Distractions

 Wow.  Eight days.  I have really been zoning out.

I had a dream about Bob last night.  I was in a room, something like a small coffee shop, chatting with two other people (a man and a woman that I don't know).  I was opening a piece of mail - a card - that was addressed to Bob.  He walked in (wearing his leather bomber jacket).  I apologized for opening his mail.  "I'm so sorry - I didn't know you were coming back."  Later, I was sitting at the table, talking to the woman while Bob was talking to the man.  I saw that he was lying down while he was talking. I sat on the floor beside him and said "Please tell me you're going to stay.  Please don't go."

Doesn't take much analysis to understand that one.

I never asked him to stay.  Our niece Amanda has said that one of the saddest things she sees as a nurse is when someone is dying, with friends/family crying and begging them not to go.  Adding stress and guilt to their last moments.  I didn't do that.  I told him that I loved him, and that I would miss him, but I let him go on his own terms.  But it still hurts.

OK - got that off of my chest. I'm getting through all this by keeping busy, finding distractions.   The last 8 days - where did they go?   Well, for one, the damned time change.  I'm always a zombie for a few days, with spring forward being the worst.  My new microwave came in (so I can go back to boiling my tea water like a heathen).  Last post I mentioned the two days of heavy rain.  A few days later I went down to the stream and it was obvious that it had come out of its banks, and that all the little ponds had become one big bog.  It's all receded now, but I had to clean a bit of debris off the path.

My sleep schedule is messed up.  First, the time change.  Then Thursday night was the lunar eclipse, totality at 2:30 a.m.  I like eclipses - and a total lunar eclipse turns it orange and it looks like a big rock somehow hanging in the sky.  I don't like them enough to get up at 2:30 a.m. - or so I thought.  I kept waking up about every 45 minutes.  Finally, the time came so I made a cup of chamomile tea and wandered outside.

It was not impressive.  I remembered that the super moon - when the moon was closest to the earth - was when I was in Roswell last November.  So the moon is approaching apogee, and it was high up, so just a rather small unimpressive orange rock.  And I finally got to sleep around 3:30.  Normally - what the heck - I'm retired so could just sleep in.  Except that in the last minutes I got from the weaver's guild (I rarely go to meetings but I get the minutes) there was a new member who is a spinner and was asking about spinning wheels. I dropped him a note to say hi, and we ended up getting together to spin and chat - on Friday morning, of course.

There was an unwanted distraction showing up Saturday night.  The weather in the middle of the country, extending down south, has been horrendous.  Some of that was extending our way - heavy storms predicted overnight, possibility of tornadoes.  After the massive destruction caused by tornadoes last year, everyone was understandably nervous.  I moved the car and the outdoor furniture into the barn and filled up a few jugs of flushing water - basic storm prep.  It's hard to go to bed and sleep when you don't know if/what is going to be destroyed by the morning.  Again - I kept waking up to check the weather and look at the radar.  Fortunately it brushed by our area, and all we got were some heavy thunderstorms around 5:00 a.m.

And, again, it would have been fine, except the the Silent Book Club meeting was at 10 this morning (so I had to leave the house around 9:15).  It seems silly to drive all that way just to sit and read quietly, but there's a bizarre charm to it.  This afternoon I was able to get some sewing done to replace the parasol cover on my outdoor lounge (the fabric came in last week).  I got the main part done; the rest is fiddly work and I was just too punchy to deal with it.

So that was the week that was.  I didn't take a nap today because I want to get back on some sort of normal sleep schedule, but it's time to crash.