobile platform. So we will see if it picks up traffic a little more now that it isn’t so all-black.

I need to do laundry. I am lethargic in getting things done but not in a bad mood. I think I need to do something about this. I will call Dr. Bishop tomorrow and try to get an appointment for that afternoon or the next. Hopefully something can be done.

Godspeed to all.

.

Birthday Party!

My nephew is having a birthday party today upstate today, and we will leave sometime around noon to get there. (He’s my sister’s little boy) He was three last week. We bought for him last Saturday and hope he enjoys the present.

I slept in from church and Bob went. I was so zonked out when I tried to get up this morning. I feel a lot better now, though. So I should be fine.

I will work on my Verywell Mind story tonight. It shouldn’t take too long to do. I have just been so busy with other stuff this weekend. But I will do my best to finish it, and hopefully that will be the last revision! This is my fourth draft of it, and like I said, I understand they are trying to put as good a face on it because they were so incompetent in actually seeing me. But I don’t have to participate in that. I am just doing the best I can at it.

I hope I am not heading for depression. I hope I am just tired from doing so much and from sleep apnea. I see Dr. Bishop in December and hope that with the CPAP machine that maybe I can stop the Provigil. But I am starting to think not. At least once I get up and get going, I am fine. I don’t feel depressed. I still take enjoyment in things. So if it is a downswing, it’s early in the cycle. Maybe it won’t ruin Christmas.

Hope everyone has a good day and starts off good on their week. Godspeed.

What Needs to be Done?

I read a horrifying WaPo article last night–it was talking about the mental health crisis in the nation and talked about an autistic boy that suddenly became ungovernable at home for his parents at 17. He was beating up his mother and his younger brothers in rages. His parents took him to the ER one night and it took a month for them to find him a psychiatric bed. That was before the pandemic. They finally stabilized him, and he was fine for about a year.

Then the abuse started again. He wound up in the same ER after he ran his mother out of the house one night, and this time he stayed for 76 days IN THE ER, being injected with Haldol every day so the hospital could manage him. He finally went to a specialized neuropsych unit in the state and subsequently died of a seizure there. The hospital hadn’t let his parents visit him, so the last time they saw he was when they took him to the neurospsych hospital. He was only 19.

Society needs to figure out what to do. We cannot go on just throwing people away like this. I started praying after reading this, thanking God that I had always been treated well at the hospitals and praying for all the people who are just being thrown away by the system, not getting the help they need. I don’t know what needs to be done anymore. I thought if I brought attention to problems through my writing that maybe things would change for the better. But apparently since the pandemic, they are only getting worse for people like me.

Warehousing in institutions is not the answer. Neither is warehousing them in jail. But community-based care is non-existent in so many areas. And I’m not going to sacrifice my own girls to political correctness saying they don’t need treatment. Each of my girls is having mental health issues. I pray every day that they find peace and treatment and good doctors and therapists. I know now how blessed I have been. I hope my girls can continue to fight for their own health and treatment.