When Jeff was little, he was a bit of a whiner; he knows this, I’m not embarrassing him, it’s still a bit of a family joke.  His brothers would make fun of him, because “I’m starving” (we regularly starved our children – it builds character) would become “I’m narving.”  “I’m tired” would become “I’m nired.”  Then it would start, the brutal big brother life lessons: “Mo-om.  Jeff is NARVING.”   “Mo-om.  Jeff is NIRED.”

Today, I’m NIRED.  It started out like any other Monday – I stretched in bed and knocked over my entire nightstand glass of water.  I just ignored it since it was water, and drifted back to sleep.  Then the alarm went off – I don’t know why I set it.  Al is always awake before I am.  Today he was lingering.  I tried to go to sleep, but for some reason it seems the paper delivery person with the muffler-less car and grinding gears apparently needed to stop at every driveway and – what?  I don’t know.  Like the mailman (we have a mailman, I know the USPS ordains mailwomen too…) the delivery person also apparently goes down one side of the street and then back up the other.  I did not get back to sleep. 

I fell on my butt last week.  I was wearing dress shoes for a work meeting and stopped at the office to do some patient paperwork.  Normally I am in my athletic shoes and fly around that particular office at top speed.  This did not work in dress shoes, and my supervisor tells me she wondered what happened because one second I was looking at her and the next second I was gone – or down as it was.  It wasn’t until today that I realized that the pelvic pain I’ve been experiencing was not constipation but probably a deep sacral bruise.  Too much information?  Tough.   Anyway, I woke up still in pain and not feeling like driving around, that’s for sure.  Had I said I would do an admit on Monday on top of the three patients I had?  Better go to the office to find out. 

Shit.  What was I thinking?  I called one of the patients and rescheduled. 

Back and forth to the car three times for stuff I didn’t bring in but, of course, needed.  Back into the office for my keys that I left on the desk. Realized I forgot to take my morning meds and went back home – no sense having a stroke over forgotten blood pressure meds to avoid starting the day already thirty minutes behind schedule, when the very fact that I’m already fifteen minutes behind could make my blood pressure shoot up by 4 p.m.

Took my meds, got back into the car, stop at the bottom of the driveway, called the first patient to say I would be late.  Gratefully she tells me she’s not feeling well and wants to reschedule.  Drive the car back up the hill.  Drag my stuff inside to do some paperwork in the extra time I’ve copped.

You get the idea.  My first patient asked me if I’d had a busy morning.  I had to tell her I indeed had a busy morning and had pretty much gotten nothing done.  One of the lovely things about patient care in the home is that you are, for that period of time, their own private physical therapist.  I am able to tell her about my crazy morning (minus the bruised sacrum) and she gets a good laugh – it reminds her, I’m sure, of when she was capable of running around like a chicken with her head cut off and getting absolutely nothing done in the process.

The VHS to DVD process continues.  For some reason that eludes me, sometimes when the finished product comes out, the audio and video are not in sync.  So Joe’s mouth is moving and I’m talking, that type of thing.  I’m sure it is something I’m doing in the editing process but it is much easier to just start over.  I’m doing that right now.  I’d just let the whole damn thing fade into oblivion, but this particular tape is Al’s Mom at Christmas, when Jeff is just a month old.  Beautiful.  Well worth doing over.

My paperwork from today’s patients awaits, I haven’t listened to the last two days of the Evolutionary Christianity webinar, and I’m working on these VHS tapes.

And, I’m nired.