Insomnia...

I just cannot sleep...At first I thought it was because I was addicted to those stupid Lortabs.  So I quit taking them and then I still couldn't sleep, so I thought maybe it was withdrawal...but it's been a couple of days now...so I guess maybe it's just a permanent condition.  Or maybe it's because I'm so uncomfortable from the pain.
Yeah, that could be it. :)
I did get the cast taken off and the stitches taken out finally on Monday...physical therapy has commenced in earnest again and my life is happy just YAY! all over...
This is one of my favorite songs ever, it's been one of my comfort songs for about twenty years now...gosh I'm getting old...we all are...
The clues to a mild little depression are all around me...the utter disarray and clutter of my house, the unreturned phone calls, the unopened mail and the canceled doctor appointments... I don't know if it's because of the surgery, or if the surgery was just a convenient excuse.  If people hadn't been coming around to help me out, I'm not sure that the laundry or dishes would have been done.
I wasn't too far gone to make sure that my daughter and my kitty got fed.
Now I have three weeks left before I have to go back to work and it's like I've been given an ultimatum...get your life in order, get your mind in order, OR ELSE.
I close my eyes at night and try to go to sleep and all I see is a big jumble of all the stuff that I need to do and have failed to do in my life, stuff that I will never do and stuff that I will never get done and stuff that I will never hope to do and stuff that I BETTER do before July 10...
I don't think I can ever go to sleep.

remembering...

The World War II Memorial wasn't there the last time I visited D.C. It's at the end of the pool between the straight line from the Lincoln Memorial to the Washington Monument.
It fits as if it has always been there.

lost entry...

am i falling for this again?...
i put my heart and soul into an entry, clicked save, and it disappeared into aol no man's land...
what was it about? something about the cast and stitches on my hand, and how it's affected my typing ability, and how i'm using my hand anyway even though i'm not supposed to and even though it hurts really bad, and we had major drama today and i'm tired of it and i'm having trouble getting out of bed, and how i'm falling into a deep black hole of depression again even though my medicine is supposed to prevent that and that might be a clue that it might need to be changed, and i ran out of heart medicine and oh yeah i was going to go back to bed and get under the covers and not come out again until things got much much better
and then of course my plans got foiled by stupid aol losing my stupid entry.
so i restarted my computer, took a walk into the living room and rescued my kitty and put her where she belongs (you know, in bed with me)
and wrote this
and whether this one works or not, I really am going to sleep now.  Tomorrow's Father's Day and we have to honor my grandpa.  I also have to call my dad.  Father's Day makes me uncomfortable for my daughter's sake...she doesn't have a father, never has had one...I don't know how she feels about it.  I feel terrible about it.

how old?

We were on the first day of our journey to D.C....
On the tour bus traveling through the mountains...
I was gazing out the window, listening to my iPod, when I noticed C and one of the moms looking at me expectantly...
I pressed pause just in time to hear my daughter explain,
"No, that's not my sister, that's my mom."
Oh.
The very next day, we're in DC...we've just visited the White House (really truly we got the background checks and the representative approval and apparently I'm not a criminal because my background check came through okay because I visited the White House!) and the FDR Memorial and Arlington and we're eating lunch across the street from the National Archives and I'm just dying to go over there and look at the Constitution and the Declaration real quick...
So I go over to the tour guide and ask her if we have time to go over there really quick and she says no...and she is kind of mean and really short with me!
And I said okay...I'm not a southern woman for nothing...I just turned on the charm and explained why I thought we'd have time...
And she said again, no, and then she said, "You'll need to ask your mom if you have time later."
Oh.
It must be my hair.  I have no idea what I'm doing wrong.
I called C 'Sis' the rest of the trip.  She didn't think it was funny, AT ALL. 

a dc tale...

It was our last stop in Washington D.C, before we started our journey back home.  We were in Union Station...everyone else on the trip was getting their last minute souvenir shopping done.  C and I were sitting at one of the coffee shops biding the time until we could get back on the bus. 

But one of the moms stopped by and asked me to go with her to help pick out a T-shirt...

So we traipse off to this little but VERY pricey souvenir shop in the middle of Union Station.  Pricey and CROWDED...

So C spills her chocolate coffee all over her shirt and the floor...oops...

"Oh no, I can't get back on the bus looking like this, I have to buy a new shirt!"

So she picks out a souvenir T-shirt...

By the time she gets up to the register she realizes that she's been holding the new shirt against the shirt she's wearing that she spilled coffee all over and now the new shirt that she hasn't bought yet is ruined...

She explains to the lady at the counter who looks at her in disbelief since she already spilled coffee on the floor...then the lady swallows and says "that's okay, just pick out a new one"...

So C picks out a new shirt and all is well until money is being exchanged and C swings her foot and it crashes against the bottom shelf underneath the counter and the shelf falls and about fifteen souvenir GLASS MUGS crash spectacularly to the floor.

And the store falls into complete silence and there's little pieces of glass all over the floor.

I'm just staring at the counter lady waiting for her to call the police on me, afraid that this is one disaster too many for her to take.

But I have to hand it to these DC people, she just gulped, and picked up her radio, and muttered into it, and then said to me very quickly,"it's okay, it happens all the time"...but even clueless me could hear the PLEASE LEAVE NOW subtext beneath her words.

I've never moved that quickly in my life.

But C does have a really cute T-shirt now...

not today...

I've tried really hard to clean out my email in the last couple of days, at the expense of my arm, which is still in a cast after the surgery I had less than two weeks ago...it's kind of throbbing and in pain.  I'm trying to cool it on the Lortabs, though, because I was kind of 'yearning' for them last night...I'm terrified of becoming an addict. 
Since January I've had two surgeries and missed tons of work and took a mini-vacation to Nashville and a bigger mini-vacation to Washington D.C (for daughter's field trip).  The doctor told me I had a minor heart condition which explained why I was feeling so sick all the time and put me on all this different medication in addition to what I was already taking.  The new medication made me feel even worse but apparently 'the benefits outweigh the risks' or something like that.  My daughter squeaked through eighth grade and managed to pass all her classes...barely, but not with grades good enough to get into any of the high schools she wanted to go to, and we don't want her to go back to the private school she was going to.
So it's June and what I haven't done is find a school for my daughter.  I'm having money issues from when I was off work.  And even though I'm on eight million different medications, I still don't feel very well...
Everyone's mad at me all the time.  Well, by everyone. I mean my daughter, who is mad at the world - I think it's a teenager thing; my mother - who is just mad at me, constantly and always, ever, ever, and ever, I can't do anything right; and my grandmother - who is mad at me and my mother, because we are always mad at each other.  Did I mention that all of us live in two houses, right next door to each other?  This four generations of women very close in age, blood, AND proximity thing is about to kill me...
It's too bad I had to come back to my journal to whine and complain...I probably should have taken that Lortab after all, I probably would have been a lot happier! 
But D is still as strong and kind as ever...and my daughter is healthy and growing and sure togrow out of this mean streak some day soon :)...and my dear sweet adorable kitty is still the cutest little thing ever.  Well, maybe not so little anymore, we took her to vet and she weighed 12 lbs 8 ounces...she's very long and tall and furry, kind of like a horse...she's way bigger than the dogs across the street...but she's still the cutest!