Up early, hope to keep moving

8/15/06 Tuesday
It is 3:45 in the morning. I just woke up and knowing it would be hard to go back to sleep got up and fixed a pot of Bob coffee, grabbing the first cup while it was still being made. I got allot of sleeping in yesterday so I suppose that is why I am awake and semi alert this morning. This cup of strong coffee should take care of the semi alert part.

Looking in my calendar I see that Cherie made some notes of things I need to do. That is such a huge help for me cause if she just asked me I would forget. The odds of something happening are greatly increased when it is written down. As much as I hate admitting it this brain damage is a disability. Without a written schedule I wander from one distraction to another and little or nothing gets done.

I had another visitor to the blog from the law firm in Omaha that has put me down as recommended reading on their website. I still am amazed at that and hopeful this will help others with traumatic brain injuries. Part of me wonders if it gives a fair perspective for many of the others I have met with TBI are in much worse shape than I am. Yet at the same time everyone who knows tells me how much I have improved over the last five years. This brain is constantly rewiring itself and thus improving. I reckon that will give hope to those readers who have TBI and their parents and caretakers. Hang with it guys, time and compassion mixed with understanding will bring a steady improvement. It just moves so slow that it is hard to see, especially by yourself. Outsiders, who don’t deal with you day to day, can see the improvement better than you. For all of us, brain injured or not, the hardest thing to see is yourself. A good mirror, coming in the form of a friend who tells you the truth, is a valuable tool to help us see ourselves as others do. I am always grateful for those who tell me “Hey, you were wrong”. This was invaluable as I struggled to learn how to act, what is appropriate and what is not.

I started working on the business plan yesterday. The guide Cathy got me sometime in the recent past is a tremendous help but also shows me that I have much research to do. I need to schedule times for me to work on this so it actually gets done.

Later today I will go get tickets to see the musical play “Mama Mia” at the Stranahan Theatre. Cherie and I had talked about it when I told her that I would like to take her. We won’t find as much of this kind of entertainment in West Texas. The population is too low to draw many big name shows and bands. That’s ok as I suspect we will be pretty busy so I want to take advantage of as much as I can while we are here in Toledo. Too bad money is so tight.

I hope my energy level stays up despite my being awake so early. I suspect that I am or was fighting something off cause my pillow was soaking wet last night. I will post this and get on the business plan. Got to stay focused because one distraction and I am off doing something else. This time of day, 3:40 AM, will help cause there are few things to catch my attention now. Time to post. By the way, for the record I am running at a 7 on the Bob scale. That is average, not real good but not slow either. I take what I can get.
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It’s 11:30 now. I got the tickets to Mama Mia. They were $61.00 each. A bit more than I expected but well worth the joy Cherie will get out of it and of course I get to share that joy with her. Can’t go wrong. As I am prone to do I told the ticket lady about how Cherie and I had again found each other. She said it would make a good movie so I told her I was writing a book. I tell everyone that and really intend to but haven’t gotten much done, maybe twenty pages. I’ve got 975 pages on this journal which details much of our love story, at least the part where we get back together. The lady said hearing of our story gave her goose bumps.

I called Nate a little after 10:00 but got his voice mail. He told me to call about nine or ten but he often is up late so I figure he might be still sleeping. Don’t know. I called Cathy and got no answer there so I decided to hook up the trailer and take it over. Just when I was getting done the phone rang. It was Cherie and she said she would be coming home for lunch so I decided to stay home so we cold eat lunch together.

Cherie just got here. Her smile when she saw the tickets was one that melts my heart. Of course her smile always does that anyway. I’ll post this and enjoy lunch.
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Dropped the trailer off at the folks house. Nate wasn’t up so I visited with mom and dad a bit. We talked about the Mama Mia musical I’m taking Cherie to and then about other plays they had seen. After that I loaded up the old wood from the trailer floor so I can dump it in the dumpster at the apartment. I haven’t yet cause they are mowing and it looks like the manager is here from the car in the parking lot. I read my E-mail. I am falling asleep as I sit at this computer. Suppose it is nap time.
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Nate called me at about 3:00. I went over and we discussed what to do. I started brushing the dirt off the angle iron that made up the frame. Then I could see the steel better and what I saw didn’t look good. I got my hammer and started beating on the frame to knock loose the rust. It was an awful lot of rust and the angle iron at the front of the trailer was the worst. I called Nate to look at it and he agreed it didn’t look good. We decided to weld the braces we were already going to install in such a way that they would add support to the rusty section.

I ran to the store to pick up a saw blade for Nate’s circular saw. There was a pack of five blades on sale so I got that. I figure he could use them and besides that he is busting his ass working on the trailer. Jeremy stopped by and brought the tires he was going to sell me for the trailer. Come to find out they were not all the same size so I didn’t get them. I figure it will be two or three months before we head to Texas so we have plenty of time to find some tires. Jeremy helped us a little on the trailer. He is kind of scattered. Jumping from subject to subject and definitely hyper. Doesn’t set still at all. Reminds me of folks who do lots of drugs.

Nate got the support braces welded in and then we cut the Wolmanized 2x12’s to fit in the trailer. With a little manipulative hammer and crowbar work we got the floor in. Nate was still wanting to go but I was getting pretty tired. It was only about three hours we worked on this but it doesn’t seem to take much to drain me. Of course I have been unusually tired for a few days now so that doesn’t help. Sinuses have been running and I think I had a fever yesterday. Who knows, all I know is I am tired and despite taking a three hour nap this afternoon feel like going to sleep now.

I think I will post this and do some research for the business plan. Need to check out the pecan industry. Already found a few sites but they don’t have the info I need. There is so much to do and I don’t seem to be very good at doing it. I’ve got another headache but it is not at migraine level so I can still function.