Happy Father’s Day!

We just got back from seeing my dad for Father’s Day. Mom decided we would meet at a buffet place halfway between us and them–it turned out it was close to where my niece plays ball so they all went straight to the ball game and we went home. It was good food but of course my sister was half-an-hour late. We gave Daddy a vanity plate that said “Buy American” on it for him to hang on his car so that tickled him. Then we drove back with our youngest and we gave Bob his gift–a Batarang pocketknife where the handle is a Batarang and you pop out blades on each side of the handle. So that made Bob happy.

I am so sleepy still from getting up and going to church early. I think when I finish this I will go back and take a nap and work on my BPHope blog post after dinner. My chest wall is still hurting–I think it’s holding tension again from me worrying about the kids. I hope we hear from them today. I’d like to talk to them again. I just want to know they are all right. I feel so beaten down right now, and there’s no reason for worry. God is in control, not me, and me worrying isn’t going to do anything to help them. Anyway. This is why I take Trileptal; so I don’t obsess. All I can do is keep praying.

SO I will go take my nap. Hope all the fathers and grandfathers have good Father’s Day celebrations.

Tropical Storm Saturday

We are hunkered down waiting on the rain from Tropical Storm Claudette to get up to here this afternoon or tonight. It is already clouding up here with the wind picking up. All we’re supposed to get is a ton of rain–but we will see. I hope it won’t be too bad on us.

We are just hanging out for today. We went out and ate; Bob had to come home early yesterday from work with his allergies so now he is trying to catch up on what he left undone last night. I did do some reading last night, but purely for fun–my middle one had given me a book on the “adventures” of public librarians and I polished it off quickly; it was short. Not sure what I’m going to do this afternoon–I feel a little sleepy so I may just nap some more. I also have edits to make on my blog post about medication management for BPHope. So I have choices.

I bought the Harry Connick Jr. tickets and need to get up with my friend when they come in. I am so looking forward to this; I wanted to do something special to mark getting my diploma and now I have it. Very very happy.

I am in a very good mood today. I slept in until about ten and pretty soon after that we went to run our errands. We ate at the new milkshake/sundae bar in Dogwood and split a quarter pounder meal afterwards–he ate the burger and I ate the fries. We were hoping the sundaes would fill us up, but we got through and knew they wouldn’t last all afternoon. So we went to McDonald’s too. 🙂

I guess I need to figure out what I’m doing this afternoon. The clouds are making me sleepy, so I just might turn in for the afternoon. We will see.

Good News Friday

I was starting to think I had really screwed up by accidently deleting a message from BPHope–I had followed up, but got no reply. So today she replied! I was so relieved. I’m not sure what I’ll be doing for them next, but I’m glad to know they hadn’t forgotten about me. I think I’ll write about the MFA and how to responsibly take on projects long-term and follow them to completion through mania and depression.

Waiting on the furniture store to deliver the bed for my youngest. I hope she has kept her room with a clear path to where the bed goes. You never know with my kids. My middle one has always been neat and organized, but my oldest had to learn in culinary school in college about cleaning as you go while cooking, and now she can’t stand disorder either. My youngest generally likes organizing things, but seems to really hate laundry.

I think I’m going to start reading on all the books I bought the past few years that I’ve been too tired to read. I have almost a whole shelf of them in my office, so I’m going to start working my way through them at night while I soak in the bathtub. The first two are going to be some writing books recommended to me so I may can apply the lessons to my memoir. Then I’ll read a lot more that are just regular books.

Not sure what all we’re going to do tomorrow with my youngest gone. Maybe we can go to Barnes and Noble tomorrow and goof off as long as we want to. Bob says it depends on what the weather is. So we will see. I need to look up a new burger restaurant I saw on Facebook that just opened up, so I am going to try to check tha out this weekend.

Hope everyone has a good weekend. Love to all.

Freed Finally

Know how I said I didn’t feel any relief when I told my editor I had to pull back from writing for them? Well, it came gradually over the rest of the day. I actually opened my book document and got work done on it yesterday without feeling guilt, actually feeling excited about working on it. It was a wonderful feeling. I feel like I have my life back. My freedom. I want to continue to revise on it until the end of July, then send out queries starting in August as well as start the next manuscript, A Year Without Writing. It feels good for the fear and constraints to be gone.

Finally heard from the furniture people—my youngest’s bed will be delivered tomorrow between two and five. I know she will be excited to have it when she comes back from my parents’ house. She has gone to spend the rest of the week and the weekend with them, and Bob and I will go up and celebrate Father’s Day with my dad on Sunday and bring her back.

I’m not sleeping away the days anymore. Which of course is a blessing and a curse. I might be doing better, or I might be going manic. Won’t know until it hits which one it is. I am going to keep an eye on myself because of the history, but I am NOT going to live straitjacketed by fear. I am going to enjoy the feeling as long as I can. I cannot live waiting for the other shoe to drop. It’s not worth the stress. Pray for me to feel more free and secure in my journey.

Well, I need to go take my lunch medicine and finish some laundry left over from the trip. Hope for everybody to have a good rest of the week. Godspeed.

Sleep Study

Bob and I go to the hospital today to get equipment for him to do a sleep study tonight here at home. They’re looking for sleep apnea, narcolepsy, etc. to explain maybe why he passed out at the wheel. I hope they find something, either from his heart monitor or from his sleep study. I had a hard time relaxing while driving this trip–I kept looking at the navigation to see where we were and anticipating what I would try to do if he fell out again on the interstate. But nothing happened so all that worry for nothing.

I need to do more laundry today. Candy and Christy took their vacation this week so I won’t see them today. I’m sad for that but hope they have a good time with their time off. My youngest will leave tomorrow to go stay with my parents for a few days and we wil go get her on Father’s Day and deliver all these presents that have been in my house since March. Everybody gets a present!

Harry Connick Jr. is coming to Brandon for a concert and I have finally found how I’m going to celebrate my getting my diploma. A friend of mine from high school and I are going to go see him. I think when I finish this entry, I will go and buy the tickets so we get good seats but don’t get ripped off. I am really looking forward to this in August. I missed him when he came to Jackson last year as it was right when the pandemic started. SO I am going to make it this time.

Well, I need to check in to that. Hope everyone has a wonderful week and that everything is going well. Godspeed!

Day After

I forgot to tell the most interesting experience we had–we were leaving Sunday morning to come home and we saw a BEAR poking its head out of the line of cars in our hotel parking lot! Very scary to see right there in the middle of civilization. We watched him cross the street to go to another hotel parking lot. I was like, “Do we call 911 or what?” Bob said, “I’m ready to go home. We don’t have time for that.” So we just let him go. That was a bit unnerving.

I’m going to mail off my thesis signature pages and hope everything turns out for the best in getting it done. I’m still feeling really lackadaisical this morning–I haven’t quite woken up all the way. I’m going to have to drive out in a bit and get some teas for lunch and see how that makes me feel. I drank mostly water on the trip–I was constantly thirsty. I don’t know if it was my meds or just all the walking I was doing making me sweat it out.

I plan to WORK this afternoon and get this insurance story done. I hope it turns out all right. I don’t know what I will do after that except rewrite my thesis. Maybe they will have another story lined up for me, maybe not. We will see.

Well, I’m about to start working on some lunch. Hopefully I will feel more energetic once I get some more food in me. Hope everyone is doing well here at the first of the week. People in Mississippi, we’re behind in our vaccine numbers–get your shot. I had no trouble at all with mine. Godspeed.

Back From Vacay

We had a good time in Gatlinburg, TN. Our most pressing problem was that I broke a strap on my sandal the first day and had to buy some flip-flops at Walgreen’s. Otherwise I found out I’m even more out of shape than usual–I hurt after every day of walking. When I remembered I hadn’t done any walking of note since March 2020 when we went to Graceland, I didn’t beat up on myself so bad. But I did really ache.

We wandered around Gatlinburg the first day, then then we went to Dollywood the next day. I didn’t ride any rides because my side ache from the wreck was acting up again, so I sat with everyone else’s cell phones and purses. Bob finally realized he couldn’t ride rollercoasters with his heart monitor on about halfway to Dollywood from our hotel.. But we saw a good gospel music show and ate a lot of good food. We ate yesterday at the Old Mill Restaurant, which survived the fire and the pandemic just fine, it looked like. A lot of other places we remembered were still there–Hillbilly Mini-Golf, the old mall, etc. We just had a good time. I let all my stresses go.

So we will see if I wake up with a better attitude tomorrow than I have had. I hope so. i know I feel better now that I did. So that gives me some hope. We’re trying to see what to eat for supper, whether we’ll go back out or just eat cereal for dinner tonight. Glad some of you still stopped in to visit while I was gone. Thank you for that. Hope everyone else had a good weekend and look forward to a good work week.

Happy Mother’s Day!

We are trying to sort out what we are going to do for Mother’s Day. Bob has texted his mom to see when we can bring her gift out to her today, and I think we’re going to try to see my mom this coming weekend. I am going to fix lunch starting around 11 a.m. then after lunch go off to the bookstore and see what I can find for myself. I’m looking forward to that.

Listened to our church service online. Bob said he didn’t sleep good so I let him sleep in after I got up. He can’t take all the new perfumes people get for Mother’s Day and wear to church–it makes him have allergy attacks. So we had already planned to stay in.

I think today is going to be a hard day if I stop and think about it too much. So I won’t. I’ll just enjoy the blessings I still have.

Monday I’m going to try to start out strong and be recovered from everything and work on my MCIR stories. Making calls, sending emails, etc. Get life back to normal as much as I can. I’m not sure I’ll go back to sleep after my youngest leaves for school–I’m not as sleepy as I have been. So we will see.

I feel strangely calm today. Bob being out of commission has always scared me so badly before. But he is getting better and may be back to full steam by the end of the week. I’m not feeling as paranoid as I was earlier in the week. So hopefully that has passed. I think getting that article done helped a lot.

I started reading again last night, my book by Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird. One of the sources in my bibliography for my thesis. I think I need to be able to explain why the book is set up like it is and be able to understand what I did instead of just saying that’s how it turned out. So.

I haven’t had any more reactions from my vaccine but I hear the second shot is the hardest. We will find out. I will just have to stiff-upper-lip it since it’s so close to my thesis defense. Maybe the side effects will be finished by that Sunday.

Need to think up some more ideas for blogging at BPHope this month. I’m sure I will come up with something. I always do. Good wishes to everyone–get the shot!

Still So Tired

I don’t know if I can sleep enough to recover from this past weekend. I keep wanting to sleep but events happen that I have to deal with. My middle one is coming back to get the title of her car transferred to her name this morning and she will run by here to drop off some more stuff to be moved. Our house looks like a Pier 1 exploded in it. But it will soon be cleaned out and that means my big girls will be gone for good except for phone calls and brief visits. Everything will be quiet except for our youngest one going to and fro.

I gave my oldest her quilt from her great-grandmother last night when they dropped by. It’s all pink applique flowers on an off-white background. It’s really, really pretty and I hope they enjoy it. They came to visit for a while last night with their puppy dog, who stayed outside and scratched the door to come in the whole time. But the visit went really well.

I was setting my office back up (the maid of honor flew in from California and stayed with us on the couch bed for part of the trip) and I found one of the bridal bouquets (I guess it was hers) and I put it in one of our many vases and set it up in the den. I think it looks good. The stems fit right in the top and the whole piece looks really professional. My oldest and the maid of honor made all the bouquets, the flowers for the guys’ lapels, corsages for me and his mom, and the flower arrangments at the reception with flowers my oldest bought at Michael’s and Hobby Lobby.

I am managing pretty well except for the sleepiness. I imagine that might change after the middle one is shipped off. But all I can do is cope with the days as they come. I’ll make it.

Godspeed.

Unloading

Just helped my middle one unload her car during lunchtime. She drove down and is driving straight back to have a meeting at one-thirty. I think she’s going to murderate the team she’s been working with on her final project–they have four days until graduation and they haven’t done their parts of the final project for one of the classes. I don’t think they’re going to like it if they really get on her bad side and she has to raise her voice.

My car is fixed–me and Bob will pick it up during his lunch hour. Something had gone out on one of the back wheels and they finally solved the problem of the “check engine” light for good. Hopefully that takes care of the car for a while as far as repairs.

I expect life to settle down some after we move her and then to pick up again around my thesis defense. Certainly by then school will be out and we can rest until band camp.

My youngest announced to me yesterday that she’s narrowed down her choice of major–either mathematics or civil engineering. I told her I thought that was great. She says she does not want to go to Hinds CC; she wants to go directly to Mississippi State. I said wonderful! So I feel a threshold has been passed. All three of my girls are going to have solid careers as long as they choose to pursue them. That makes me a happy woman. No depending on a man for their living.

I am doing surprisingly well. I figure when my oldest and her husband pack off back to Florida and we have my middle one gone to Indiana then everything will settle in and I might be bereft. My mother-in-law is already freaking out–she has them coming over on my oldest’s birthday night by saying “Am I ever going to see you both at the same time ever again?” So she is coming apart.

I need to get ready for Bob to come home. I wish everyone well today. Godspeed.