March 24, 2014

Monday Lived Up to Its Reputation

Monday,  March 24, 2014

Today wasn't a terrible Monday, but it was a day I would rather have spent at home with the covers up over my head.  To back up a little, Saturday night I could not get to sleep.  I was still awake at 4:30 a.m.  So when Sunday came, I was tired.  We were late getting to our Sunday School class because we both overslept, but my husband had been up a while before he woke me.  That is not good; I am normally the first one up by about an hour.

We had expected to be out of town for the weekend so I had not bought groceries.  We stopped and picked up some lunch on our way home from church.  Then I took a nap after filling the bird feeders and birdbaths.  The migrating Red-winged Blackbirds took over the backyard along with Inca Doves and a couple of other types of doves.  Ron and I watched them for a while but both agreed naps were in order.

My nap was about 3 hours.  That did it!  When night came, I could not sleep.  It was well after 5:00 this morning when I finally got to sleep.  I spent part of the evening working on the puzzle in progress and talking to our youngest son.  Many of the wakeful hours were spent praying for assorted people and their needs.  It isn't hard to fill the time with those.  I did read for a while, and took a hot bath when my hip started hurting.  My guess is that this is due to a new medication I am on.  It says: May cause drowsiness.  Not for me!

All that being said, I overslept this morning.  Ron got up and left for work without waking me, so I got 3 hours of sleep last night.  At the office, there were a variety of things going on.  There were some tax forms to sign and send in.  There was a stack of filing.  I needed to find some old, paid bills to be sure they had all been paid, and actually the day went pretty fast (it helps when you come in late).  I had a couple of customers who really mumbled.  I would watch their mouths and they would barely open them.  How do they expect the words to get out???

As soon as I was up this morning, I went out and took care of the birds.  The first thing this morning, I saw a pair of Green Jays.  They always bring a smile to my face.  Again, the Red-winged Blackbirds were all over the place.  At one point yesterday afternoon I started counting them as they flew down from the trees like falling leaves and reached over 65 before they took off because they saw me move.  Today there were more.

One of the funny things that happened this morning which I didn't realize until just a few minutes ago is that I shot a nice video of the Red-wings and it was before I had put on my sound processor this morning.  When I just played it back, I could hear the TV morning news.  Oops!  I will see if there is a way to "mute" it so I can post the video.  Otherwise I will try again.

That experience (not knowing the sound on the TV was turned on while I was filming) shows one of my other challenges.  Without the sound processor on, I am not aware of what is going on around me.  At night when Ron goes to bed, I may have the sound of the TV on, but I may have taken off the sound processor and not be aware that it is at a disturbing level.  Also, Ron was sharing with our Sunday School class yesterday how I can't hear myself.  Most of those in class were not aware of that.  Even with the sound processor on, I don't really know how my voice sounds.  I can come across sounding much different than I think I sound.  I can't tell how loud I am talking or my tone of voice. 

We kept the five youngest grandchildren for the evening.  Their mom was needing to get some things done at home while their dad needed to be at a scout meeting with the two oldest boys in Los Fresnos.  They were all wide awake and full of energy.  I baked a batch of cookies for them to take with them.  Of course they had to try them out to be sure they were good.  (They were.)  The noise really got to me.  I changed the setting on the sound processor and it got better, but with the five kids, the a/c, the mixer, my sometimes noisy refrigerator, and several phone calls, it was loud.  But we did have a lot of fun.  The youngest found an Easter Bunny that laughs when you squeeze his had and she must have done that 30 times in a row, giggling along with it.  I offer to her dad that she could take it with her, but he declined.