Post 48 of 92

There were purple bruises under my eyes this morning.  I looked at them with not quite dispassionate interest.  I used to look at others with dark circles and feel a fleeting sympathy.  How awful, I thought in my youthful arrogance, not to be able to sleep well.  Now I know.  Strangely, unless it is a night with only 2 or 3 hours sleep, I seem to function all right.  Perhaps the dragging sensation of a loss of energy is too familiar now to be noticed. 

The strange sensations experienced during the night is part of a whole other world, another existence of which I am now too aware.  I would have sworn one of the cats had scratched the inside of my left arm midway between wrist and elbow.  It burned and stung for hours.  I looked for the telltale marks in the dawn light.  My skin was unmarked.  How odd.

I used to never notice my hair, past shoulder length, getting tangled around my neck in the night.  Now I understand why long haired women pile their hair in a top-of-the-skull ponytail.   I seem to spend half the night unwrapping hair, lifting hair, rearranging hair.  

I listen to Richard's breathing, his snoring, his conversations, his occasional shouts and laughter.  I don't wake him unless he gets too exuberant and talks too loudly for too long.  Odd that the soft Parkinson's voice he has during waking hours gives way to his normal speaking voice at night.

The cats are either good company or pains in the arses.  Natalia, the tiger cat with the hair trigger purr, is my boon companion.  She doesn't seem to mind my constant changes of position, my kicking legs, my pillow gymnastics.  She rides the blanket waves with a constant purr and allows my draping hand to find comfort in the softness of her fur.  She often rubs my fingers with her whisker pads, over and over again.  If I pet her back, knowing just the right places to massage or knuckle rub, she gets overexcited and bites me.  It is a sign of affection and a small price to pay for her company.

So, Monday afternoon.  Before me are the should do's, a list of cleaning, gardening and vehicle jobs to make even the most assiduous chatelaine depressed.  So I don't do them.  I'm a piecemeal cleaner.  Save for the morning blitz; vacuuming (3 cats, a dog and 2 humans in one house, we'd drown in hair if I didn't), kitty boxes, bed making, laundry doing or folding, I don't do much in the way of projects anymore.  I clean one window, vacuum one car, weed one section of a garden, tidy up one corner.  One little bit at a time does, barely, keep total chaos at bay. 

This is the new reality.  Richard tries to help, wants to help but usually makes a project more complicated and more time consuming than it would be if he didn't.  He washed dishes without water the other night.  I feel like an overzealous employer having to double check his work.  The work ethic is still there, the work know how has long fled.

It's a big change for me, Miss Anal Retentive, Everything Has to be Perfectly In Order.  Now I know time is worth more than having a super clean house.  If I want to write, yoga and learn guitar than I have to forego Miss House Perfect. 

So far so good.  As time goes on and Richard requires more than...well, we'll see.  People say there's home help for bathing and feeding.  God damn it.