What a day!

When the alarm went off at 6:30 I popped out of bed and right into the shower. I thought, "man! I am finally caught up on my sleep and this is the way it used to be!" After the shower I promptly lay back in bed and slept until after 8:00. I was half hour late on Monday morning, and on a day when Pam wasn't there.... Poor Joyce! I am going to repent and make amends to her somehow!

The day went well, except I wore a bad combination of slidey underwear (because I am a sexy, hot mama!) and tights...The tights kept creeping down the slidey undies... I had to be careful and not walk too far without doing some rather unusual hip shakes and reach under the waistband of the skirt tugs! If I hadn't performed the shaking and tugging the tights would have been down to my knees in a zip! At least I have lost more weight since I had the skirt altered and I had room to reach in and grab when necessary! It probably looked very rude and bizarre, but not as bizarre as it would have looked had I had to take little tiny steps and shuffle to the ladies room to take the tights off! Or maybe I would have done one of those graceful things like blithely slipped of my shoes and removed the tights right there, slipped the shoes back on and went on with, "And how much do you want to ask for your Harley Davidson, Mr. Deathman?"

Dad had a very bad day and threatened to commit suicide... I ended up spending the latter part of the afternoon calling his nurse, making sure things are in place to get some action taken on this. She spoke with him a good long while and here is the plan:
She will speak to the night aides about speaking to Dad more respectfully. She says they do not have have much medical knowledge and may not understand that he is only aphasic, but understands everything and is not brain-damaged, nor senile like many of the other patients.
She will speak to the physical therapy manager that Dad does not like therapy treated like "games" He wants to know the purposes of each exercise and what tasks he needs to accomplish in order to go home.
She will get with the dr. on increasing Dad's pain medication. He had already had prior chronic back and neck pain that may have been aggravated by the fall. She is also going to have the dr. consult with Dad's previous dr. about the steroid shots in the spine for helping that pain.
Dad complained that he is cold every night. She got him extra stuff and they set his bed up in a way that he thinks will be warm enough.
Dad talked to her abut how he feels "degraded" by having everything done for him, how he likes to cook for himself and the family and do things and be busy. She said she talked to him about how he needs to consider this temporary and how by cooperating he can get back to that sooner.

I felt much more positive after I spoke with her the second time. A different nurse is there tomorrow, but I plan to call and follow up on how the orders have been changed and make sure I don't need to speak with the dr. myself, etc...

I was pretty tragically demoralized after Heather initially called (she was there today) and said he had told them that he was just going to kill himself, don't bother to put any more pictures on the wall... My headache instantly returned and I was very distracted as I tried to go to Target and pick up my medicine. I forgot my glasses at work and had to drive without them and it was all just kind of shitty. Then when I got home Michael had said he would cook for me, but hadn't found anything he felt like cooking that was enough for both of us. I just had a can of soup, but I really like canned soup, so it was okay.

Now I have two more loaves of bread in the oven. Michael and I were BOTH jonesing for it tonight. Killer sandwich... slice the focaccia bread horizontally into two halves, mix some prepared basil pesto and balsamic vinegar into a sauce and schmear all over one side, fill with sliced fresh mozzarella, sliced tomatoes.... umm whatever. I could imagine it with pepperoncinis or onion or fresh basil or spinach.... then grill until the cheese is all melted. If you have a panini press, this is the time. I just have a skillet. I have thought of heating a second skillet and putting it weighted on the top. Oh - I put some olive oil in the pan first... it made that side of the bread nice and toasty. Yum. I know what's for dinner tomorrow night!

Okay all I'm going to do is take that bread out and get to bed! So nigthy-night.