Hospice

Last Sunday

It’s my Sunday night/Monday shift again. It’s quiet and I’m happy for it to remain that way. On quiet nights, though, I tend to snack a lot more trying to stay awake. Already tonight I’ve had two cheese sticks and a small bag of baked potato chips, in addition to my breakfast of sunflower butter and sliced strawberries on whole wheat bread. I’ve had two 16 oz bottles of water and two cups of decaf coffee (I just started on my third).

Sigh. It’s been a bad week for snacking. (PMS.) I’ve been craving salt and sugar and eating salt and sugar. Not good.

I worked on my quilt yesterday, after putting it off for a week. I got all blocks sashed into horizontal rows and now all I have to do is sash the rows and bind it and then it will be done. Then I’ll start on my next quilt.

I have two ideas for new quilts: One is using the crumb blocks I’ve been making since I started quilting a few years ago. Crumb blocks are made from tiny bits of fabric that would normally be thrown out. They get sewn together willy-nilly and then cut into blocks. My blocks are about 4 1/2 inches square. I have about 70 of them currently. I’ve been bordering some of them with green fabric, whatever green fabric I have laying about. I have about four or five of them at that point. The fabric that Dave gave me for my birthday had a lot of unusual shades of green, so I’m going to use it on more of these blocks. Then I’ll start sewing them together into four patch blocks.

I have two more quilts that are at the “to be sashed together” stage, so I could also finish those. And I have a bunch (six?) quilt tops that I could sandwich and quilt. But—sigh—it’s always more fun to start something new. (Less fun to see a project through to the end, right?)

I’m having a cup of coffee right now—decaf—and my veggies with ranch dressing. Later, I’ll have my middle of the night meal (a burger patty and a sweet potato) and then before my shift relief gets here, I’ll have an apple or something else. There, that’s all my eating planned out for the night. I’m trying to space things out so I don’t just eat everything and then go and raid the vending machine in the break room. (I already scoped it out, though. I’m thinking SmartFood and a KitKat. It just might come to that.)

I didn’t sleep well yesterday. I kept waking up. I was letting old episodes of The Match Game from 1978 play in my ear as I slept, and I think it was messing with my dreams and every once in a while there would be a too-loud or too-long buzzer and it would wake me up. It’s fine, I get up three or four times throughout the day anyway. I usually take more melatonin and go back to sleep. I take half a milligram of melatonin at a time so throughout the day, I might take two or maybe two and a half milligrams total.

It’s later in the night now, closer to 6 a.m.

I took a walk earlier. I’ve been slowly stocking up the supplies in the office, just making reasons to get out and move around. It’s great when it’s quiet because it means that everyone is sleeping, but it’s also really boring. 

This Sunday

It's my Sunday/Monday shift.  It's 5:20 a.m. on Monday morning. I've been here for ten and a half hours. Only two more hours to go.

The coyotes who live in the field on the other side of the hospital fence caught and killed something a little while ago. They were howling and something, some animal, was crying out. It stopped for awhile and then started up again. It's an awful sound. 

It's been an awful week in many ways.

Our friend Paul was placed on hospice care. Dave went to visit him on Sunday since they relaxed the Covid-related visiting restrictions since he is dying. Dave says he was non-responsive and he is not expected to live through today. We've known Paul and Judi for 22 years. They're both in their 80s now, but that doesn't make any of this any easier.

I have texted Judi but not called yet. I'll call tomorrow, when I get off work.

Last night--the night before, now, since it's Monday morning--I stayed up all night finishing my Covid quilt. I called it "The First Pandemic." It's the largest quilt I've made yet, closer to a queen-sized quilt than the twin-sized or picnic size quilts I've been making. 

My next quilt will be a scrap and crumb quilt, I think. I have an idea...

I slept all day Sunday, of course. And I'll sleep all day today, when I get home.