Good morning, Captain

Do YOU remember Captain Kangaroo? We watched him & Mr. Green Jeans every morning. I wonder what my mother thought of that. I should remember to ask her sometime. Wasn't there a Dancing Bear on that show?

Well, I'm not writing about the Captain this morning. I'm just up early, but never early enough. Nights take a long time here, what with teenagers who never want to go to bed (but someone's got to make them - even if I have to catnap & send them to bed at a decent hour) & a husband who practices with a band some nights & isn't home to send them to bed at a decent hour. I am so thankful for my CPAP. Before I got that - during the school year - I was falling asleep on the way to work. I can survive on slightly less sleeping time now.

I like getting up early, while it's quiet here in the house. I forgot to turn on the morning news today, but I usually watch that while I'm doing "morning things." I balance the checkbook, read some newspapers online, & lately, blog. I walk the dog. I shower & do the usual morning stuff. Randy doesn't get up until I've been up awhile.

I have hinted that some things might change soon (see July 15 entry). Mornings will definitely change if that happens. My mornings will have to start a LOT earlier. By that time school will be back in session so I shouldn't have the summertime bedtime issues. Their mornings will start a lot earlier too. For our efforts, I believe we'll see some rewards. But, all that's still up in the air. What if things don't change? Then something else will change. Change is inevitable.

I've got a mansion, just over the hilltop

And I can't wait to be there!!!

I started to name tonight's missive "nuts & bolts, nuts & bolts...". You know what comes next. If you don't...sorry. Ask a cheerleader.

I could use a cheerleader right now. Today has been a hard day. Work was stressful enough. Outside of work was stressful, too. Randy was home trying to get some work lined up for our plumbing. Randy & I don't do major plumbing or other major household repairs very well. By that I mean, not only do we not know beans about major problems, we don't emotionally handle those kind of problems well either. Give us a new surround sound or TiVo or computer network, we can handle that. We can scan your photos & mail them around the world. We can sing whatever you want to hear. We can produce musically talented younguns. But we can just barely plunge the toilet.

I really am not being fair when I say that. Randy can change a washer or even the sink or toilet itself. I can install washing machines. I can MacGyver my way into rigging together a toilet flush apparatus out of paper clips. I highly recommend a plunger for every commode in the house. And, as I said, Randy can even put in new toilets like a pro. But we are the dream customers for plumbers, because we will - left to our own devices - agree to pay whatever the plumber says we should. You say gold pipes are today's standard? Sure. They cost how much? Well, if we gotta have 'em.

My co-workers think I married an idiot. Well, I COULD sit back & compare husbands & get into vile name-calling, but I am gonna take the high road here. I didn't marry an idiot. As I said, he's a whiz at the wiring & sound stuff. And, he knows the difference in conjugating verbs & dangling participles. (Boy, has THAT been financially lucrative. Just like my knowledge of principles of accounting, identifying wildflowers, & comparing the vegetation of north- & south-facing slopes.) He's a good cook. He's a good daddy. He is a sweetheart who hung my new hammock, which I bought with my birthday money & immediately felt guilty about (turns out, though, the cost of the hammock is just a drop in the bucket, pun intended, in the grand scheme of the 21st century Watergate scandal). He hates me right now. I don't think there's anything I can say that would help that. I didn't tell him he was an idiot. He inferred it from what I said about my co-workers. And I didn't tell him everything they said. Nor did I tell them everything he said.

I am not going to say anything when he gets off the phone with his mama either. She's in there giving him names of plumbers too. When I did that I got lambasted. I don't hear him giving her down the road. (Honestly, though, I would worry if I did.) No, I am gonna take the high road here & NOT say, "See, even SHE thinks you could do better than that estimate you got." For all I know, he might've told her what a meanie I was, & THEN she went & got more numbers.

No, that's not what happened. She told her sister, who told her that we were getting reamed! & gave her a number for us to call. So she called to tell Randy, who felt more like an idiot.

Believe it or not, I can find things to be thankful for. It seems like a pipe dream to imagine moving out of this house & into something I might dream about. Unfortunately, I owe too much on this one & houses seem really, really expensive here to me. I found this article - America's 10 most overpriced housing markets - & believe it or not, I didn't find Clarksville, Pleasant View or even Nashville on the list!

Ten more things I'm thankful for, & then I have to get ready for bed.

1. My patients were all really nice today, &
2. All the stress tests went well.
3. I spoke to both my brothers - even the one who lives in NJ - today. And -
4. They're both doing fine.
5. I made it to Derek's band concert tonight just in time, & didn't even have to exceed the speed limit. much.
6. I am SO glad I have been using the CPAP. Without it, I wonder how I would be functioning right now.
7. I am SO glad I got rid of all those attempts at side businesses that sucked out a lot of my time & benefitted me very, very little. If I were still doing all that stuff, I wonder how much more of my time they'd be draining.
8. I am SO glad I got back into Southern Gospel music, because without the positive, upbeat messages I feed my mind, I would really be down & out right now.
9. I am SO thankful I won that mp3 player at the state nuclear medicine meeting 10 days ago, because it has kept me entertained & given me a lot more inspiration to sing!
and finally, though this might seem a little crazy...
10. I am SO thankful I read Vestal Goodman's biography, Vestal! this weekend, because I need all the inspiration I can get. And how they got money in miraculous situations - yes, Lord, I needed that.
Two more? Three? I got paid today. I have a check I forgot to cash from my grandmother. I also got a check for $50 from a prescription program Randy's enrolled in, where we get our copay back every month. And, they sent us next month's coupon too. Praise the Lord!

happy anniversary baby, got you on my mi-i-ind

Twenty years ago today Randy & I became a couple. Oh, wait a minute. That would be 20 years ago yesterday, now...it's officially 4/29 here. But it's 4/28 somewhere. Anyway, as is usually the case on anniversaries, only one of us is home - tonight it's me. Randy is being a Cheatham County Rock Star at one of his Cheatham County classmates' birthday party. The 40th. Yes, I know. It is rapidly - very rapidly - approaching. If the gap between this blog & the next is as long as the one between this one & the last, I'll be 40 when I blog again.

I went out & spent a bunch of money today buying shoes. It's sales-tax-free weekend, for clothing & school supplies anyway. (Here in TN we normally pay a rather exorbitant sales tax on everything, including food.) I was NOT the only person who had the idea to shop today. The mall was jam-packed. I won't go into all the horrible things I saw there - suffice it to say that when we finally made our purchase, I was good & ready to get out of there.

This week has gone by quickly & it has been somewhat eventful. I pulled some strings & got the results of my CPAP titration done a few weeks ago. I am waiting on the doctor's office to get me my very own machine with all the bells & whistles, but meanwhile I am using Randy's old one. I love the Internet. Using it, I learned how to reset the machine so it's on MY pressure instead of Randy's. I know some people hate the things & I do have my middle-of-the-night moments when I can't get comfortable with it, but the very next day I saw a huge difference, & I really see a lot of improvement already. The next morning on my way to work I not only didn't have to fight sleep, but I actually noticed things I'd never paid attention to before!!! Now, granted, I need to discipline myself to get enough TIME to sleep right now...that's my plan for TOMORROW night. Yeah, famous last words, I know. But tomorrow between morning church & evening church I will be here watching the Talladega race (Sterling starts 4th!!! First time in a long time he's been that close to the pole!!!) - hopefully for the whole thing - & that will be a good time to rest up - & maybe finish up my laundry before this rather eventful upcoming week.

One afternoon this week I got an e-mail from a fellow named Barry who went to school with me & as it turns out way back (at least 7 generations ago) there are some family connections. Now, where we grew up, I always heard most of us in Ridgetop & Greenbrier were "kin" but now I am starting to believe it. I couldn't believe all the names I recognized in his family tree. He's a descendant of one of the founders of Ridgetop. My family's been there for at least 7 generations (really, I think most of them were around before the town became a town). His ancestor married into one of the families I came from.

I used to be really into the collection of family history, but most of the time the present day takes most of my time & attention. And sometimes, the future does too. Truthfully, I started writing these things down & looking this stuff up because (1) I want the future generations of our family to have this information in case they need it & (2) I just have a lot of fun digging up old records, looking at old newspapers on microfilm, & stuff like that. Every now & then I might dig out a folder & look through, or if someone in the family passes away I might copy the obit or something, but I haven't done much serious searching in years. I suppose I got tagged the family historian because I spent a lot of time hanging out with my grandmother, who lived across the road from the old homeplace, & I knew all the old folks in the family when my cousins my age didn't. Anyway, this week I've corresponded with Barry a few times & have learned a lot I didn't know about that branch of the family. There's a lot to learn yet - though I am in no hurry, I kind of like getting more info as it trickles in. That way it's not boring. The best part about that has been catching up.

Wednesday night I went to a nuclear medicine educational meeting in Nashville after work - so glad I wasn't fighting sleep - & that gave me time to catch up with my friend Cindy. This coming weekend we have another nuc med meeting to go to, & that should be fun too.

Thursday night Rachel had a piano lesson, then on Friday she had a recital, which I baked about 100 pigs in blankets for. So, yes, it's been quite an eventful week. I am ever so thankful for the CPAP. It is definitely a blessing. No way I could've made it through 2 trips through the mall, a trip to my grandmother's in Greenbrier, shopping in Springfield, & doing some laundry here at home today without it.

Well, it is really, really late so I am gonna hit the hay - & the CPAP. More later, sometime, maybe.

I like dreaming.

Actually, I like sleeping. I hate waking up. Not because I'm depressed. No, life is pretty good right now most of the time. (Unfortunately, life's not really good everywhere right now...there's an awful war going on & a seriously messed up guy just up & shot a bunch of people at a college in Virginia...but my personal life is not bad.) No, I'm not depressed. I'm just anxiously awaiting the next step in treating sleep apnea.

Have you ever heard of sleep architecture? I had never ever heard of such a thing until last week, when I learned that mine is disordered. Well, THAT's just what I needed to hear. LOL. Seriously, sleep architecture is a pretty interesting concept.

Normally, sleep architecture looks something like this:

Stage 1 - a sort of "pre-sleep" - 5%
Stage 2 - a not-quite-deep sleep - 50%
Stages 3 and 4 (AKA Delta sleep or slow-wave sleep) - 20-25%
REM sleep - 20-25%

My sleep architecture looks like this:

Stage 1 - 5% (so something's normal about me)
Stage 2 - 77%
Stages 3 and 4 - 0%
REM sleep - 17%

Why the lack of slow-wave sleep? Good question. Some might say it's the apnea itself. But in 2001 I had a sleep study. I wasn't sleeping long enough, but back then I had higher than average slow-wave sleep. What's different? I wasn't taking SSRI's. I started those in the fall of 2001. I DID have more obstructive apneas back then - & I weighed 25 pounds less than I do now. So, like I've said all along, I don't think my weight has as much to do with it as my nose, throat & neck.

I've learned a lot. For instance...from the blog See One, Do One, Teach One, lack of slow-wave sleep has shown to decrease cognitive performance. And here I thought I was just forgetting everything because I'm about to turn 40. Also, according to this same doctor, you increase your chances of having a car wreck. Untreated patients with narcolepsy have a ten times more risk of car accidents than normal subjects. This morning I had to stop & nap for 5 minutes before hitting the road again. I almost didn't make it.

Here's what ought to make me stand up & take notice: Less sleep equals more fat. “appetite is substantially larger.” Lack of sleep is associated with abnormalities in the hormones that control food intake.

And here's another one...I can actually back this one up with real examples...people who sleep normally, live longer. Ever heard of Marty Robbins? I'm a big Marty Robbins fan. I have visited his grave on a couple of occasions. He did just about everything. He was an awesome singer, a great songwriter, not a bad race car driver. He also acted, wrote Western books, & did a lot of other stuff. He didn't sleep much. In the PBS special, his son Ronny said that his dad didn't sleep much. He put 90 years of life into his 57 years. Now that I'm 40, 57 seems pretty young. He was the first person in the world to have a triple-vessel heart bypass surgery. That's not such an awesome statistic to have. He did, however, live 13 years after that, which was probably pretty good at the time.

My grandmother didn't sleep much either. She'd stay up until midnight watching "Gunsmoke" & reading, then she'd get up early in the morning & work, either at a restaurant or in the garden or the kitchen. I can close my eyes & see her there on the couch, wearing her pajamas, feet on the floor, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees, cigarette in her right hand, book in the left, moving her lips as she read silently. You know, she quit smoking about a year before she died. She got hypnotized. It worked. Her heart didn't get her. Neither did her lungs. She had a ruptured ulcer which was attributed to steroid use for a skin condition. That last year of her life was the only one she didn't spend working hours in the garden, staying up all night canning beans or making zucchini relish or cooking a huge Thanksgiving dinner. The prednisone just zapped her completely. But Mom & I think she wore herself out.

Well, I'm convinced I need to get some sleep therapy. I wish they'd call me & get me set up for this thing already.

Later...

News that's good enough to eat.

I saw this headline on Google today: Turkey, Kurds Move Toward All-Out Fighting...turkey's a food...curds (although spelled differently) are food...hmmmm.....I know, it's not nice to make jokes like that. The thought of food in the news just struck me as funny. I'm just picturing the cottage cheese quivering on the plate as the turkey gradually moves across.

I learned today that I have sleep apnea & have to start wearing a CPAP. I included links so that you can read more than I know about it. I know this because I got called to go back for a 2nd sleep study. I had a sleep study years ago & didn't have to go back. So this time, I flunked. I wonder how bad it was. I'm not really in the dark about this condition though; Randy's had a CPAP for at least 7 or 8 years. He tells me it will make me feel a lot better. I'm looking forward to that. I have had some awful near-sleep experiences in the car. There for awhile it seemed to be a daily thing. I've been taking different routes lately, which might be helping a little. I really blamed the morning fatigue on the pets who think they should share my bed, but then I started waking myself up snoring. I've snored all my life, but it's really bad now.

Last night I started the Chauncey blog. The URL is chaunceyalmanac.blogspot.com. I spent too much time tonight putting stuff on this blog, but I'll post more on there later!!!