Maybe not so bad

Three weeks or so ago Mr Footless went through a three day marathon glucose monitoring session that involved among other things two trips into Greeley.
Then we had a meeting with MS diabetic specialist.  For the first time we felt like someone actually understood the weirdness that has been Mr. Footless's daily struggle with control.  Ms Specialist has named Mr. Footless the hardest to control diabetic she has ever encountered.  Suddenly they are politely asking Mr. Footless what he thinks.
 Does he need more or less at this particular time of day?  As we go along the incredible highs and the crashing lows are beginning to smooth out.  We are sneaking up on the thing and it has been eight weeks since we called 911 for blood sugar.  Mr Footless is less likely to be upset with his sugars and we are getting the afternoon highs down.
Now that we are getting that stable there are other things that need attention, because be he never so stable blood sugar wise, Mr. Footless is still going to be 73.
He is still the Mr. Footless we know so well with all the don't touch my stuff and it's all worth mucho money attitude.  He took a bunch of his good stuff up to the auction and got the itemized list of what sold for what....Oh dear look at that.  Cassette tapes sell for five cents each no matter the artist on the cover.  Who would have thought? 
Well, Me for one. 
I think that I might be able to point out to him that it costs more between gas and my missing work to truck the stuff up than he gets in money for the stuff.
Meanwhile he's having memory problems periodically and life is moving on for both of us.  Another day, another problem.

the view from the boat

You don’t know us.  You see us in your offices when we come in together for an update or a check up.  What you see may be the facts but it isn’t us.

Here is a picture of where we are

This is us.  We have been in the boat for a long time and we have kept it afloat for many years longer than anyone could imagine.   We have worked out some ways to keep it afloat that look pretty weird to you.  

The other passenger has some beliefs that may be pretty dysfunctional, at the same time he knows the boat better than anyone else and I trust him to say what will work and what won’t.  He has been right more than he has been wrong.  He is still here in his boat.  He has been riding it for years and been told since he was three that it couldn’t last much longer. So seventy years later the boat has more leaks and the way he has been dealing works less and less well.  It is still his boat and he has managed to keep it afloat.  You have only seen a very small part of the voyage

You have seen more boats than we have, you even have some operating instructions that might help us.  You might even be able to shout some of the instructions to us and we might be able to make use of them.

You, none of you, are in here with us.  The problem as I see it is that no one can tell from outside the boat what conditions are in the boat, and it isn’t a standard boat and never has been.  What works for the standard boat will swamp and sink this one.  I have seen it time and again.

When you inform us that the conditions in the boat can’t be there and that they must be other than we report or have experienced, we think that you have ignored the only source of information about conditions inside the boat that you have.  How much trust do you think that we will give to your instructions when we know from experience that what you ask or tell  or order us to do will swamp the boat?  When the storm is up you are not there.

We in the boat are well aware that the water is rising, more than you in fact because we are sitting in it.  I have the ability to leave it in theory, and like any relationship it’s more complex than that.  I got in this boat for a lot of reasons including a lot of love for the other passenger and I agreed to stay until the boat sank and he went with it.

I have had many opportunities to leave.  I have considered a lot of them.  None of them fit with my sense of honor and my sense of commitment.

 You all may have your ideas about what should be done to keep this boat afloat.  You can tell me things like I am being too controlling and to back off and let him steer.  However, at three AM in the midst of yet another storm, with yet another wave swamping us both, with my partner incapacitated, You are not there and will not be there and have no interest in ever being there.

 I am there and in the night watches I am the one who makes the decisions.  That includes whether to stave in the bottom of the boat and swim away.  You can’t imagine how often I have considered that option.  If I did who would know after all?

At present I am working hard to construct a viable life vest to keep me afloat when the boat sinks.  It will sink. We both know this.  I understood that from the time I got in the boat.  I have chosen to stay with it until the natural end, whatever that is, because I have to look at myself in the morning and I want to like what I see. 
 I wouldn’t like me if I bailed at this point.

 It would be really helpful to have some of you watching from shore.   I would like to know that there was another boat nearby.   It would be useful to know if here is some help that I can trust, to be there as I strike out for shore.  Will I have shelter?  What will conditions on shore be for me?  Will there be someone there to help when I pull up on the sand?
My core beliefs tell me that there will be nothing there for me.  
I know that if I am acting from that place that's exactly what I will get.  So Here the two of us are.  
I don't need judgement about my trip in the boat, it has been a lot better than not mostly.  I just need to know that when my boat sinks with my partner there is a shore to head for and someone with a towel waiting when I hit the sand. 

 

Things That I had forgotten

Weekends are busy for me now.  Weekdays are taken up with clients, and making it from one end to the other without dropping too many balls.  So if I am going to socialize, do personal errands, attend to my own things like arranging my yarn supply and get some easy to manage meals planned and partly cooked it happens on the weekends.
This is a part of normal that I haven't participated in for a long time because of the workpainsleep cycle that is moving into the background instead of taking up the front screen most of the time.
I had forgotten

• that you can do more than one thing in a day
• that some of the looming tasks actually take up very little time preparation wise and can be operating in the background while other things happen.

• that having the stuff set up ahead really can be done as background to the main chore of the day.

I made bread yesterday.  Today I will make a pot roast and spaghetti sauce. Between the two I have enough meals available that I only have to set up some sort of vegetable to eat well.  I had forgotten that the real time amount of time that bread takes is about fifteen minutes spread out over the day.  Mixing the dry rice bread ingredients and setting them in a bag  takes five minutes.  Two hours of preparing ahead makes for fifteen minutes to food all week.
How did I forget this?  I didn't have that much energy or the attention available over the weekend to do it.  If you had seen me sitting reading or staring into space or knitting you would have thought that I was just lazing. What I was doing was sitting in such a haze of exhaustion that I could not think of what I should do to keep things together and make life easier for myself.  Ok. food is in the fridge, dinner and others is available for the week.
I have been away in a far country.  I am back here a bit, and I hope that more of me can show up.

The lovely socks mentioned a few posts back were fussy about what they wanted to be.  After two aborted tries they and I agreed on a relatively simple pattern and we have made it past both the heels.  It can be hard when the yarn has a mind of it's own about what it wants to be.  It's really hard when they let you get a long ways before they let you know it isn't going work.

Aha moment

Life had a look up point on Friday when the trash folks dropped off the new recycle bin.  That sucker is bigger than our trash by about double.  On the top is a list of what does and does not go in. So yesterday I spent a fair amount of time putting all the recycle items that have been hanging about, waiting for the magical day wherein the twinkle fairies will drop their blessings on it, and it can be transported magically to the great God Garbageous in the sky.   The bin holds 65 gallons and is about half full at this point.
Naturally Mr. Footless is remarkably pissed off because he no longer has the control and excuse to keep his heaps and fuss with them.  Among others I emptied a bin that has been sitting on the living room floor for four months because he had an anxiety attack about it being something he had not seen.  My response was "Too Bad."
Mr Footless is considerably less than pleased with me.
Then of course yesterday I caught him red handed in a twisted little piece of ugly called" pick a fight and blame the receiver."  Isn't it funny what people do to keep themselves safe.?

Up date

Two sock (one pair) almost to the pupae stage reduced to larvae once more.  I have one up to the heel.  I like the pattern better. It knits up faster.

umph

What with feeling better I am delightedly rummaging through my bin of sock yarns to decide who gets what  in the way of sockage.  I talked with a friend who reminded me that the enormous bin of yarn is not a liability nor is it a waste.  It is socks in their larval stage.  That settles my conscience about waste, although it doesn't stop me from adding more to the bin.
  I can live with that.  I just sometimes think that it would be nice if my wish for order didn't run directly into my rebellious side.  How do I know that I will want to knit those yarns for that person when I get to the point of it? I don't.  
All the time I spent bagging peoples names with certain sock larvae may well be in vain, because who knows if I will agree to what I thought was good way back when?  At some point All of it will evolve through my needles into warm stuff for feet, the possibility that it is an unlikely color and strange pattern is going to be the luck of the draw.  I knit out of love and not obligation.
I pulled a really wild one out and knitted it up.  It looked rather nice as a skein and better as a ball and then WHEW as the sock itself it was pretty loud.  It was purple and pink and aqua plus green and orange and sparkles.  One of the Guys at the knitting table looked it over and said "Looks like Liberace's bedroom slippers."  well then, that's alright, if a little(!) gaudy. 
Now I am working on a pair in various shades of flame red  absolutely glorious and past the heels.  I don't like the pattern, and like it less as I go. Do I morph it into something else, rip it or continue?  The debate rages mostly in my head.  I think that it will do better with another pattern.  Phoo.  

bZZZZAP!

Yesterday started out badly. I was up by 2:45 and that is AM mind you due to Mr Footless's blood sugar being 911 low (37). I had the following conversation with an EMT
"Ma'am, would you come up here and convince your husband to eat some glucose?"
"No."
Someone grabbed him at that point and I hear the whispered ( hissed) "The reason that we are here is because she can't manage it herself and she would if she could." 
I hate new cert EMTs with a fine and burning passion.
So Mr Footless trundled off to the emergency room, and I went off to work.
Then after work I had a hair cut and did the Friday errands. I got home by four thirty and went upstairs to check in....... and called 911 again Blood sugar (23).
At that point I called a friend and asked myself to dinner.  There is no way of describing my state of mind except to say that it was Not Good.
Today I was doing the normal Saturday chores and heading over to return some sock needles that I can't use when the phone rang with a desperate call from someone I will call Friday's Child. 
She asked me to come over and help with problem unspecified.  I sailed over and spent what had to be the most uncomfortable hour and a half imaginable with five hostile people all trying to make themselves understood and to get their own way at the same time.  I am sure that I was supposed to be there, and I am sure that I did what I was supposed to do, all the same I am clueless as to what that was or what in the name of the creator it was about.
I missed the great television transfer scheduled for the afternoon and Mr. Footless was miffed because I disappeared with the truck when he wanted the helpful guys to carry out and load a bunch of schmutter.  Sorry. I called and he didn't answer his phone.
I feel like I put my finger into the light socket of the universe and my newly shorn hair is standing on end.
Now I am really wondering about tomorrow's Meeting.