Judi texted yesterday that Buzz died in the morning, cardiac arrest. She wasn't ready to talk about it, but wanted us to know that he had died. Poor Buzz. He was so sick for so long though, that it is a kindness for his suffering to be over despite the pain it causes her and us, too. We sent flowers.
Poor Judi. She has had so much loss these past few years, her husband Paul, then two of her long-time friends, her home, now Buzz. I'm glad she is near Paul's daughters. They come around to see her often and at least one of them is a dog person like Judi. She will have that comfort at least.
Ah, it's so sad to think about. It's like the tears will never be over.
And that was how yesterday started.
I didn't much want to go to physical therapy after that, but I went anyway. We're working on my shoulders, which is hard going for me. Today I feel like I fell and jarred everything above the waist. I'm achy and sore from a handful of simple shoulder exercises. I store a lot of emotion in my shoulders and so the work is doubly exhausting, exhausting both physically and mentally.
Dave's mother is not doing well either. After some recent dental work, she was given an antibiotic and (I believe) she had a bad reaction to it or it interacted badly with one of her medications. She's been largely unable to communicate, but when she can, she has been treating the caregivers at the facility badly and lashing out. She's fallen twice. Finally, the doctor ordered a sedative, partly because she was so agitated that she was in danger of hurting herself. It's a sorry solution, a chemical restraint rather than a physical one. I feel badly for her--we all do--but there's so little that can be done now for her.
Dave is exhausted from dealing with that and from not getting enough sleep. Over the weekend, daylight savings time took us by surprise. We're both still so tired from that.
The week before, I had some strangeness with the meds I've been taking for HTN, so those got changed a bit, then I decided that I didn't like the change so I changed them back. In the middle of that, I had an allergic reaction to something and ended up going back to the clinic to see the PA. It's never ending, doctors and health concerns.
What else?
We had a day of rain and snow. Literally one day. Then it was gone. It was just enough to wreck some of the blooms on the trees.
I've been reading Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.
I had my teeth cleaned. I also saw the periodontist who is going to do horrible but necessary things to my gums in June. I like him. He found out I was a nurse and he told me about half a dozen stories about the nurses he used to work with when he was younger. All good stories.
I saw the doctor at the sleep clinic and scheduled a sleep study for May.
I've watched Northern Exposure episodes over and over and over, falling asleep and waking up to them, listening to them while I sew or journal.
I drafted a pattern for and sewed a small crossbody bag. I screwed up the pocket and didn't have the right hardware to make the strap adjustable. I ordered a bunch of bag hardware from WAWAK.
I also ordered a pair of shoes that didn't fit and which will have to be returned. I ordered two keyring flashlights, one for me and one for David. David ordered a lot of looseleaf tea and they shipped out the boxed tea in mailing envelopes so smashed box after smashed box kept arriving at our door (the tea was safe in the bag inside the smashed box). I ordered toilet paper and alcohol prep pads. I ordered oxygen concentrator tubing and nasal cannulas. I change out those two things quite frequently.
I cooked, lunches and dinners mainly. Tonight I made vegan chili and baked potatoes and salad and heated up some frozen fish for myself since I remembered as I was making the chili that I had had beans and red chile for lunch and didn't want to double up on either of those things today. I made two--or maybe it was three--dinners and one lunch of red chile and beans and scrambled tofu and frozen root vegetable hash browns. We spent a few weeks eating our way through about four pounds of cheese that Dave ordered with a gift certificate his sister gave him for Christmas.
I've been dreaming but mostly not remembering my dreams. There was one about waitressing that I do remember. In the dream, I was looking for a clean uniform to wear to work (I can't tell you how many times I wore a dirty uniform to work or how many times I ironed a dirty uniform--not only as a waitress, but also when I was in nursing school. Both restaurant and hospitals required uniforms to be worn daily and five shifts a week or five days of lectures and clinicals are hard to cover when you are only issued two uniforms and have no washing machine at home). In the dream once I got to work, I was searching for cigarettes and came up with a partial pack, six or so cigarettes, and had to ask myself if it was going to be enough to make it through a shift.
A month or so ago, I was reading the comments on a tik tok video about waiters and waitresses and several people commented that they had stopped waiting tables, gosh, three years ago! and were still having dreams about it. I didn't tell them that I haven't waited tables in almost thirty years and I still sometimes dream about it when I'm stressed. I don't know what that says about me or about restaurant work. There was a study done years ago about stress levels in various jobs and waitressing ranked just below air traffic controller. So take that into consideration when searching for your next career move.
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