Nervous Puddle

Thanks to a third medication added mid-last week, my athsma is finally calming down, and my fluish sypmtoms are pretty much disappated. But now I have side-effects at their peaks. In short, I feel like a nervous puddle. My breathing treatments make my heart race, my antibiotics make it nearly impossible to fall asleep without Nyquil, the Nyquil makes me useless by morning, and the Prednisone makes me feel a little crazy. My thoughts are disjointed, I can't seem to make a decison, I'm exhausted but can't sleep. When a nap fails during the day, I give into Caribou or Starbucks, and then I go absolutely crazy trying to get things done while I'm on my caffeine mountaintop. My craft room, which I have been trying to reign in some sort of control for the past two months, was organized in one evening. Last night I tackled the mudroom closet, piling tupperwares of paintcans and dropcloths to the ceiling. And I'm proud to announce that my closet and the pantry, mentioned in previous blog entries, are still dance-around-in clean.

I have a day of organizing things like this, and then I crash the next day. Today was one of the next-days. I found myself crumpled on the stairway, unable to get enough motivation to haul myself upstairs for a shower. Once I finally got it together, it took me an inordinate amount of time to get the diaper bag ready to run errands for the day. I double-checked the number of extra burp rags we had with us like three times. It was attention to ridiculous details like this that made big details harder to pay attention to. Like, oh, I dunno, closing the locked door before grabbing the car keys. Yep, that's what I did. Why I assumed that Michael, whose arms were fully laden with Oliver in his carseat, would take the key with his non-free hands, is anyone's guess. But I did, and slammed the locked door closed. By the grace of God, Oliver's Auntie Val, who lives 3 miles down the road, was home and rescued us with the spare key, and Ollie was bundled enough to withstand waiting 10 minutes in the cold car.

I myself was revelling in the cold of the garage. This past week, I thought that I was having fevers every day; somehow, my thermometer would read temps like 95 degrees when I was sweating profusely, and 98 degrees two minutes later. Naturally, I bought a third thermometer thinking that I had two crappy ones. No difference. It has occurred to me, though, that my own little heat waves have begun at a time when I'm also loosing some of my hair. As some of you may know, the hormones in pregnancy make your hair mop-thick and your nails as tough as, well, nails. Unfortunately, one vice I cannot let go of is biting my nails, and coincidenctally, my hair is already thick. But the extra hair falls out anyway, and I'm beginning to think that this occurs when hormones shift even closer back to normal. Hormones shifting around, hot flashes...my gosh, am I menopausal? Just last week I wondered if my nesting instincts were telling me I was pregnant again. Women's bodies are weird.

So I'm sweating, I'm loosing my hair, and I can't think straight or sleep like a normal person. Tonight I'm downsizing from Nyquil to Melatonin, a gentler sleep aid, in hopes that the scattered clouds in my brain will become partly sunny tomorrow. At least Oliver hasn't seemed to mind my craziness. To him, it's just another day.