when am i?

   So this morning I woke up without prompting and felt actually awake and like I had a brain. I folded up my quilt from its cocoon formation on the sofa and placed it tidily on the back of the chair. I opened the blinds to let in the 7AM  morning light. I marveled over the absolute stillness of the surface of the pond, so windswept and rain-pounded it has been for such a while now.

I ran a brush through my teeth in the bathroom after struggling to read a magazine article without benefit of my reading glasses. I filled up a glass with ice and water, sat down at my desk, took my daily handful of Rx, and began checking some things on the computer.

I had told myself before falling asleep last night that THIS morning I would wake up with energy, enough energy to get something done from my home to-do list — finally! The loss of energy and physical-condition confidence is another of the MS symptoms that rule me daily (& nightly) whether or not the fall-out-on-my-face symptom is making its occasional appearance. The energy drain is one of my biggest challenges and my score against it is very low. It all leaves me as existing on a more internal plane, living out the day to day more in my brain than actuality.

Ah, but today was scheduled to be different, eh? High on the must-do list is hosing off the animal detritus from the back screened porch where either Charlie hangs when we must go somewhere and the outdoor elements seem threatening weather that makes it unhappy to leave him out on his zipline, or, recently where I’ve let my tribe take the air as some expansion from the bedroom/bath they’ve taken over – and Pearl, who is again, still, having the life-dwindling chronic tummy issues, can’t make it into the box. Argh and ugh in both cases. I have the hose set up, ready to go. I have other related chores, which logically should occur in 1-2-3 order in the same general time frame. And thinking (I do too much of) about the physical effort (for me) drain for this almost wears me out in advance.

My excuses for procrastination on this, I don’t dare call it anything else, are almost automatic by now — tired, too tired!; cats are on the porch SO enjoying their sunbaths, I hate to disturb them just now; it’s pouring down rain now!; I’m tired, too tired; I’m job searching; it’s not our addresses turn to use outside water; I’m researching; I’m holding the baby and won’t let go; I’m tired, too tired; I … fill in the blank.

I have always had a struggle with procrastination but usually deal with it by charging ahead and getting done what needs to be done and THEN sitting down and thinking about the excuses. But with the increasing loss of energy that has hit me along with the physical challenges of my other aches and pains, it has become so difficult to put that first step forward to getting things done that I shall, must, eventually do.

This may also be part of the reason that I have yet to start the process of dismantling our home, of sorting out the things to throw away, sell, give away — those things that we won’t any longer be able to afford to take on the journey with us. Some of the pain that feeds the procrastination of that is just downright denial to accept what has happened and is happening and will happen to us much sooner than I can bear to think about. I can’t answer my own questions of what to do with my collected life and that of my parents whose last worldly goods that fell to me are in my care to cherish and then pass on to my descendants. Their ‘things’ (and the books, both collected and written by my parents) matter far more to me than 99.9% of “my” things. Yet I don’t know how, in another month or so, I’ll be able to shelter and protect any of it.

Okay, there go the tears again. Today was not going to be a day with tears, I’d decided. Thinking about all this makes me so fearful and abashed that I snap at Chick on the slightest provocation, which flips her switch, and there we go. The terror punches more drain holes for my energy, and I feel my will seeping out past my feet and into the ground.

But at least it is Saturday, I think, somehow finding the innate energy of Saturday plugging in and giving me a tiny sizzle of a charge as I take a deep breath. Then suddenly, looking at the date/time on my computer — crosschecking it with the schedule on the tv (which I’d deliberately left off) , I realize it is NOT Saturday, it is SUNDAY. 

I am so disconnected with having a structured daily life that I have lost hold of an entire day. When I spoke to the Hospice nurse about Snowy’s massage, I told her it was Monday but instead it was Friday. It all proves, besides my own polychronologic tendencies and natural disregard for straightline time, that time and the organization of it is something we have done to ourselves that is not natural or struggle-free for some of us (me).

And that and a dime will buy me … nothing these days.

p.s. the shame of my confession topped up my tiny battery enough to go fire up the hose and spend the time to ‘blast clean’ the porch. Cats shooed back into their room, and Charlie is bouncing happily on the porch hunting for lizard shadows. And I am utterly, bone deep, soul deep exhausted. It is ridiculous, but it is my life.