Another sleepy day

Well, I did it again. I went to bed too late last night, got an unwanted second wind, and then couldn't fall asleep at all. After a bathroom trip and a couple more attempts to sleep, I gave up, turned my light back on, and read a book by Kevin Fisher-Paulson, the SF Chronicle columnist who died recently. I ordered all his books from Amazon and they came yesterday, so I read A Song for Lost Angels. It was very good, though sad, and much better for middle of the night reading than my current spooky book. I finished it around 5 am and then was finally able to fall asleep. 

But around 9 am, our cat Sillers decided it was high time I got up (I normally feed the cats at 8:30). Meow meow meow meow! I fought it as long as I could, hissing "Sillers!" in angrier and angrier tones. She paid no attention. I finally got up and threw her in the garage. Back to bed. A moment later, here she is again, having climbed expertly through the cat door that I neglected to lock.

I gave up and got up, but I didn't feed the cats until after 10 am, just to be mean.

So I'm a basket case again today. So tired and grouchy. I'm sure soon I'll be ready for a nap, but until then I might as well type this blog post.

It's been kind of a strange week. Last weekend, unhappy about the fact that the King Soopers pharmacy had given me another box of 5 mg Mounjaro, I decided to take my shot a day early, on Sunday night. You can do that -- you can take it as much as 3 days early, I think, if you and your insurance company want to pay for extra doses. I thought giving myself the medicine a day early would make it seem a little like I'd gone up to a higher dose. 

I don't know if that's what happened -- all I know is that I spent most of the week in bed, no energy at all. I got nothing done. Well, I made dinner four times, did the laundry, kept up with dishes, took a few walks. I think that was it. No cleaning to speak of, except litter boxes. No work on the files. And no fun stuff, either, no writing or genealogy, even though on a couple of days I specifically told myself: you can spend today writing. I didn't want to. All I wanted to do was read and nap. And even at the end of the week it didn't improve much. Maybe yesterday I finally had a little more energy, but not a lot.

I also lost some weight, 2.6 lbs.

• Weight the morning I took my first shot: 254.6
• Weight last Sunday: 236.2
• Weight this morning (after 17+ weeks on Mounjaro): 233.6
  

So I'm now down 21 lbs in a little over 17 weeks, for an average of 1.23 pounds per week. Finally made it past 20 pounds! Yay! 

But OMG, spending the week in bed was not yay, it was awful. If this is what it's going to feel like to go up a level, I'm not sure I want to. I'm not going to take the shot early this week, just stick with Sunday for now. Maybe this will be a better week.

It will be our last week without Rocket Boy. I'm racking my brain trying to think of how to get ready for him. What I really wish I'd done was to clean up the desk room, but that's not going to happen in a week. I think I'll probably just try to do the basics this week -- same as I did last week, except more vacuuming and mopping. Dusting. There are some things on the calendar, too: my parent support group on Tuesday and a conference with Teen A's Boulder TEC teacher on Thursday. Plus I'll try to bake something. This past week I made brownies and the week before I made banana bread coffee cake. It's still warm during the day, but cool at night and the house never gets hot -- perfect for baking.

One thing making it hard for me to sleep at night is the election. The presidential race is so close, ridiculously close, that it's making me feel ill. I just gave Kamala Harris another $10 -- I figure that's my November donation a few weeks early. Our ballots arrived a couple of days ago. I'd like to turn mine in right away, but I'm going to wait until Rocket Boy comes, so that I can show him my choices before I submit it. We don't always vote exactly the same way, but we like to discuss our reasoning. Also, he's been out of the Colorado loop, so I can explain some things to him.

But I can hardly bear to read the news right now. I don't want to read that the Democrats are going to lose the Senate, the Republicans are going to keep the House. I especially don't want to read that Donald Trump is doing better in the polls. Who in the name of God is planning to vote for that mess? I just don't understand my country. When I think about him winning again, I get physically ill. We survived his first presidency because he behaved so badly and so many people noticed and fought back. But this time? 

So anyway, I can't think about it. I have to think about anything but that.

You know, I think I'm going to stop here and post this. My brain is obviously not functioning well enough to write a good post, and Teen B has just asked me for help with homework (ha!), so I'll go do that. If I have more ideas later, I'll come back and add to this. But this is probably enough for now.

Beautiful October

Although I'm a little tense this month -- Rocket Boy is supposed to be home, why isn't he home, why did he have to miss Teen B's concert, what are we going to do about the furnace (it's getting colder), what about our health insurance, are we going to have enough money, etc., etc. -- as usual, October in Boulder is just beautiful. It is the prettiest month. 

We don't have the best spring. Ann Arbor had a fabulous spring, every year, flowers and trees and plants just busting out all over. Boulder is more subdued -- it's much dryer, and you can have snow in May, and all that. 

But fall! Fall in the Midwest is glorious, fall in the East is glorious, but fall in the Rocky Mountains is glorious too. And the skies are blue and the leaves are turning and it's awesome. We haven't had any rain for a while, which is bad, but it means the leaves stay on the trees longer. So pretty.

So here's where things stand right now. Rocket Boy's last day at work in St. Louis will be October 18th, and then he'll probably start driving home on the 19th (or the 20th, if necessary). He'll be home that Sunday or Monday. He's retiring, rather than resigning, so we get to keep our health insurance -- forever. (The twins get to keep it until they're 26.) If Rocket Boy dies before me, I still get to keep it as long as I live. This is very good.

His clearance finally came through with this contract job he got, so he'll be starting that as soon as he gets back (but we won't need to use the insurance they offer, which is more expensive than our government insurance).

He's going to start getting Social Security payments in a couple weeks, $2,421 each month. The twins will start getting their own Social Security payments at the same time, $720 a month until they graduate from high school. I have tentatively agreed to give them an allowance of $20/week until then (I control their SS money). Since their allowance has been $2.50/week for many years, this will be a huge bump, and I am a little uneasy about it. But now's the time to learn how to manage money, so I guess it will be good. Better than continuing with the $2.50 and then suddenly giving them almost $14,000 or whatever as a graduation present. Because I'm required by law to do that -- maybe I have to give it to them when they turn 18, I'm not sure. Teen B will of course put his thousands in the bank, but I hate to think what Teen A might do with a sudden windfall like that.

So maybe getting $20/week for a year and a half will help him learn more about how money works (and it will also reduce the windfall by a couple thousand). I don't know. I googled "how to teach teens about money" or something like that and found some websites with all these great ideas, most of which it was too late to try or else they just seemed impossible. "Talk to your teen about blah blah blah." Doesn't that require that the teen listen when you talk and not just say "OK, Boomer" to all your words of wisdom?

One thing about your kids getting older is that you realize how little control you have over their lives. Like, I worry about my kids' social lives, or lack thereof. Guess what? That is none of my business! When they were little I could have worked harder to set up play dates or whatever, but when they're in high school, no. 

I did suggest, a couple weeks ago, that they go to the Homecoming Dance. They both gave me these looks. "OK, OK," I said. "Never mind."

So, with money, I can certainly offer advice, but in less than a year and a half, I won't be able to control anything they do anymore. It's a terrifying thought, but also something of a relief. 

Anyway, after a few weeks of everything seeming like a mess -- Rocket Boy's homecoming, money, insurance, etc. -- it now seems to be working out. And I have two more weeks to (not) get ready for him.

***

Last night we had dinner at Panera, my choice (I wanted someplace cheaper than where we've been going -- last week at BJ's the bill was around $120 just for the three of us). I had a bowl of Autumn Squash soup, Teen B had a bowl of chicken noodle soup, and Teen A had a chicken avocado BLT, something like that. Plus drinks it was $45. I really miss the days when restaurant food was reasonable.

After dinner we went to Target to buy Halloween candy (for snacking, not for handing out). We bought M&Ms (both plain and peanut), Reese's peanut butter cups, and KitKats, and when we got home I brought out my Halloween candy dish and filled it up. It looks very lovely, and I realized that I did not want any of it. I'm totally off chocolate. Actually, I keep looking at it and thinking about eating something from it, but then I think, nah, wouldn't taste good. Honestly, if I could have thought of something to buy for me, I would have, but there isn't anything. The only kind of candy that appeals to me right now is mints, and there don't seem to be any Halloween mints. Christmas, now that may be a problem. But not Halloween. I don't know who is going to eat all this candy. Rocket Boy, maybe.

That seems like a good segue into the Mounjaro update.

• Weight the morning I took my first shot: 254.6
• Weight last Sunday: 236.8
• Weight this morning (after 16+ weeks on Mounjaro): 236.2
  

So I'm now down 18.4 lbs in a little over 16 weeks, for an average of 1.15 pounds per week. I don't like this slow losing! But I'm glad the number keeps going down. I was supposed to start the new higher dose, 7.5 mg, tomorrow, but the stupid King Soopers pharmacy made a mistake and gave me another box of 5 mg. That is, I picked up the new box of 7.5, but then I got some more robocalls saying my prescription was ready, so I went back a couple days later, got my rosuvastatin -- and another box of Mounjaro. "That's weird," I said, "but OK." Took it home, took it out of the bag, and realized it was another box of 5 mg. If I'd actually seen the box at the pharmacy, I would have noticed it was wrong -- the different doses come in different colored boxes -- but it was already packed in a paper bag and stapled shut.

I didn't think they'd take it back -- I don't think you can return medication -- and in any case, I didn't try. And the copay was $53, so I don't want to waste it. I'll just do four more weeks of 5 mg (and probably not lose much weight). However, I'm planning to take the shots every 6 days instead of 7, as a compromise. That means I'm going to take a shot tonight, and next weekend on Saturday night. We'll see how it goes.

I did better with exercise this week -- I took a walk on five of the last seven days. On a couple of those days I wasn't feeling energetic, so I just walked for 15 or 20 minutes. My usual walk takes me about 28 minutes, and then one day a week I try to go longer, so that was 42 minutes. I will try to take a walk today too, in a little bit.

I've been doing pretty well with cooking, though not so much with eating. One day last week I made a new (to me) recipe from the NY Times, for macaroni beef casserole, something like that (of course I made it with fake meat, which might have been part of the problem). I thought it would be similar to goulash, without actually BEING goulash, since I made that just last month. Well, it was complicated, took a long time to make, had to make a stupid ROUX, which is not my favorite thing to do, and in the end it wasn't very good. Plus, it gave me absolutely terrible heartburn, don't know why. Maybe the tomatoes, maybe the butter in the cheese sauce. Anyway, the kids didn't like it, and I didn't want to experience that heartburn again by eating leftovers for lunch, so into the compost it went. But first I left it sitting on the dining room table for a couple of days, under aluminum foil, but fruit flies can get under aluminum foil. Here it is just before I finally dumped it in the compost. I don't know if you can see the fruit flies.

Euw.

We are having a fruit fly problem. I put out a cup of apple cider vinegar for them, and a few jumped right in and died, but the rest went and sat in the macaroni beef casserole. Then I remembered you're supposed to put plastic wrap over the vinegar, with holes punched in it, so I tried that, but I think it wasn't then smelly enough and all the fruit flies went away. So today I took the plastic wrap off and mixed in some dish soap, but so far nobody's taking the challenge. Stupid fruit flies. Pretty soon it will be too cold for them, fortunately.

OK, well, I'm sure there were other things I was going to write about, but this is probably enough for today. I need to take my walk, and then the kids have homework. Plus, I need to finish reading last night's ghost story. I bought a book of ghost stories at the Bookworm last weekend and decided to read one each night all through October. What I didn't think about is that reading a ghost story at night (when your husband is in St. Louis for two more weeks) is perhaps not the best idea if you want to fall asleep easily. The noises this house makes! The other night there was a noise and both cats perked up their ears, like what the heck was that? But anyway, last night I started reading the next story and I thought, you know what, this seems like it's going to be very scary, and I'm just going to go to bed. So I did. But I need to finish it now, to stay on track. It'll probably be much easier to read in daylight.

Reading post: Jesmyn Ward in September

September is now truly over, so it's time for a reading post. In September I decided to read books by Jesmyn Ward (b. 1977). She is a highly praised young American writer, has won all sorts of awards, and I'd thought about reading her for a long time. Why hadn't I? Because her books sounded so depressing. 

I tell myself I want to stay up to date with Black literature, and then I read a description of one of Ward's novels and I think, oh, maybe another time.

I mean, she sounds good: "lyrical," "dazzling." But she writes about characters in really desperate situations. So I dither and postpone. But -- a new development -- she has three books on the NY Times list of the 100 best books of the 21st century so far. I decided that September was the time to read Jesmyn Ward.

• Salvage the Bones (2011). Beautifully written, this is the story of a poor Black family in southern Mississippi and how they experience Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The book's 12 chapters each describe one day, including the 10 days before Katrina hits and one day after the waters subside. The main character, Esch, 15, realizes she's pregnant on Day 2. Her dad is an alcoholic, her mom died after giving birth to Junior, now age 7. She has two older brothers, Randall, 17, and Skeetah, 16, who's in love with his pit bull, China, who gives birth on Day 1. And therein lies the problem with the book, for me. I can handle reading about the hardscrabble poverty, the rapes... it's all awful, but the characters are vivid and interesting and you care about them. But the dog stuff, oh my god. I understand that the dogs are symbolic, but I couldn't handle it. China's puppies die, horribly, one by one. There's a dog fight. Around Day 6, I almost gave up. The hurricane stuff is good, a lot of the book is really good. It ends well (except for the dogs, again). But the dog stuff ruined it for me. Unbearable. Should come with a trigger warning.
  
  
• Sing, Unburied, Sing (2017). This is a less successful novel than Salvage the Bones, and if it hadn't been for those dogs, I'd say I liked the earlier book better. Sing is the story of another family: grandparents (Pop and Mam), their troubled daughter Leonie (and their murdered son Given, now a ghost), Leonie's white husband Michael, and their two kids, Jojo who's 13 and Kayla who's 2 or 3. Much of the book is about a road trip Leonie and the kids take to pick up Michael, who's been in prison for three years. Pop was imprisoned in the same place many years ago, and there's a subplot about a boy he befriended there, Richie, who is now a ghost. The story is told from three perspectives: Jojo's, Leonie's, and Richie's. I think part of the problem with the book is that Leonie is a mess. Every time she took over the story I wanted to close the book so I didn't have to "listen." Jojo, on the other hand, is a sympathetic character. So, Sing has strengths, but on the whole I was disappointed. It's all so jumbled, especially the ghosts. Not enough character development, other than Jojo. Leonie is so awful, and Mam is a little too woo-woo. Too many loose ends -- what was wrong with Kayla? Too much misery for any of it to have an impact. Oh, and we have to watch a goat being killed. I really didn't care for this novel.
  
  
• Men We Reaped (2013). I was very interested to read this book, which isn't a novel but rather a memoir of five Black men in Ward's life who died young. I've heard that it's harrowing but worth it, and anyway, I like memoirs. But both local copies were checked out, and they remained checked out all month. So I'll read this in October (it's "in transit," will probably arrive in a day or two).
  
  
• Let Us Descend (2023). Because I couldn't get Men We Reaped, I reluctantly tried Ward's most recent novel, which follows a young woman, Annis, as she descends into the hell of slavery. I was expecting to hate this book and planned to read only a chapter or two. Instead, it wasn't bad. I liked Annis and cared about what would happen to her. And I've started to be interested in how writers deal with the subject of slavery. What is the best, most effective, most meaningful way to write about it? It can't just be Uncle Tom's Cabin over and over -- but then what? One thing Ward does is to introduce a mysterious "spirit," Aza, who sometimes helps Annis, a little, when she asks. I made sense of this by comparing it to how someone might try to talk to God, ask God for help, be disappointed when not much help is forthcoming. But in the last third of the book or so, the dialogue between Annis and Aza takes over the book, and I was left wondering what on earth was going on. One reviewer (in the Guardian) thought this was where the book came alive, but for me it was where the book fell apart. The ghosts and magic realism were my least favorite aspect of Sing, Unburied, Sing too. I'm not opposed to those things in fiction in general, but I don't think they're Ward's strong point.
  

What's the verdict? I am not, at this point, a big Jesmyn Ward fan. She writes well and I expect that I will look at reviews of her future books with interest. But whether or not I actually read the books, hmm. Might or might not. I don't know. I really didn't enjoy the animal torture porn. Likewise, I didn't get much out of her weird ghosts and spirits. I don't understand what she's trying to do with them. A New York Times reviewer said the spirit Aza "sounds as if she is making up her own mythology as she goes," and that's also how I felt about the ghosts in Sing. Like, what is this sh--? 

I'm glad I finally made the effort to read her, and I'm still looking forward to reading Men We Reaped. But Ward probably isn't going to be one of my favorite writers. On the other hand, she's fairly young. She still might write something amazing...

POST-NOTE: It's October 11th and I finished reading Men We Reaped about an hour ago. Now THAT is a good book. It's sad, terribly depressing, but I thought it was worth it. It earned its misery, it wasn't gratuitous. I read a stupid review of the book on Goodreads by someone who felt Jesmyn Ward hadn't "processed" her grief enough before writing it. "I've lost several family members as well, so I do understand," the clueless person went on. I looked at her little photo: a white person, obviously. Which is not to say that white people can't lose several family members and feel grief, but Men We Reaped is about more than that. It's about losing one young Black man after another (they ranged in age from 19 to 32) for stupid reasons that all circle back around to the way Black people are treated in this country, especially in Mississippi, which is almost 38% Black -- that's a higher percentage than any other state. This isn't the kind of grief you "process." Ward doesn't apologize for some of the behaviors that got the young men in trouble, such as drug use, but she explains clearly how it all happens. The dead-end jobs (after all the decent factory jobs were outsourced overseas), the lack of support for Black students in schools, for crying out loud the defective crossing gate arm because no one cares about fixing them in rural Mississippi...

OK, I've revised my opinion of Jesmyn Ward. I am going to go on reading her, but I'm especially interested in any other nonfiction she may write in the future. Men We Reaped is a very good book.

Other reading this month...

On a walk one evening I found Stay True by Hua Hsu in a little free library. It's about his years as a Berkeley undergrad and his friendship with Ken, who is then senselessly murdered. Their friendship reminded me so much of my Berkeley days. Even though I started at Cal in 1979, two years after Hsu was born, Berkeley is Berkeley and the Berkeley dorms are still standing. I lived in Unit 1 and Hsu lived in Unit 3, but I know those dorms. It's kind of an odd memoir, a bit meandering, but I really liked it. He takes some rhetoric classes (my major) and makes fun of them, which I enjoyed. His perspective on the Asian experience(s) at Cal is interesting. Just overall a cool, though odd, book.

Then...

In an article in the New Yorker from 13 years ago called "Why You Should Read W. G. Sebald," which I happened to reread this month, the author, Mark O'Connell, mentions another writer who is something like Sebald, Geoff Dyer, implying that Dyer imitates Sebald. Apparently Dyer responded by pointing out that he started publishing before Sebald did, and that both of them were actually influenced by the writings of Thomas Bernhard. 

Geoff Dyer? Thomas Bernhard? I pursued this line of thought. Our branch library had one of Dyer's books, White Sands, a sort of offbeat travel book. I happily consumed it, and then I got The Last Days of Roger Federer: And Other Endings out of the main library. That was a more difficult book, referring to all sorts of writers and musicians and artists that I wasn't familiar with, going on and on about Nietzsche. And yet it was full of gems too. I love the section on books we read as we get older vs. books that make more sense when we're younger. Talking about reading long nonfiction works, which I often do these days...

It's always time well spent, reading whoppers like these. You learn so much. The problem is how little of that 'much' is retained after finishing them. 'Little' is sometimes a euphemism for nothing.

And...

That's the other thing about the process of knowledge absorption as you get older. You can't get it all on one plate, in a single helping. You have to read about the same events, slog through the same subjects, in multiple whoppers... Knowledge has to be laid down in the brain in overlapping and criss-crossed layers. You need the underlay before you can have the carpet and then---then you can abandon the analogy because it's completely unsustainable. Everything has gradually to become a kind of sediment in the brain, its ocean floor---a place so dark and mysterious that the fish aren't even really fish, just creatures without eyes or brains, flattened by the dead weight of water-knowledge pressing down on them.

I thought this was a wonderful, goofy description of what it's like to read when you're older. I've read so many great books the last ten years, feel like I've gained so much from reading them, and yet, when I try to explain what I got out of any particular book, I'm stumped. Or all I can remember is maybe a line or two from the jacket cover, the blurb. So why did I have to read the whole book, why couldn't I just read the blurb? Well, something happens when you read the whole book, more of those "overlapping and criss-crossed layers" are laid down in your brain. Little by little, you're more knowledgeable about the world, while at the same time you get stupider and stupider because you're getting older and your brain is leaking bits of knowledge right and left.

I plan to go on reading Dyer. He's a lot of fun, although I don't quite see the connection with Sebald. 

Moving on to the Austrian author Thomas Bernhard (1931-1989), no Boulder libraries had anything by him, but the Longmont library obligingly supplied Wittgenstein's Nephew (1982). And here, yes, I can see the influence he had on Sebald. The narrator of this book -- Bernhard himself, since this is a sort of memoir (but also sort of a novel) -- is a crabby, depressed middle-aged man who seems like someone W. G. Sebald might include in one of his novels. But I don't think he'd have the crabby, depressed middle-aged man narrate, he'd have his narrator encounter the crabby, depressed middle-aged man and perhaps listen to him for a while before moving on...

Wittgenstein's Nephew is the oddest book. Thomas Bernhard was in real life friends with Paul Wittgenstein, whose father was actually Ludwig Wittgenstein's cousin, not brother. Anyway, Paul was about 25 years older than Bernhard, but Bernhard was in very poor health his whole life and died in his 50s, so perhaps the age difference didn't matter much. Bernhard was tubercular and Paul was insane, so they were both always in and out of hospitals. The book begins when they're both hospitalized but then does not seem to follow any pattern of organization, it just meanders along, crabbily, for 100 pages and then stops, when Paul dies. 

He lies, as they say, in the Central Cemetery in Vienna. To this day I have not visited his grave.

I may or may not read more of Thomas Bernhard. Probably I will (though I will have to request his other books from Prospector). Have to be in the right mood, though.

So that was September. Now, what about October, the spooky month? After some thought I decided I am going to read Kafka. Yes, Franz Kafka (1883-1924), the German-speaking Czech Jewish weirdo with his own adjective: Kafkaesque. I've read "The Metamorphosis," long ago in high school, and that's it. I figure if I don't do it now, I may never do it, and October seems like a great time to read books that have been compared to nightmares. Of course I will also try to read some ghost stories.

End of the quarter

So, one more day of September after this, and that means we're at the end of the 3rd quarter of 2024. I'm not quite where I planned to be at this point, but that's OK. I'm still here, we're all fine, it's all OK.

I took a walk this afternoon and I was amazed at how many trees are already changing color. Isn't it a little early? I looked at some old blog posts to see. Maybe not. Late September might just be when the trees start turning. Supposedly up in the mountains they're already at peak color. It'll be peak down here in a few weeks.

I'm tired today because I couldn't sleep last night. This happens sometimes, if I stay up just a little too late. I associate it with my phone, but last night I put my phone on the charger early, so it wasn't that. I decided to read until 1:00 am and then turn off my light, and that was a mistake. "But it's the weekend!" Doesn't matter, still have to go to bed on time. When I turned my light off at 1:00, I tossed and turned and ruminated about things that are not my business and which I have no control over (mostly politics) until 2:30 am, at which point I turned the light back on, went to the bathroom, fixed myself some warm milk, and read until 5:00 am, when I was finally tired enough to go to sleep. 

I slept until 11:30 am, which might be a record for me, but I'm still really tired. Now I just have to keep myself awake until 11 pm, and then I can try to get back on schedule.

Even though I was tired, I drove to Longmont today to see Rocket Boy's brother and give him the vitamins he'd asked me to buy. He was in the hospital for three or four days this past week, and we don't really understand why. Something about his calcium being too high. When MY calcium was too high, I had to have parathyroid surgery, but in his case they put him in the hospital. It doesn't make sense. We will probably never find out.

When I was there, I studied him. He looked a little healthier than usual, although still desperately thin. He doesn't weigh much more than 100 lbs and he's Rocket Boy's height, around 6'1". He gave me a salad spinner and a bag of miscellaneous junk, "for your birthday." I asked him where he got the salad spinner and he mumbled something about someone giving it to him. He probably found it by the dumpster, which is where he gets most of his stuff. 

When I got home I put the salad spinner and the bag of stuff on our front porch, to try to remove the heavy scent of incense. We'll probably put most of it in a free pile when it smells better.

On the way home I stopped at Safeway and bought a Chantilly birthday cake for Miss Sillers, who is 7 today. (I didn't know what flavor "Chantilly" was, but it turned out to be sort of almond flavored, with raspberries in the filling.) We had a little party for her, but she was highly displeased about it, meowed a lot and tried to run away. I put a tiny piece of the cake in her dish and Baby Kitty began eating it. I shooed him away and tried to get Sillers interested. Finally she ate a tiny bit of cake that had fallen on the floor. Baby Kitty got the rest. 

Cats shouldn't have cake anyway, so it's probably fine.

***

I thought this would be a good time to review my plans for the year and see how I'm doing -- and make some plans for the last three months of the year.

Back in January I wrote my resolutions in eight categories -- I'd actually forgotten this -- so I can review them that way too.

• Reading & writing & culture

How am I doing? I've read 92 books so far this year (it's the one activity that's not affected by Mounjaro), including biographies of 3 presidents, seen 9 movies, gone to 4 concerts, 1 play, and 3 baseball games, blogged regularly, and wrote a short story.

Plans for the last quarter: go on reading -- it would be fine to slow down, but I don't see that happening -- including a biography of Herbert Hoover (I'll read that in November). I'll see more movies when Rocket Boy comes back, because he likes movies, and there will be some school concerts and plays to go to, and the Haunted House, and maybe the harp concert at the library in December. I'll keep on blogging and try to keep on writing, but I won't expect too much of myself. Whatever I manage to do is fine.

• Self care
  

How am I doing? I did a lot of stretch videos in the first part of the year, walked a lot all summer, and right now I'm having trouble doing anything. I took some hikes this year, though not one every month as I planned. I got my braces off and have been very good about wearing my retainers at night. I worked on some of my clothes -- shirts, socks, bras, nightgowns -- and then kind of let it go, partly because I started Mounjaro and I thought I might be losing a lot of weight soon... and I guess here is the right place for my Mounjaro update.

• Weight the morning I took my first shot: 254.6
• Weight last Sunday: 237.4
• Weight this morning (after 15+ weeks on Mounjaro): 236.8
  

I'm still struggling, but I'm now down 17.8 lbs in a little over 15 weeks, for an average of just over 1 pound per week. This will be my last week on the 5 mg dose -- I already have the 7.5 mg box in the fridge for next week. I haven't lost as much weight as I expected to, so my clothes still fit, lol.

Plans for the last quarter: keep trying to get some exercise every day, even if it's only 10 minutes. When Rocket Boy comes back we can do some hikes, maybe, and maybe go swimming. Get a flu shot and a Covid shot (and for the twins). Keep on taking Mounjaro, no matter how horrible it is. And don't worry too much about clothes. Try to get some boots this fall, because they're the one crucial thing I'm missing (well, and a coat, but I don't want to buy a coat if I'm going to lose more weight), and otherwise probably let it go for now.

• Twins stuff
  

How am I doing? Well, I guess pretty well. Neither boy has flunked out of school, though their grades could be better. Teen A got his license in June, though Teen B seems to have given up on driving altogether (my own fender bender didn't help). Neither one got a summer job (next year). And I got them signed up to get social security payments when Rocket Boy's start, in a few weeks. That's going to be interesting.

Plans for the last quarter: keep doing what I'm doing. Help the kids with homework, keep track of their grades so stuff doesn't slip through the cracks. Maybe do a better job of cooking dinner regularly. Try to ease the transition when Rocket Boy moves back in October. He can take over the driving practice!

• Outside house stuff

How am I doing? I got the trees pruned and the volunteer elm in the front yard removed, so that's a win! But I did nothing else all summer and the back yard looks TERRIBLE, like our house is abandoned.

Plans for the last quarter: This is a tough one. Obviously I should work on the back yard, but I don't really have the energy, due to Mounjaro. I think this is something for Rocket Boy and me to work on together when he gets back. 

 

• Inside house stuff

How am I doing? I didn't do much work on this, I have to admit. I made some trips to Goodwill, but then everything fell apart in June when I started taking Mounjaro. I didn't work on the files, I didn't work on the kids' room, I didn't even keep the house as clean as before.

Plans for the last quarter: I'm not sure what to plan. Obviously I should get back into doing all these things, but will I? 

 

• Rental house stuff

How am I doing? Total bust. I did get an HVAC guy out and he cleaned their furnace, but he didn't even replace the filter because he didn't have the right size on the truck. I went out and bought a filter, but no one's been back since to work on this. I should note that OUR furnace isn't working at all. I did NOTHING on their yard -- but fortunately they did a lot of work themselves. We even gave them some rent credit because they worked so hard.

Plans for the last quarter: Get someone out to replace their furnace filter and do the HVAC repair. I am probably going to need Rocket Boy's help here, since I'm having trouble doing anything about it. He also needs to be in charge of OUR furnace repair. Winter is coming... 

 

• Social/travel stuff

How am I doing? I managed to arrange (and pay for) our two family vacations (St. Louis in March and California in May/June), and I took the planned trip with my sister in August. I had one call with my friend who has Alzheimer's and then just dropped her, so that's not impressive. I saw an old friend when I was in Seattle and another old friend came by a week and a half ago. I haven't called any local friends or done anything with them. Do I still have local friends?

Plans for the last quarter: I'm going to give myself a pass on this one for the last quarter of the year. With all the holiday stuff coming up and school stuff and Rocket Boy moving back, I think my energy will be depleted. I'll try to go to my parent support group in October and November -- that's enough. 

 

• Money/jobs

How am I doing? I can't really take any credit for this, but Rocket Boy has applied for social security, told his boss he's leaving, and probably has a new job in Colorado (still waiting for confirmation). We just realized he needs to retire, rather than resign, because there are good benefits associated with retiring from government service that I had completely forgotten about. So he probably won't be home by next weekend, as we had planned, but sometime in October. It will happen.

Plans for the last quarter: Help Rocket Boy come home, finally, keep track of our finances and our health insurance, which is complicated. At this point it doesn't look like I will need to get a job, but continue to be open to that, just in case.

Well, OK. Everything's going fine except for being on Mounjaro and having no energy. And we hope this is temporary. I wonder if it is.

Goodbye September, welcome October, the best month of the year. People already have their Halloween decorations up! This crazy neighborhood...

 

First day of Fall

Today is September 22nd, the first day of Autumn, quite late in the month. I didn't realize it was so late -- this month went by quickly. Counting today, I have 9 days left to finish my September reading (three books -- I can probably handle that).

It rained heavily all last night, and it's still sprinkling a little today. Everything's sodden. When I said goodnight to the twins last night, I mentioned how lovely it is to fall asleep to the sound of rain. But instead I kept waking up to the sound of rain and then having trouble going back to sleep. I realized that rain still isn't as positive a thing as it used to be, for me, because it reminds me of the flood of 11 years ago. During the night, listening, I kept thinking that the rain was probably going straight down into our basement, like it did during the flood. No, I would tell myself, the ground isn't saturated. It's been very dry, the ground can probably hold a lot of water. The water is not going in the basement. And so on.

So today I'm kind of tired, even though I slept until 9 am. 

Maybe all those awakenings were sleep apnea. I've felt as though my sleep apnea is better since I started taking Mounjaro, but last night wasn't good. 

Speaking of Mounjaro, time for a disappointing update.

• Weight the morning I took my first shot: 254.6
• Weight last Sunday: 237.4
• Weight this morning (after 14+ weeks on Mounjaro): 237.4
  

So I'm 17.2 lbs down in a little over 14 weeks, for an average of 1.23 lbs per week, but I did not lose any weight this week. In fact, most of the week I was up a couple of pounds, so I don't know how I dropped down this morning. We'll see. Maybe next week will be better. I did email my doctor to tell her that I think it's time to up the dose to 7.5 mg. Wonder how sick that will make me.

Even though I'm disappointed that my weight loss is stalling, I do like being this weight. To cheer myself up I look at my old weight notebooks. During the pandemic I was in the 260s. On September 6, 2020 I weighed 269.2. And on January 24, 2021 I weighed 272 pounds (a blip, but still, it showed me what could lie ahead). Can you see why 237.4 feels good? Lighter than air.

***

Rocket Boy gave notice at work this week. I'm not sure when his last day will be, but I'm guessing around October 1st. The day he's really interested in is tomorrow, September 23rd, because that's when his student loan payment will be deducted from his bank account. It will be his 120th payment made while working for a nonprofit (including all his years with the federal government as well as the months when he was teaching). Supposedly that means that what's left of his loans will be forgiven, even though "what's left" is currently much more than he ever took out, due to interest. I'm not sure what the total is now, but it's over $80,000. When I met him, 24 years ago, I think it was around $60,000, and he's made ALL those payments since then, including paying off one very high interest loan with some money he made on the stock market.

It's not clear to me whether this really will be the end of it, because Republicans have challenged Biden's student loan forgiveness programs in court. If they prevail, what will happen to people whose loans are already forgiven? Will they get all their debts back again, only higher due to the interest that's accrued while they thought they were done? I have a friend whose son's student loans were forgiven a couple of years ago. Will he too get his debts back again?

I don't really care that much, although RB does. Those student loans are part of our lives together. If they aren't forgiven, they will follow us around until Rocket Boy dies. I believe the payments will be deducted from RB's social security.

Speaking of social security, this week I had a long call with a woman from that agency to set me up as the twins' Representative Payee. Starting in October, when RB's payments start, they too will get money, about $700/month each, deposited into special accounts that I have to set up for them next week. I am not allowed to use the money to take a trip to Tahiti (this was her example) or otherwise spend it on myself. If Teen A goes out for football (also her example), I could use some of his money to pay for equipment. If Teen B goes on the band trip in March that he doesn't want to go on, I could use some of his money to pay for that. But otherwise I have to just save the money and give it to them when they turn 18 -- or graduate from high school, it wasn't quite clear. (The money stops when they turn 18 or graduate, whichever comes last, so that'll be May 2026.) Since the total could be as much as $14,000, it seems like a bad idea to just hand it to them -- Teen A will probably blow all of his on video games -- but that's the law.

I'm starting to think that I should sign up for social security too, get in on all this free money. But if RB does get this contract job, we won't need more income, in fact, it could be a problem for our taxes. So I'll just wait, at least until my "full retirement age" (67 -- three more years).

***

This was mostly a bad week. I had multiple interactions with people related to the young woman whose BMW I rear-ended last Sunday. First her dad called, and then her dad's "personal assistant," a man who said he also acts as the young woman's "fun uncle" when her CEO dad is out of town, which is often. It turned out that repairing the small dent and two scratches on the car's bumper would cost over $2100, because the whole bumper has to be replaced. So I said that was too much for me to come up with right now, and they should just go through insurance. 

It's not that we don't have $2100, it's just that this is not a good time to hand over $2100. With Rocket Boy leaving his job, and some uncertainty about where our income will be coming from for a while, plus possibly having to pay for our own health insurance for a month or perhaps more, plus the fact that we still don't have a functional furnace (it got down into the 40s last night), plus a big credit card bill this month due to a 6-month-old $1300 medical bill of RB's that popped up all of a sudden, plus whatever I've forgotten about... I can't be handing out checks for $2100 to little rich girls. RB talked to our insurance agent and she said it's likely that our insurance will go up $500/year for five years, due to this claim. Although that's stupid, it's not much more than the $2100 I would have to pay now, plus we get to spread it out over five years.

Normally I would have just paid the $2100, but our situation just feels unstable right now.

Anyway, getting all these phone calls really stressed me out. Even after I told them to go ahead and make an insurance claim, the "fun uncle" still called me and left a message about some problem they were having with the insurance. I didn't understand the message and decided to ignore it -- how am I supposed to sort out their insurance problems? I suspected that they wanted me to pay the deductible, which I was not going to do (they'll get it back eventually). And he hasn't called back. But I'm not convinced I've heard the last from that icky family.

I shouldn't call them icky. I know a lot about them now, due to internet sleuthing. They may live in an enormous house south of Denver, which according to Zillow is 8785 square feet with 8 bathrooms worth $3.5 million, and the dad has donated money to a Republican candidate. But hey, I'm sure they're lovely people.

I'm now terrified to drive, naturally. I only went to the grocery store once this week. Today was Starbucks day, and I refused to park in that parking lot. We parked in the main Basemar parking lot instead and walked over to Starbucks, Teen B complaining all the way. As we walked past the Starbucks parking lot, I saw a car backing out and another car honking at it, and I shuddered.

I'm trying to think of places I could walk to, rather than drive.

***

One nice thing happened this week -- my old high school friend Z'bet came for a short visit. That was Tuesday morning. I had a parent support group meeting scheduled for 11 am, but I decided not to tell Z'bet about it. She ended up leaving right around 11 am (to drive on to Nebraska), but at that point I didn't want to go to the meeting, I wanted to hang around home and think about our conversation.

I hadn't seen her in 27 years, since she helped me move from Ann Arbor to Boulder back in July 1997. She drove the rental truck and I drove my little Toyota, with my old cat Edward yowling in the seat beside me. That's a long time, 27 years, but also, important things happened to both of us during that time. She had just gotten married a month or two before the trip, but in 2004 (I think?) her daughter was born. I got married 5 years after the trip and then in 2008 the twins were born. So when we did the trip she was just barely married and I hadn't even met Rocket Boy, and neither of us were parents yet. Now her daughter is in college and my sons are juniors in high school. We're very different people, because parenthood changes you. 

But at the same time we're also exactly the same as we always were. It was so so fun to spend a couple of hours talking with her. She retired from her teaching job a few years ago, so we're both retired, I guess, although I keep thinking I might go back to work someday. I suppose that idea is getting less and less likely.

Toward the end of our conversation I managed to tell her how important she'd been to me in high school. We were both part of a large nerd friend group, managed by her. Her "management" consisted of being welcoming to absolutely anyone who stopped by at lunch (we all ate together), even people who were just completely beyond the pale. She also was always checking in with people, making sure everyone was OK. And all summer long she had pool parties on Friday afternoons, giving everyone a chance for some socializing once a week. I told her I thought the good behavior that she modeled kept everyone in the group on their best behavior and made high school a happier place for everyone. 

I'm glad I got the chance to tell her that. I hope we'll see each other again, but you never know.

After she left I spent some time thinking about people's lives and what I've done with mine and what I still want to do. The older I get, the clearer it gets, although often I feel as though I should strive for more. I want to read and write, that's primary, and I want to go outside and look at birds and trees and plants. I want to finish raising the twins and stay on good terms with them, I want to have fun with Rocket Boy, and I want to stay in touch with my family and friends, what's left of them. I want to vote Democratic in every election. I'd like to travel, but it doesn't have to be anything exotic -- whatever we can afford to do is fine. 

I feel as though I am no longer a driving force in the world, if I ever was. Probably I never was. This comes up when I'm reading the New Yorker. There are often very depressing articles about terrible things that are happening in the world (Israel, Ukraine, domestic terrorism, climate change nightmares), and I often skim those articles, or even skip them altogether. Then I feel guilty: you should pay attention to these terrible things, I tell myself. And then I ask myself, why? What am I going to do about them? I'll continue to vote for Democrats (and subscribe to the New Yorker, so that it can keep running those articles) and hope for the best.

I do feel that I should still find a way to "contribute" to the world -- volunteer work, or being a substitute teacher, or something like that. Maybe some such opportunity will present itself. Or maybe I will go on the way I have been. Either way, I don't think the world will care. I am feeling superfluous. I suppose that's part of growing older.

***

Well, here comes the last full week of September. I've pretty much given up trying to get ready for Rocket Boy. It's all I can do to keep the kitchen clean and the clothes washed and the litter boxes scooped. I am going to try to make a Goodwill run before he gets here, but not much more than that. At some point this medicine has got to stop making me feel so bad... but I don't know when that will be.

Maybe I will feel better if the BMW owner's people stop calling me. 

Rocket Boy called on Friday and asked me to look through the boxes of books he brought home the week before -- for a library book he couldn't find that was overdue. Sure enough, there it was in a box. I pulled it out and mailed it back to the St. Louis public library on Saturday.

Baby Kitty has a nail-clipping appointment on Monday, and I must go to the credit union and get those special bank accounts set up and then call social security back and give them the account numbers. I think that's all I have scheduled for the week. Next Sunday is Sillers' birthday -- she will be 7. And next weekend is a three-day weekend -- the Monday is a teacher day off, work day, something like that.

Looking out the window I see the clouds have mostly gone and the sky is a brilliant blue. I love early fall, such a pretty time.

Strange September

Well, this day hasn't gone the way I thought it would. Here it is almost 4 pm and I'm just starting my post. I may not write much today, because I'm completely discombobulated by something that happened earlier -- I hit a car in the Starbucks parking lot! I'm fine, my car is fine, Teen B is fine, the other driver (probably a very young CU student) is fine, but her little BMW (parked illegally) now has a brand-new dent. So I will be paying for this, I'm sure, and we will have to see what that involves. I called my insurance company and they told me not to make a report unless I'm claiming damages, which I'm not. (I studied the back of my car carefully -- there are scratches on both sides, but nothing bad, and no dents. The car is, after all, 17 years old.) I just have to wait for a phone call from the insurance adjuster. And then wait for our car insurance to go up even more. Maybe. It didn't go up after Rocket Boy's car was hit in St. Louis a year and a half ago, and that was very expensive. But this was my fault, more or less, so it may be different.

I've gotten less comfortable driving recently. I go out of my way to avoid it if I can, and I take roundabout routes to avoid anything I find scary. I've always been a nervous driver, but it's getting worse. This experience isn't going to help.

My main feeling when it happened was embarrassment. I couldn't believe I'd done that. I looked behind me before I backed out, but I didn't see her -- she was slightly to my right -- but as I backed out, I was backing to the right, because I was planning to go to the left, and I hit the back corner of her car. So dumb. And so dumb of her to be parked there, illegally, in the "no parking" zone. Grrr.

I'm also embarrassed because she has all my contact information: a photo of my license, a photo of my insurance information, my phone number. My address. My height. My eye color. I feel exposed. You wouldn't think someone who writes a blog could be bothered by "exposure," but the blog is anonymous and hardly anyone reads it. This experience with the car is different.

Memories of other minor car accidents keep coming back to me. A few years ago, someone rear-ended me. I was turning right onto 30th and I stopped -- because someone was coming -- but the person behind me didn't. He was terribly apologetic, wanted to give me all his information, etc., but I said no, because there wasn't any noticeable damage and it didn't seem worth worrying about. That's probably where some of the scratches on the back of my car came from, lol.

And this summer someone scraped the side of my car. There are all these white marks on the left side. It was in a parking lot and I wasn't there at the time and the person didn't leave a note. It didn't seem very important to me, but then, my car is 17 years old. It'll be 18 in November.

All afternoon I've felt like crying, but I can't because I have to be Mom and not freak out the twins. I've talked to Rocket Boy twice, trying to get some comfort. The first time, right in the middle of my story, he had to get off the phone because his car was misbehaving and he needed to disconnect and reconnect the battery. The second time, right in the middle of my story again, I had to get off the phone because Teen A chose that moment to accidentally pull a shelf out of the refrigerator door, sending bottles flying. 

Emailing my sisters did help. Thanks, guys. Gals. Whatever.

***

OK, now it's almost 6 pm and I've hardly written anything. Let's do a Mounjaro update.

• Weight the morning I took my first shot: 254.6
• Weight 2 weeks ago: 239
  
• Weight last Sunday: 241.4
• Weight this morning (after 13+ weeks on Mounjaro): 237.4
  

So I'm 17.2 lbs down in a little over 13 weeks, for an average of 1.3 lbs per week, and I got rid of last week's little blip upwards. I saw my doctor on Monday and she was very pleased, both with my weight loss and with the reduction in my A1c (from 7.7 to 6.7).

That's all good, but it wasn't a good eating week. I had terrible sugar cravings. I had bought myself a lot of peppermints and mint Mentos, and this week I finished them all off. Friday was the worst day, after Rocket Boy left to drive back to St. Louis. Could not stop eating. A diabetic is not supposed to sit around stuffing herself with candy! It was much worse than my cravings used to be before I started taking Mounjaro. It was as bad as they've ever been in my life, although I've never had this craving for pure sugar, not chocolate. Very very strange. I don't know how I managed to lose weight while also gorging on sugar, but whatever.

I feel better today, not so crazy (despite -- or because of? -- the car accident).

Let's see, what else happened this week? Rocket Boy arrived, dumped some stuff, and left a few days later. For once I didn't get upset when he left, because I knew we'd see him again in a few weeks. 

We went out to dinner for his 70th birthday on Thursday at the Boulder Dushanbe Teahouse. Teen B had been there before, with his dad, for tea, but we don't think Teen A had ever been there. The hostess looked down her nose at us: "Four walk-ins?" but then found us a nice table outside, where I always like to sit in the summer. Teen A looked around in horror and then whispered to me, "It's a Miss R--- restaurant," Miss R. being his language arts teacher last year (and Teen B's teacher this year). I have met Miss R. and also read some of the things she's written, and yes, I agreed, it was definitely a Miss R. restaurant. So then we kind of made a joke out of that, looking around for people who might turn out to be Miss R. or perhaps a relative of hers. This helped calm Teen A down.

The food was good (I had the Indian Thali, ate maybe half of it), and then we went home and had ice cream cake from Sweet Cow, which was a bit too rich for me, even though I only had a sliver.

***

So now I have perhaps 2 weeks until Rocket Boy comes back for good, and I have to figure out what I want to get done during that time. It would be a good idea to throw a whole lot of things away and clean up the mess in the desk room, but I know probably neither of those things will happen. I guess I will just try to chip away at them both, but mostly I want to enjoy my free time. The one thing I'm not looking forward to (about Rocket Boy coming home) is that I will lose my private time, my quiet space when I can be in the desk room by myself and write. Rocket Boy is like me -- he likes to spend most of his time sitting at the computer. And this room is so small that when we're both in here together, we hear every click of the other person's keyboard. When I get in the zone, I stop hearing him, but it's hard to get in the zone without some private time first.

We'll work something out -- we'll have to -- but I think it's likely that I will be the one who gives up the most. If he gets/takes this job that's in the works, he'll be working at home most of the time. I will just have to figure something out.

I still want him to come home!

Things are happening

Oh my goodness, things are happening. Rocket Boy is at this moment driving home -- not permanently, but with his first load of stuff. He decided he wouldn't be able to bring it all at once, so he is making two trips. Yesterday when I talked to him he was packing, and I urged him to leave that day, maybe get 200 miles under his belt, stay overnight near Kansas City, whatever. I don't know what he ended up doing, because we missed his calls when we were out to dinner, and when I called him back later he didn't answer. So he might have been calling to tell me he hadn't left yet! But I'm sure he's on the road now and we'll hear from him tonight.

Knowing he would be home next week kind of threw a monkey wrench into my plans for the month, but it's OK. I didn't feel well enough to do much of anything this past week. On ONE day I did what I'd planned -- Monday, before I took my shot. I spent 15 minutes cleaning up the area around the entryway and put away my suitcase. That's it. I did my normal stuff throughout the week: dishes and laundry and shopping and cooking (some cooking, anyway). But I couldn't seem to do anything else. This drug, Mounjaro, is not my friend.

In addition, I didn't lose weight this week, I gained! True, I think it had to do with a little constipation problem I've been having (which may be solved now, I'll skip the details).

• Weight the morning I took my first shot: 254.6
• Weight last week: 239
  
• Weight this morning (after 12+ weeks on Mounjaro): 241.4

So instead of 15.6 lbs, I'm only 13.2 lbs down in a little over 12 weeks. If I were on Weight Watchers, this would have been very upsetting. But because I'm on Mounjaro, it's kind of like, oh well, I'll be down again next week. I liked being in the 230s (and I was for most of the week, just this little blip up today), but I like the low 240s too. Much better than 261.2, which is what I weighed on May 12th.

Plus, to be honest, Mounjaro is my friend. I got bloodwork done this week in preparation for seeing my doctor tomorrow. My A1c went from 7.7 to 6.7! That is a really good drop. I'd like it to go down further, maybe to 5.7, but it might, if I keep this up. So I guess I will keep taking Mounjaro. But I really don't enjoy this drug. 

I am interested to see what my blood pressure is tomorrow at my appointment. If it's down, I might mention the possibility of dropping my blood pressure med. Not that it bothers me. I looked at some lists of common side effects of Losartan and I don't think I have any of them. It's a low-key drug. It's just the idea of losing a med that is appealing. My total cholesterol is down to 111, but I've already brought up the idea of dropping Rosuvastatin and my doc said no, because it also helps prevent stroke in diabetics.

I just feel like I take so many pills! 

Every morning I take:

• 2 Metformin
• 1 5mg Rosuvastatin
• 1 CoQ10, to lessen the muscle pain side effects of the Rosuvastatin (not that I've ever noticed any)
• 1 Vitamin B complex OR 1 Vitamin D (I alternate -- the B complex is for my hair and the D is for all the things D is good for, not that I've ever been low in D, but you know...)
  

Every evening I take:

• 2 Metformin
• 1 50mg Losartan
• 1 10mg Loratadine (generic Claritin)
• 1 400mg Citracal petite
  

In other words, of my 10 daily pills, 4 are Metformin, which I still need, 2 are optional but I don't really want to drop them (the vitamins, the CoQ10), 1 is fairly necessary (the allergy med), 1 is a good idea and I probably should take more (the calcium), 1 is a med I've been told I can't drop (the Rosuvastatin), and just 1 is a med I might someday be able to drop (the Losartan).

So, you know, probably I'm going to go on taking all 10 of these, unless I can get my blood pressure down far enough to drop the Losartan -- and it won't be tomorrow.

I guess when you're old you just take pills.

***

There's a chance Rocket Boy might show up late today, but I think it's a remote one. Much more likely we'll see him tomorrow, possibly tomorrow night. Still, just in case, I'm trying to do some cleaning today. So far I've spent 15 minutes on the living room and 15 minutes on the kitchen. Still to come: our bedroom, the bathroom, and the desk room. I also need to work on homework with the kids. Sundays are not a day of rest around here, although I do find writing this blog relaxing.

Rocket Boy's 70th birthday is this week, on Thursday. He might start driving back that day, just to spite me, but if he's here we should have some sort of celebration. How do you throw a party for someone who hates birthdays and is absolutely horrified to be turning 70? I'll never forget his 59th birthday, which was the day of the flood. But that's kind of how he views every birthday. After raising the twins to this point, he understands that birthdays can be nice things, and so he's a little more accepting of birthday traditions. But he still doesn't like his birthday, not one bit.

I got him a silly card. I'll get a cake. That's probably all we should do.

***

I guess I don't have much more to write today. Not much happened this week, and we're just in waiting mode, waiting for Rocket Boy to get here. The hummingbirds have been going crazy, drinking sugar water like maniacs. They're getting ready for their flight to southern Mexico, maybe even Guatemala. My understanding is that the guys at the feeder now may not have spent the summer here -- they may have been up in Wyoming or Idaho, and they're on their way south, stopping at my feeder. Meanwhile, I ran out of sugar! I had to make only half a cup of sugar water, because I didn't have a quarter cup of sugar. Teen B and I went to Costco after that and bought, among other things, a 10-pound bag of sugar. It'll probably get me through my Christmas baking.

September is always a month of new beginnings (and endings, with the hummers leaving), but this year it feels truly fraught. Rocket Boy moving home, quitting his job, possibly starting a new one in October (I'll write more about that when it's more sure). It makes me feel happy, but incredibly unsettled.

By next Sunday, Rocket Boy will be back in St. Louis for two more weeks and I'll be trying to figure out how to spend those weeks.