« September 2012 | Main | November 2012 »
While I was making breakfast this morning, I thought, "I'm tired... and depressed." I quickly rethought it however (which is a new thing for me), and realized that I wasn't depressed. The weather is beautiful, I have lots of time today to get the things done that I've planned, dear husband is working at home so we'll be able to eat lunch together, my breathing is much better today, and I even slept well last night.
I am tired, though.
The breathing is the key part. Due to mixups with both the new mail-order pharmacy and my doctor's office and also due to the Romney campaign, which filled up my answering machine with unneccessary political ads, leaving no room for the pharmacy message, I didn't get the Flovent (maintenance inhaler, used daily, which keeps my lungs open) which I ordered at the beginning of October so that it would be here when we got back from vacation last week. Because there was no message, I didn't realize that it was missing for two days.
The Flovent inhaler that I had was almost gone by mid-week, and it never works well when it gets down to the end. After a week of using an almost-empty inhaler, my asthma got really bad Sunday night so I didn't get much sleep. Even though I got an emergency prescription from a local pharmacy yesterday, it takes a few days to build up in my body and keep my airways open. I tried taking naps yesterday, but the only one that worked was when I was sitting in the recliner. You know when you've just gotten over a really bad bout of the flu and breathing seems like a chore? That's where I am today.
I did manage to sleep last night so I feel better today, but still very tired. When I get depressed, of course, I feel tired, but I've also ended up assuming that I'm depressed just because I'm unusually tired. I've started to try to turn this around by trying to look at which one is the cause and which one is the effect. If I couldn't appreciate the beautiful sunshine today and the autumn flowers blooming, then I would be depressed.
Older son says that he just doesn't pay attention to anything he thinks about emotions after 10 pm, and I'm trying to do that too. Late at night, I often assume I'm depressed just because I'm so tired - then I try to figure out why I'm depressed rather than just going to bed. Unfortunately, experience has shown that, if I go to bed before midnight, I end up wide awake at 3 am, and I hate being wide awake at 3 am. Sometimes, I'll fudge, round up, and go to bed at 11:30.
I should have some thoughtful conclusion to this post, but I'm too tired. I included a photo from vacation - those are the gardens at the Biltmore Estate. My carpal tunnel is getting better so I may be able to go back to the vacation photo posts I started before the carpal tunnel.
I have a number of blog posts in my head and lots of vacation photos on my computer... and carpal tunnel in my hand, which means that I can't spend much time on the computer.
However, I have been spending lots of time reading. Last night, I started reading Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader, by Anne Fadiman. She used to be the editor for The American Scholar, and dear husband eventually dropped his subscription (after she was forced out) because it was no longer thoughtful or beautiful. He loved the American Scholar under editor Joseph Epstein (the editor before Anne Fadiman who wrote under the name Aristides) because it was thoughtful and sharp-witted. He loved it under Anne Fadiman because it was thoughtful and beautiful.
Ex Libris is about her lifelong love of books, and it's wonderful.
I enjoyed the first essay, Marrying Libraries, so much that I read it out loud to the guys after lunch today - sitting outside in the warm, North Carolina, October sunshine by all the hundreds of chrysanthemum flowers. Here's the opening of the essay:
A few months ago, my husband and I decided to mix our books together. We had known each other for ten years, lived together for six, been married for five. Our mismatched coffee mugs cohabited amicably; we wore each other's T-shirts and, in a pinch, socks; and our record collections had long ago miscegenated without incident, my Josquin Desprez motets cozying up to George's Worst of Jefferson Airplane , to the enrichment, we believed, of both. But our libraries had remained separate, mine mostly at the north end of our loft, his at the south. We agreed that it made no sense for my Billy Budd to languish forty feet from his Moby-Dick , yet neither of us had lifted a finger to bring them together.
We had been married in this loft, in full view of our mutually quarantined Melvilles. Promising to love each other for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health--even promising to forsake all others--had been no problem, but it was a good thing the Book of Common Prayer didn't say anything about marrying our libraries and throwing out the duplicates. That would have been a far more solemn vow, one that would probably have caused the wedding to grind to a mortifying halt. We were both writers, and we both invested in our books the kind of emotion most people reserve for their old love letters. Sharing a bed and a future was child's play compared to sharing my copy of The Complete Poems of W. B. Yeats , from which I had once read "Under Ben Bulben" aloud while standing at Yeats's grave in the Drumcliff churchyard, or George's copy of T. S. Eliot's Selected Poems , given to him in the ninth grade by his best friend, Rob Farnsworth, who inscribed it "Best Wishes from Gerry Cheevers." (Gerry Cheevers, one of Rob's nicknames, was the goalie of the Boston Bruins, and the inscription is probably unique, linking T. S. Eliot and ice hockey for the first time in history.)
Our reluctance to conjugate our Melvilles was also fueled by some essential differences in our characters. George is a lumper. I am a splitter. His books commingled democratically, united under the all-inclusive flag of Literature. Some were vertical, some horizontal, and some actually placed behind others. Mine were balkanized by nationality and subject matter. Like most people with a high tolerance for clutter, George maintains a basic trust in three-dimensional objects. If he wants something, he believes it will present itself, and therefore it usually does. I, on the other hand, believe that books, maps, scissors, and Scotch tape dispensers are all unreliable vagrants, likely to take off for parts unknown, unless strictly confined to quarters. My books, therefore, have always been rigidly regimented...
We got my new computer in June, just as rehearsals for the musical were getting busy. I've been gradually getting the computer up to full use. Dear husband found the software for getting photos off of my point and shoot camera so I can now post quick photos like this one of Tamlin (the DSLR photo software was easier to find). I've been putting music on the new computer so these are CDs that I haven't had time to put away (and tapes I've been listening to in the car that I haven't had time to put away).
Tamlin finds the strangest places to snuggle up and sleep.
