Doggone Tired!

This is being posted this morning instead of last night because I suddenly woke up in my chair halfway through a sentence. Now that’s doggone tired! Have a nice rainy day all.

Luckily for some reason I woke up at 5 this morning. I looked at the clock and dimly wondered why it wasn’t ringing. Then I realized it was supposed to be ringing and I needed to be getting up. I eventually took a closer look at the clock and had indeed set it wrong for 5 PM.

My wife generally takes care of setting clocks and other gizmos that may require reading directions to set and then tries to show me how. This is where our 20 year difference in age can come to loggerheads. Since I didn’t grow up with this technology and not to mention a bit stubborn about figuring things out my way I can be a bit of a Neo-Luddite.

The funny thing is I’m kind of a iPod genius. I know, I know genius has its own rules. Just don’t hand me a TV remote!

I literally stumbled out of bed to face the day. Frankie had other ideas and crawled back under the covers. The Nuns and Drill Sergeants would have disapproved of my bed-making this morning but I need not have to answer to either of those entities any more. So the Frankie-sized lump stayed put until it was time for his morning walk.

I left at 6:30 am and arrived back home at 7:40 pm. A very long day indeed. Only 3 more and I can go home to my wife, dogs, cats and chickens. If this sounds like a recurring theme it’s because it is.

Everything is ready for the morning; clothes out, dinner eaten and lunch and breakfast prepared and meds lined up for the morrow. Just my way of making a shorter morning.

 

2 much needed days off.

After working 6 days my first week at my newest assignment I took a few well deserved days off. Two days spent with family and my boy Frankie have rejuvenated me enough to make it to the weekend. I will head home to the Berkshires, my wife and dogs, cats and chickens.

Yesterday I had a lovely day hanging out in the sunshine. My father-in-law D showed me and Frankie all sorts of places out this way to go hiking and kayaking.

Today I realized I was close enough to visit an aunt and uncle in the town I grew up in. And there were nice conversations with my brother and sister. All in all a nice 2 days!

Here’s a great little video from my wife’s blog of our 2 big dogs (Frankie is only 14 lbs), the new almost finished chicken coop and our rapidly growing 8 chicks.

Reaching for Nonsense

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THAT kind of day, huh!

Heading home 2 nights ago after work, I was halfway ’round that peculiar New England institution known as the rotary or round-about.  Simultaneously, two yellow trouble lights lit up, the temperature gauge went rocketing into the red and I lost my power steering.

Somehow I managed to wrestle the car out of the rotary  and end up in a Friendly’s restaurant parking lot. Thank God it wasn’t in the fast lane on the highway. Oh, those silver linings  again.  Opened up the owner’s manual long enough to realize the lights meant something bad about the coolant system.

I had  been heading to a local diner to eat.  Once I figured there was nothing I could do, I went in to do just that.  My mind slowed down as I fed it and breathed deeply as I advise my patients to do when panicked.

In spite of myself, I’m surprised every time by how well that advice works.  I let go of the enormous “WTF!” to the Universe.  Needed to be done in order to make necessary phone calls and prioritize tasks of importance over the next 12-15 hours.

When the AAA driver arrived and got out of his tow truck, his first words were whats up in this Post’s title.  My reply, “it’s been a hell of a day!”  “The look on your face said it all,” he said back.

And then proceeded to hook up my car, take me and my car to a nearby garage, give me the name  of a car rental place and drop me and my gear off at my hotel. Keep passing it along dude, the Universe will recognize and reward it.  Trust me, someone is keeping score!

Now on to the better part of my day.  My new coworkers were very sympathetic to my tardiness and traumatic plight.  I’m starting to sort out who’s who.

One of them who lives close to where I’m staying is going to pick me up for work this morning.  So I only needed a rental car for one day.

But the bestest part of the day was getting to hang out with some of the over 90’s crowd.  They got that way by being stubborn, funny and feisty.

One 98 year old informed me she was born a month before England declared war against Germany… in 1914, and her grandfather  was in the Civil War… for the North of course she said tartly, when I asked her which side.

She is unabashedly  a liberal feminist UU with a great sense of humor and a stubbornness to match my own.  After testing me a bit, her roommate declared to my patient she had  finally met her match.  Maybe, maybe not, it can be difficult to to match wits  with such a wily crowd.

And in spite of his oxygen tubing another patient practically chased me and the occupational therapist working with me into the hallway with the foam swords… a fun and effective way to work on balance and endurance.

Yeah, that over 90’s crowd sure know how to teach some of us young ones (I’m 56) how to have fun.  I really do love my work.

And it’s off to work I go right now.  May everyone get joy from whatever work you do.

I started a post last night but fell asleep before I could finish. I’ll try to post tonight. I’m off to rent a car to get to work!

Reaching for Nonsense

My poor wife has had a rough day.  I think she’s probably going to post about it tonight, but let me just say that it involved having her car towed in a town she knows nothing about.  Tomorrow she will be renting a car in order to get to her third day on the new job.  There is a certain AAA tow-truck driver who earned major karma points tonight, for which I am grateful.  She will manage it all with grace and humor, because that is who she is.  Thank goodness she’ll be back living with my parents as of this coming Saturday.  She is not a person who should have to live in a hotel by herself with no dog.

While all this was going on, I was enjoying myself at our local Date Night hangout.  I decided to go ahead and do date night without her.  I had a…

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Not really alone!

Years ago in the mid 80’s I attended a WomenCircles in Rowe, Ma at at a UU (Unitarian Universalist) conference center.  At the Finding your Spirit Animal workshop I mentioned I thought mine was wolf.  One of the leaders said ” No, I think a coyote… You are too social and you’re a singer.

The more I thought about it, the more right it seemed.  After all they’re known as song dogs and when was the last time you heard the phrase “lone coyote”.  I’ve always felt more comfortable as part of a pack.

Living at my grandparents, boarding school, the National Guards and then college and a series of roommates it wasn’t til my late 20’s that I actually lived all by myself.  I was living far from  friends and family.  It was not good for me.  Then I discovered living with a cat or a dog fulfilled my need for pack and by then I had made some friends

Today made me think of those days… knocking about alone in a small room in a town where I don’t know anyone.  And I realized yet again I’m a coyote not a lone wolf.  Luckily modern technology in the form of my cell phone allowed me to reconnect with my pack.

Thanks to my conversations with my wife, my in-laws and my friends Darlene and Kate, I was able to ignore the guy in the Yankee’s cap making fun of my Red Sox jacket, the broken glass in the parking lot and the dude hanging out his second story window smoking and making rude comments at me.

That stuff would have really bothered me all those many years ago when I truly felt alone.  Now it doesn’t cause no matter how far away, I still know I’m part of a pack.