It's been a long week

... and it is not getting shorter yet.

I have been spending time with a good friend of mine as she and her family try to get everything taken care of for the viewing and service tonight.

Her mother died Monday night.

And there was the additional stress of trying to get the Army to grant her son leave so he could come home from Iraq for his grandmother's service and funeral.

So the service is tonight, but the funeral itself is not until next weekend because they wanted to make sure there was time for him to get back. They didn't want him to miss everything. If everything went as planned he should be on a transport now to arrive back in the states at some point tomorrow. It would be nice if he could be back for tonight, but it doesn't look good.

So I have a service to go to tonight.

Once I am back from the service, depending on the time, I will go back to getting ready for my trip this weekend. If it is too late, and I am not going to leave the service early, I will be spending tomorrow night getting ready to leave early Saturday morning.

I am looking forward to the trip, but first I need to make sure of how people are doing tonight.

Oh, and this is after not sleeping soundly the last couple of nights. I was doing good until then.

And No, I have not received the results of the sleep study yet. I guess I should go and call my doctor again while I am thinking of it.

Peace.

And a piece of advice: Let people know you care about them. You never know when they could be gone.

It's not always easy. I should know, I'm still working on it myself.

Quote of the Day(?)

The temperature finally broke after 11 days of 30+C in a row. Since I don't have anything else which I feel like typing up right now I am going to mention something that I should have mentioned a while back.

A few years ago I started a quotation mailing list for myself and a couple of friends. It started out with 3 members, which is about what I expected. (It now has 51 members.) It slowly grew, and the service I was using got bought after a couple of years so I moved it to Yahoo Groups, where it has been since June 25, 2001.

The group is called "WyldWoods' Quote of the Day(?)". The question mark is there because I don't always get a quote sent every day, but I was sending about 25-28 a month. Then it lapsed for a while and over the last few months I was averaging about 10-15 a month.

I have now picked it back up and am running with it again. So far this month I have only missed one day. And since it is running again, I figured I would mention it here, let all of you know, and see if any of you want to join.

It is a low traffic group, only moderators can post, and there are only two of us. Myself and my brother who has covered for me when I am going to be away without computer access. There is at most one quote per day, and the occasional admin post, maybe 4 per year.

You can find it on Yahoo Groups at:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WyldWoods-QotD/

And you can signup there and have the emails sent to any address associated with your Yahoo ID, which does not have to be a Yahoo Mail address.

Or if you prefer you can subscribe, or unsubscribe by email using the following addresses: ("encoded" to prevent spam harvesting)

Subscribe: WyldWoods-QotD-subscribe(at)yahoogroups(dot)com
Unsubscribe: WyldWoods-QotD-unsubscribe(at)yahoogroups(dot)com
List owner: WyldWoods-QotD-owner(at)yahoogroups(dot)com

We now return you to your irregularly scheduled blog.

The Sleep Study

Some of you are probably wondering how the sleep study went. Others are probably wondering what it was. The majority are probably thinking "Who cares?" Well, too bad. I'm going to tell you about it anyway.

I got to the hospital about 8:00 Thursday night for my appointment and ended up sitting in the waiting room for twenty minutes or so before the technicians came out to get me. And then I ended up sitting in the clinic for about an hour while they got everything ready and dealt with the other two people there for studies. Good thing I brought a book.

After the others were done it was my turn to get changed and get wired up for bed. This meant putting on the shorts I brought to sleep in and then sitting and listening to the tech tell me about the study and about what causes sleep apnea. Then they started attaching the electrodes.

However, before the could attach the electrodes they had to clean the areas.

I tried not to be offended at the implication.

They had this scrub they used to clean the areas. I guess it is specially formulated to breakdown and remove all the oils, etc. from the skin. The real problem I had with it was that it was abrasive. VERY abrasive. The spots on my scalp that they scrubbed are still a little tender today.

After scrubbing the spots and making them tender it was time to glue on the electrodes, two on my legs, five on my scalp and in my hair, one on my forehead, each cheek, behind each ear, beside each eye, and one of each side of my chest. I think that covers all of them. Oh, and there were two belts wrapped around my torso.

Each of these had a long wire coming from it and attached to a control box hanging beside the bed. Plus there was another control box attached to one of the belts which was connected to the first box via a cable. A short cable. (This will come into play in a moment.)

Once all the wires were attached they asked if I wanted to go to sleep then or if I wanted to read some more. Since I couldn't put my glasses back on with a couple of the electrodes in the way, I decided to try to sleep. It was about 11:00 or 11:30 by this time

The hospital bed was smaller than a twin and it was uncomfortable. I am used to a queen sized bed that is (in my opinion) quite comfortable. This wasn't looking good.

So I lay there for half an hour or so before managing to fall asleep. And then I woke up quite suddenly during the night. I guess that will happen when you go to roll over and something stops you unexpectedly.

Remember that cable I said was short? When I rolled over in my sleep I found out just how short it was. Not quite long enough for me to roll onto my side. So when I tried during the night I had this cable holding me back and the sudden shock of the pulling woke me up.

Once I realized what had happened I hit the call button and asked the technician what time it was and if i could get up then. He said it was 3:30, and no. I had to be monitored for a minimum of 6 hours.

After trying to get comfortable again, and failing miserably, I managed to get back to sleep about half an hour or an hour later.

And then at 5:30 they woke me up said that we had to get out because another clinic used the space during the day and would be showing up by 6:30.

It seemed to take hours for them to get all the wires off so I could move around (and head for the toilet) but they probably had it done in about 15 minutes.

After that I did what I had to do. I washed up. I got dressed. And I left. And I still had left over paste in my hair from the electrodes on my scalp.

So I headed home for a hot shower, and it was only hot so that it would get rid of the last of the paste and glue that all the electrodes were attached with. Leaving only the tenderness and sore spots behind.

They told me that my doctor and I would have the results in a week or so. i am just hoping that all the issues caused by the small, uncomfortable bed, and having all the attached wires which kept me from moving, and woke me up, don't skew the results and make them think there are problems that aren't there.

I mean I felt so miserable when I left. Lack of sleep. Being rudely awoken twice. I was exhausted and felt like I hadn't slept at all.

However, the next night I slept in my own bed, and slept better than I had in months. I slept for about 10 hours and woke up refreshed and ready to go.

And I had a good day.

Short post now...

... the longer one will have to wait. Although it will not be tomorrow (or should I say tonight at this point) since I will be spending the night at the hospital.

It is time for the sleep study my doctor is sending me for. She wants to find out what they can about the sleep problems I have been having. And there is a chance I have Sleep Apnea. I guess we are going to find out. Although I will find out a bit before you guys do.

In the meantime you will have to wait a little bit longer to find out more about Rites. Or you could read some more about it on Journey's LiveJournal Page where she is talking about her experiences. She knows what I have hinted at, but don't expect her to talk about it. You'll have to come back here to get that info.

...

I have to start writing these things earlier in the evening s I have time to write more.

Until then,
Peace and Pleasant Dreams.

Rites of Spring 2005 :: Part 2

Although I felt like crap at the beginning [Editor: See Part 1] things shifted as I spent more time there.

Even though I know it is still there lurking in the background I felt like I had pulled completely out of my depression. I still feel good even after a couple of days back at work.

It was good spending time with good friends, and getting to know people better.

There were a couple of things that made my spirit soar.

I want to tell you all about it, but I am not going to just yet. But I will say that my heart is singing, and you should be glad that it is only my heart.

For now, I'm going to sleep, something that has also been doing better since Rites.

Rites of Spring 2005 :: Part 1

Let me start by transcribing the entry I wrote on Tuesday (5/24) while I was at Rites. I wrote it in the Dining Hall around 9:50PM.

It's the second day and I feel like crap.

Yesterday we arrived to find out that the campsite is in the middle of a dispute with the town. Thus the town is clamping down on the camp, checking all permits, reinspecting all buildings, generally doing everything in their power to cause pain to the camp owners.

Since I don't know the history of the dispute, except that the camp has not done necessary repairs and upgrades for years, I am not going to take sides. Just observe that it is causing us no end of problems and headaches so far. The biggest one so far being that the cabins had not been inspected by the time we arrived. Although by late last night enough had passed that we could house the hundred that are here.

Of course we aren't sure about housing for the 400 more who should be arriving tomorrow.

But back to last night...

After we unloaded my truck into our cabin I had to move it [Editor: my truck, not the cabin] into long-term parking since it won't be moving again until we pack to leave on Monday.

While walking back from the lot I stopped to watch a deer. He was grazing and munching on twigs just off the road I was walking. When he moved I moved with him, following along on the road. By the end I was standing about 12-15 feet from him. All told, I watched and followed him for almost 20 minutes.

It was a beautiful thing and kicked me out of my depression for a while.

Today wasn't so good. I was on the verge of collapse all day. About two thirds of that was physical, the other third being emotional.

The emotional collapse was things triggering the depression at the same time I was dealing with seeing people who mean a lot to me that I only get to see here. And, of course, seeing one of my stalkers didn't help. [Editor: I'll cover this another time if there is interest.]

The physical issues were brought on by all the work helping to setup the camp, and by having my bloodsugar crash at least 3 times today. They were all fairly minor crashes and I was able to control it but it still takes a lot out of me.

It is getting harder and harder to hold a pen and write this in my notebook right now. (My carpal tunnel as it were) Therefore I am going to put the pen down and pay more attention to the Bardic Circle going on at the other end of the hall.

It doesn't hurt that the next up is my good friend Rev of Sol Dog [Editor: buy their CD at CD Baby (US) or Bärchen Records (Germany)]

Peace.

More to come.