Hope today is better

4/5/07 Friday
That was a rough ending for yesterday. The migraine was so bad I couldn’t get to sleep. I finally took one of the Hydrocodone pain pills. I resisted the temptation to take two. Doing much better this morning though I feel drained. The migraine came with a slow down also. Never a good combination. I get bitchy at these times and am so grateful I have a wife who understands and knows that these episodes don’t last long.

It’s going to freeze tonight and tomorrow night also. If I had hay or straw I could protect the corn and three melon plants. That is all there is right now. Not a lot of garden going yet.

Hope today goes better.

Yesterday we got a notice from the VA that I have an appointment with the neurology department in Albuquerque, New Mexico on the eighteenth of this month. It will be a stretch to get there and back. We may skip paying our electric bill in order to just buy the gas. Cherie says it is about four hundred miles. It is an important appointment and one I requested. There is no one at the Big Spring VA hospital trained for brain injuries. Missing appointments is frowned on at the VA.

I just came in for lunch. Cherie warmed up the baked chicken dinner she had made for me last night. Unfortunately the migraine was so bad I couldn’t really eat. I had a few bites of the chicken and gave up. It tastes better than great but I just wanted to hide from this headache. Now it makes a killer lunch and I can enjoy it.

I’m still a bit fuzzy today but not bad. Get lost easy but I’ve been able to focus on one task so…I’VE Got the lettuce planted. Hooray. For me every task I can complete is a cause to celebrate. One of the things I was thinking of as I worked the compost into the dirt with my hands is the motto I had posted all over my warehouse store. It said “There are two things that earn my respect. Say what you mean and do what you say”. It is a creed I lived by then and try to live by today. I have no problem saying what I mean though I have a problem knowing when not to say anything. What bothers me is the “Do what you say” part. It’s hard when you don’t remember what you said. That and the fact that my life is now a series of unfinished projects as I bounce from one thing to another.

It is cold and there is to be a freeze tonight and tomorrow night as well. Nate has a great idea for protecting the plants from the freeze. That’s to cut out the bottoms of paper bags and put them over the plants. Unfortunately we only have two paper bags in the house and I’m not keen on walking into the grocery store and asking for a big stack of paper bags. Besides that most of them use plastic nowadays. (wow, nowadays is an actual word recognized by spell check on this laptop)

Actually the only things that we have are corn and three mystery melon plants that were all that came up out of a flat of 72 spaces. I’m thinking of making a sort of greenhouse thing where I’ll place stakes and bricks to hold a sheet of plastic above the corn. I’ll have to hold it down with lots of rocks and bricks so the wind won’t blow it away. We will see.

When I mentioned this to Cherie she asked me “Do you have to cover the well?”. Oooh, that’s right, they had to cut all the insulation we had bought that I carefully wrapped the well with off. Now there is nothing on the well and there’s nothing in the budget to buy more insulation. Nuts. I’ll gather what old blankets we haven’t covered windows or doorways with and use them. Can’t afford to have anything on that well freeze. I’m glad Cherie remembered that. I’ll make that my next task to focus on.