Wednesday, January 25

Wednesday, January 25

After I posted last night’s entry, I watched some television and cut out the last two doll clothes patterns I’ve been wanting to cut out since I got them.  My sore arm hurt when I went to bed.  It doesn’t hurt as bad as it did, but it is hard to move it.  It’s like it moves back and forward just fine, but lifting it to shoulder height or higher to the side is nearly impossible.  I am beginning to wonder if something is actually broken or torn.  I see a doctor on Friday, so I will ask about it.  I suspect it will get better on its own…but way too slowly.  It was hard to find a comfortable position to sleep in.

Once I did fall asleep I kept waking up because it hurt.

I woke up to pee about 3:30 am.  When I went back to bed, my phone pinged, and I had a message from Lily.  It said:  I heard noises out in the house so I locked the bedroom door with my babies with me.  My legs are starting to get uneasy so I will have to go out.  I have water and my pills in the bathroom.  If you see this give me a call later.  If I don’t answer, call 911.

Her “babies” are her two cats, Missy and Finn.  She as restless leg syndrome and needs to take pills when it acts up.

I texted her and asked what kind of noises she had heard.  She texted me her address.  So I asked again what kind of noises she had heard.  No response.

So, I tried to call her.  The call did not go through.  So I called her again, and this time it went straight to voice mail, so I left a message telling her that if I did not hear from her in ten minutes, I was calling the cops.

This is not the first time I have dealt with her panicking over “noises” that she hears.  Usually it is nothing.  But when I couldn’t get her, I got a little worried.

However, she called me in a minute or two and told me that she heard noises like  things being moved around in the basement and that she had stacked some totes full of Christmas stuff in front of the basement door and she was sure she heard those totes slide across the floor.

I suspect she hears the furnace.  My furnace always makes noises.  Or the water softener kicks in.  She has this insane idea that someone can get into her basement through the “windows” in the basement.  These windows are about a foot and a half long and about five inches high.  They are made out of those vintage glass blocks that a lot of vintage homes have.  In the first place, those windows do not open.  They would have to be broken out to create a hole into the basement.  And that would be difficult and take quite a bit of time and effort to break.  Also, they are about four inches of thick, heavy glass.  So it would make a LOT of noise.  And the only kind of person who could fit into that space would be an anorexic toddler. 

She gets herself so worked up.  Then she almost becomes irrational.

So, I spend an hour or more calming her down, trying to get her to see reason.  Finally, she took me (via the phone) with her to the bathroom to get the medication for the restless legs.  Then I talked her into turning on the lights and checking to see if those totes in front of the basement door had been moved.  Of course, they had not been moved a fraction of an inch.

Finally she was calmed down enough to go back to bed, but she kept herself and the cats locked in the bedroom for the rest of the night.

I’m beginning to think she needs anti-anxiety meds.

I finally got to go back to sleep and slept pretty well till after 8 am.  Then I had to get up to pee again.  DeAnn and I had another Productivity Partnership Zoom at 10 am, so I got up at about 8:30, fed the cats, and fired up the computer.  DeAnn didn’t show up until about 10:30, but I had plenty of stuff to do.  I downloaded some pictures from my camera into my computer and cleaned out my email. 

DeAnn and I chatted for a while.  I told her about my middle of the night adventures.  She told me about some houses she has been looking at as she is considering buying a different house that is more suited to her needs.  Then we spoke our intentions for our session.  She planned to work on animating her illustrations which is one of the things she is working on for her sabbatical. 

I worked on my domestic issues.  I swept and scrubbed the bathroom floor, cleaned the cat’s water dish, swept the laundry room, cleaned the laundry room litterbox, washed two loads of clothes, dried one (the other is probably done in the laundry room now), and then headed into the kitchen.  I chopped up  onions and celery and sauteed them in butter while removing the chicken I roasted yesterday from the bones.  It took quite a while.  Then I added the rice, water, and cream of mushroom soup and stuck it in the oven to bake while I did all the dishes I had dirtied. 

Lily called and wanted to come over to give me her last piece of garlic bread and the last of her grape jello.  She wanted to pick up some of the bubble wrap and tissue paper that I always save from my packages.  I asked if she could grab my mail on her way, and she said she would.  When she came, I signed the paperwork from my car insurance so she could take it with her to drop in the mail the next time she went to the post office.  We chatted for a while, and I told her she can call me any time.  I don’t want her sitting in her house shaking in terror when I can help her calm down just by talking  to her.

I get a lot of catalogs from a variety of places that have really cute things in them.  I gave her three of the ones that came today as I cannot afford to buy anything non-essential right now.  She looked forward to taking them home and looking at them.

When she left, I went through the rest of my mail, wrote out two of the bills and got them ready  to mail, and set aside the third one as I think I have that set up for auto pay—but I figured I would call and see as this is a new health insurance carrier through the group plan I have through teacher’s retirement.  It’s kind of exciting as it is only about half what I was paying for the old one.  And the TRA person told me the coverage was exactly the same.  It better be.  Humana was very good about covering everything and the people were very nice and helpful. 

I recycled a whole bunch of junk mail.  My inside recycling bin is ready to overflow.

Since she left my house, Lily has called me twice and talked for about half an hour each time. The first time, she called to tell me she forgot to take the bubble wrap with her.  So, I put the bubble wrap in a plastic bag and hung it on the handle of the cabinet under my television where it is directly in my line of vision so the next time she comes, I will make sure she takes it with her.  The second time, she called to tell me she had taken something to the basement, and Finn followed her down there but she didn’t realize it.  She looked everywhere for him and could not find him. She opened the basement door and called and called, but he didn’t come.  She searched the whole house again and still could not find him, so she opened the basement door, and he was sitting on the top step.

She called me because he “seemed so sad and tired,” and she was worried that he might be sick or dying.  I said he probably was just depressed about being locked in the dark, cold basement without food or a litterbox for a couple of hours. She said he just wanted to sit on her lap.

She works herself up about everything.

I had a nice bowl of the chicken and rice hot dish I made today for supper.  It was delicious.  I ate the container of grape jello Lily brought me for dessert. 

I got my written prayers done before Lily came, and I am working on my DW journal right now, obviously.  I think I have covered my whole day. 

I wanted to sweep and scrub my whole house, but I only swept and scrubbed the bathroom.  I swept the laundry room but did not scrub it.  Tomorrow, I have to clean the litterboxes again, so perhaps I can sweep and scrub the rest of the house after that.  I also did not make the raspberry jello, spaghetti, and brussels sprouts I wanted to make today.  Maybe I can get that done tomorrow too. 

I think I would have gotten the cooking done if I had not spent so much of the day reassuring Lily.  We’ll see if I have enough stamina and motivation to work on all that tomorrow.  Lily will be stopping by at some point to get that bubble wrap.  Otherwise, my day is open for my own personal use tomorrow.  Friday, I have an appointment at the clinic, and Lily, my mother, and I are going to go to the Kernal, a local mom and pop restaurant that serves really good clam chowder every Friday.  They also make really delicious pie.  I hope they have the raspberry cream cheese pie that is my favorite there. 

I won’t accomplish anything extra on Friday.  I am always exhausted after going to the clinic.

And Lily wants me to come to her house on Saturday to work on the recipe project again.  I really don’t want to, but I do want to help her complete her goal of getting all her recipes typed up and made into books for her kids and grandkids.  She also said she’d like  to give them to her nieces as well.  My mother also wants one.

It snowed lightly a couple of times today.  It didn’t amount to much and was rather pretty drifting down.  It might snow again tomorrow, but I don’t think that is supposed to amount to much either.  This weekend it is supposed to be ungodly cold.  Below Zero, even.  Yuck.