Rant #3,134: Quicksand

Another crazy night of sleep for me last night.

Another nightmare, another period of restlessness, and when I finally got to sleep, I slept, and overslept, and thus, the lateness of this Rant.

I firmly believe that the added pressures of what is going on over here—my mother’s condition, and now my wife’s situation, and some other things—is having a major impact on my psyche, and it really is not enabling me to relax during the optimum time for relaxation, which means bedtime.

My mother’s situation is pretty static.

It is what it is, and it really isn’t going to ever get any better; in fact, it will probably get much worse.

But she has her days, and yesterday, she seemed to be as chipper as could be, mainly because she actually ate something yesterday, including for dinner.

Food provides the nutrients one needs to get through the day, and you could see a definite change in her yesterday from prior days, where she ate minimally at best.

My wife is getting better by the day, and although she is getting hit with paperwork and other things related to her head injury, she is as bored as can be, ready to take on the world again, but as I mentioned the other day, the doctor basically told her “not just yet.”

She had another CAT Scan yesterday, and I am sure it will show great improvement from the first CAT Scan she had, which showed the damage to her skull from the fall she had.

She is feisty, wants to resume her activities, but I don’t think she will be able to, at least fully, for some time.

You don’t fool with such injuries, so she is just going to have to bide her time and let her body heal.

I think this is all playing out in my mind, and since I am in overdrive during the day froim everything I have on my plate, it is very difficult to turn it off at night, and that is why I am not sleeping like I should and why I am having nightmares on top of everything else.

The one nightmare I had last night that I remember, at least partly, involved my son and myself.

He was much younger than he is today, and we were going to an amusement park and he was really acting up big time, and was totally uncontrollable.

There were several incidents during the nightmare, but the one that I remember fully was that he put his face into the dirt and rubbed his face fully into the dirt, and then he took his face out of the dirt and smiled at me.

I then woke up in a huff.

I have no idea what the dream means, because my son has been a “Rock of Gibraltar” though all of what is happing with my mother and my wife.

When he was younger, he used to act up in certain situations that he felt uncomfortable in, but due to his own maturation, and yes, due to the proper drug therapy related to his developmental disability, we really haven’t had the least bit of a problem with him at all for several years.

I like to think that is more his own maturation than what any pill is doing for him, but bringing me back to a time when he was a bit of a problem made my nightmare even more unsetting to me, so unsettling that I had to move myself to the living room to sleep rather than try to sleep in the bed that I had the nightmare in.

And that is where I slept, and finally slept well, for about two hours, sleeping so well that I overslept.

I guess that there is just so much going on in my extended family right now—I am only telling you a portion of the full story—that this is the way my mind handles it all, even though it is quite unsettling.

I know I—and we--will get through all of this in due time, and yes, I am trying to do some things for myself that will make things calmer, at least for me.

There is a record show coming up in my community, and I plan to go to it sometime on Sunday, an activity that I find pretty relaxing.

And then I digitize whatever I buy so that I can listen to the music in the car, and I find that entire process—from creating the digital files to listening to them in the car—very relaxing.

I already listen to stuff in the car that I digitize, so my time in the car—including driving my son back and forth to work—is kind of relaxing … until I hear a “skip” in what I have digitized, which throws me for a loop.

And then I have work, which is not relaxing, but in a funny way, it gets me away from everything going on around me, so it can be relaxing in a strange sort of way.

But whatever relaxation I get, it doesn’t take away the fact that there is a lot swirling around me right now, involving people that I love, and it does take its toll on you when it is one thing after another after another.

But you can bet that I will get through it all … hopefully in one piece.