Insomnia Night Three

Another night and I am wide awake at 2:06 a.m. For the last three nights, I haven't been able to go to sleep and I've ended up awake until dawn. Yesterday, I finally fell asleep around 6:00 a.m. Or should I say, TODAY I finally fell asleep around 6:00 a.m. This is such a problem for me. I am not getting enough sleep and I am sleeping too much in the daytime, throwing off my schedule. Going to yoga at 9:00 a.m. was too much for me today and I skipped it. How am I going to feel tomorrow morning (this morning?) when I have to be at water aerobics at 9 a.m.? 

Today is going to be really tough if I don't fall asleep soon. I have the water aerobics, then a program on colon cancer at Glazier I want to go to at 11, and an appointment with Dr. M. at 2 p.m. I am going to be whipped after all that. Hell, I'm going to be whipped duriiong all that.

Most evenings, I start falling asleep in the living room when we are watching tv and/or I am fiddling with my iPad. I try to stay awake, but it is hard and sometimes I miss hallf the program. That doesn't translate into going to bed and going to sleep though. Before I can go to bed, there are chores to be done. Feed the cats and clean that up, finish the dishwasher and run it, brush and floss my teeth, take medication, give the cats their nighttime treat. By the time I have done all that, I am wide awake AND it is late. Like 12 or 1 a.m. late. And I get into bed and I can't sleep.

I am getting phobic about it. I start worrying that I won't falll asleep and that keeps me awake. Or I start falling asleep and I become self-aware of the progress, which wakes me up. I try tricks, counting, breathing, pretending I am in my chair falling asleep watching tv. It doesn't seem to help. I have some sleeping pills aand I always think I'll take one of them and get a good night's sleep and get back on track, but it is always too late to take the pills by the time I realize that I can't sleep.

I can see what I need to do. Get everythiing finished early in the evening so that when I get tired, I can go to bed and fall asleep. Get on a better schedule, stop staying up until 1 or 2 in the morning on a regular basis. While we were traveling on the West Coast, we got up every morning and got on the road around 8:30 or 9. We traveled and did things all day and went to bed 11-ish. We didn't nap. I didn't have insomnia. We had purposeful days.

I feel that I am adrift. I have lots of things to do but little motivation to do them. I doesn't seem to matter whether I accomplish anything or not. There are rarely any deadlines in my life. But, of course, it does matter. The house is in terrible disarray, still disheveled from the flood last February. FEBRUARY. What is it that makes me not care enough to put my house back together? I don't know. And in the middle of the night, when I can't sleep, that is part of what I am thinking about. Everything I am not doing and everything I need to do and should be doing. 

When morning comes, that is all forgotten. I am adrift again. You know, at 65 I really should have this shit worked out. For all the years after I left the workforce in 1992, my family's schedule defined my life and provided the structure that I lost when I retired from work. The kids are all gone now and since Michael retired, he doesn't have a schedule either. Self-discipline seems to have eluded me. External requirements still get me moving most of the time. But I hate living this way. I hate seeing myself as a failure on this very personal level. I need to change up my life. I wonder how I'm going to do that?

My AROHO Reading

In August 2013, I attended at women writers' retreat at Ghost Ranch sponsored by the A Room of Her Own Foundation (AROHO). During my week there, a videographer named Rebecca Scheckmann taped me reading the opening of my memoir-in-progress, "The Requirements of Love." Today, Rebecca posted the video on YouTube, making it public for the first time. 

Thank you, Rebecca!!

You can see the video at http://youtu.be/XjA-ir2-ecE.

Let me know what you think!

Ciao,

~Lanie

Cheryl Marshall Remembered

I wrote the following Remembrance for Cheryl and read it at her 

Memorial Service on Saturday, September 13, 2014.

Cheryl Marshall was one of my dearest friends. We knew each other for twenty years, we enjoyed Crones together for probably fifteen of them, and we spent uncounted hours in Starbucks. Twice every school year from second grade to twelfth, Cheryl accompanied me to my younger daughter’s ARD meetings, even when they were in Waco! Every December, Cheryl, Dan, Michael, and I went out to dinner for our wedding anniversaries, which were a day apart. Cheryl and I made road trips together, one all the way to Bellingham, Washington to see Bertie Edwards, who many of you know, and one to Dallas to see Eddie Izzard perform.

I guess you could say I knew Cheryl pretty well. And I know that if Cheryl were here, she’d have you all laughing by now. She was seriously funny. She’d probably undertake a pun or two - tell us we’re getting morgue than we bargained for and that we have to do more to urn our keep. If you tried to tell her there was mortal life than puns, she’d just laugh. It was her joy to post a pun on her Facebook page every morning for a friend she especially wanted to cheer up.

And what friends she had. Cheryl was Houston Gran to a couple hundred people all over the globe, on every continent except Antarctica. When I say she was their Gran, it was not just a word. These people loved her, they poured out their hearts to her, they sent her letters and gifts, called her on the phone, came to Houston to have lunch with her. For her 80^th birthday, they sent testimonials about all that Houston Gran had done for their spirits and their hearts. Cheryl loved her Internet family deeply and truly.

Cheryl considered herself Eddie’s Gran, too. Besides the trip to Dallas, Cheryl made a trip to NYC to see him in a play. She owned every DVD of his ever made and then some, but let's not say bootleg. Cheryl and I had tickets to see Eddie on June 30, but she went to the hospital instead of the performance. She was heartbroken to miss him, she loved him so.

She loved children, too, devoted her life to them, as you’ve heard. Special education was not just her vocation, it was her calling. She continued standing up for children after her retirement, attending ARDs as a substitute parent for children in foster care. And there are more families here than just mine whose children Cheryl advocated for tirelessly, refusing to accept a penny for her skill and time.

Before Cheryl was Houston Gran, she was grandmother to the children of her friends and acquaintances, offering a comforting lap, a listening ear, a willingness to engage in childhood games and stories. And who could forget the bag of lollipops she carried? Cheryl never condescended to children and perhaps that is why they loved her so much. In local circles, she was mostly known as Lala, a name she cherished. There was a special place in her heart for her one and only Mazie.

Was Cheryl perfect? No. None of us is perfect. Cheryl was simply so full of love and laughter, compassion and comfort, wit and wisdom, that her imperfections didn’t amount to a hill of beans. I am proud to have been her friend, and I know you are, too.