Changes and Other Themes

Epitaph

Elizabeth Sladen will be missed. Don't worry, I didn't recognize the name either. The clue "Dr. Who" helped, and for even occasional fans of the series, Sara Jane Smith is a much more recognizable identifier.

I didn't become a fan of hers, or the series, until recently. Part of the problem was that my Ex, back before he was my Ex, tried to shove it down my throat. The basic attitude was anybody who is worth anything will like what he likes, and it doesn't matter if it comes on late at night when, after a full day of kids kids kids, the only thing I'm capable of appreciating is sleep.

Yeah, not sex either, at that time of night.

But recently she was in a spin-off that I caught a bunch of episodes of, "The Sara Jane Adventures." Sure, they were juveniles, but good romps nonetheless, and left me wanting to look up some of those earlier episodes. You know, someday, when I have time again.

* * * * *


Losing My Non-Tan Line

I used to be able to look at my left wrist and see just how white my skin is when it doesn't see sun for dozens of years. Even though a leftie, that's where I wore my watch. It's where everybody else wore theirs, so it just seemed that natural place for it. Nobody ever bothered to tell me that it goes on the non-writing hand so you can see it at the same time you're writing. Oh well.

But I lost my watch a couple months ago. In fact, just before I broke my hand. Then of course there was not room on my wrist for any watch to fit, should I actually have located it. So I got used to doing what the kids are doing these days, checking the cell phone for the time. (At least I know it's accurate.) It feels weird, however. And I still find myself checking my wrist for a watch that no longer resides there. At first I'd joke when I caught myself doing that in front of a customer, when I needed to enter the time of a pick-up or delivery on the log, that my watch just didn't fit any more. True, though I never had occasion to actually verify it by trying a watch over a bulky wrapped wrist.

After a couple weeks, when I'd change the wrap in the evening or morning, I'd notice that my non-tan line was disappearing into a vaster whiteness that comes from having all the skin protected from the sun. It was still perceptible, but only just. A couple weeks ago when I finally quit using any supports (I heal bones fast, I guess) on the hand, it started to darken up again. Of course, that's relative to me, not to any usual standard of dark: there's too much Scandinavian in my background. Still, there was a slim line that was slower to darken than the rest. Mostly, it's gone now, but not completely.

* * * *

Just Another Night in Paradise

It started when I arrived home from work. Daddy started in on how we needed to keep a light on in the entryway so the people who were still coming could see. Even though we told him several times that nobody else was coming, he insisted.

After we finally distracted him with his nebulizer for the evening, he started back in on lights, but this time insisting that we needed to keep them off when we weren't using them, and needed to shut off everything we could, In fact, we should all go to bed right now and turn off everything.

Yeah. Sure. Have a good night, Daddy. See you in the morning.

It should only be that simple.

I had, for several weeks now, started getting some sleep at night. Generally, one awakening needing attention, and a bit of talking to him persuaded him to stay in bed and wait for me to come get him up in the morning. I'd hear complaints about he was awake all night "for days and days" and "it was the longest night ever!" But he stayed in bed, and I got some sleep.

Last night I was just going to bed when he started calling. He wanted to know what we were going to do about all the babies.

Now last time he dreamed about babies, it was a genuine nightmare, the first actual one I've seen him have. There were all kinds of women chasing him, upsetting in itself for reasons known only to him, and they either were going to or had already started popping out babies. This upset him even more, and was one of the few times he seemed to be relieved that this was only a dream. Mostly he takes that as us calling him a liar if we tell him whatever it was, it was only a dream.

This time I worked for a while to persuade him that there were no babies, and he'd been dreaming. My level of success was emphasized by his interrupting me periodically to ask if the kids had started having babies yet, and what were we planning to do with all of them?

Finally getting him settled in again, I went to bed. Half an hour later he was yelling for me again, on the same topic. I went through another "usual" routine for us lately of asking him to please be quiet because it was the middle of the night and the rest of us were all trying to sleep. He apologized profusely for making noise, and settled down just about long enough for me to return to my bed and pick it up on the baby monitor again.

Oh goodie.

I was tempted to turn it off so I could sleep. Instead, I decided to hope it wore itself out and he'd go back to a very quiet sleep for a couple hours at least. It was a good choice.

In another couple hours, he started calling for help. Loudly. When I got to his room, Paul was already there, and Daddy was standing with his walker next to the dresser with his legs all twisted and crooked. He'd knocked his glasses from the dresser onto the floor and would likely have broken them, either with a foot or the walker foot. Paul was asking him what he thought he was doing and where he was going. I was past patience for that and just sent Paul back to sleep. Besides, I heard all about it as I helped him straighten up and work his way backwards to his bed.

First there was his I'm-such-a-charming-little-boy look that I see so often this time of night, accompanied this time by his telling me how much he loved his furry little animals.

That's nice. Sit.

Then there was apparently some dream where they had to be all put back in their cages, and he was the one to do it. Because I hadn't.

Oh. Too bad.

After about twenty more minutes, he was settled back in bed, with me asking him to please stay in bed and try to remember that anything he dreamed that made him get up was going to be just a dream so he didn't need to really get up. It was the middle of the night. It was dark. And cold. And we were all sleeping.

Trying, anyway. It would have worked better if he could actually be reasoned with at that time of night. But it was still going to be one of those nights. He chatted on for a while, and I managed to finally fall asleep, when...

"Help! Help! Help!"

I fought my way into the room with eyelids so sandpapery that I couldn't quite open them all the way, relying on my knowledge of the house and hope that nobody and left something lying out where I'd stumble over it. This time he was sitting on the far side of the bed, with the blankets all thrown off onto the near side floor. He was down by the foot of the bed but still partly wedged between the bed and the mattresses of the old bed standing along the wall. There's just no other place for them, and someday I'm going to reclaim that room, my bed, and my super-nice mattresses. Anyway, the only way for him to go was up, around the foot of the bed using the walker on the other side of the room, and back into bed from the near side. My only comment to him, other than directions for how to move, was, "I don't even want to know why this time."

When the alarm went off this morning, I just shut it off and went back to sleep. He was, after all, quiet at the moment. Not even doing the not-so-subtle loud sighing and yawning he does when he's "patiently" waiting for me to get him up, even if it's 3AM. I needed sleep and I took another hour, then quickly made coffee, set up the nebulizer, and woke Richard to take over morning wake-up. Of course, he was already sitting on the side of the bed, ready for his third excursion of the night. I just left to go shower and get myself dressed.

Just myself!

Heaven!



* * * *

Another Right Wing Loon

We don't usually listen to WCCO in the evenings, unless there's a ball game on for my dad. But it was playing last night when I got home, after 8PM. According to their schedule, that's when John Hines is on. Never heard of him, never want to again. Two minutes was sufficient.

His rant was on global warming, or rather, why it's not real. If you're expecting a logical base to his reasoning, well, tough. He had a different kind of answer last night, involving Charles Manson.

Huh? You ask what that creep has to do with why anybody thinks anything about global warming? That was kinda Hines' point, in a twisted way. Apparently Manson came out and made a statement in support of or in belief of global warming. Against all that's rational, it made the news. And Manson being who Manson is, Hines "reasons" that the fact that he spoke for it means it isn't valid.

Now Manson is a very broken clock, but even those can be right on very rare occasions. One just learns never to depend on them. But they're not always wrong. If Manson said water was wet, would that make it dry? If he said grass is green would that make it orange and purple? If he said the earth is round, would that make it flat?

But the biggest question of all is this: why on earth is Hines listening to Charles Manson?

It's immediately followed by: why on earth would I ever want to listen again to John Hines?