Tuesday, April 10, 2007

slow

4/10/07 Tuesday
It’s almost 10:00 now. I can usually feel it when a petite seizure is coming. There is a sort of dizziness in my head and sometimes a light sweat, probably all the time but I only notice it on occasion, or simply forget. That is most likely. They often are announced with a headache that turns migraine, which is the case now. I was running at my average mental lucidity of 7 on the bob scale but my typing speed lets me know that has degraded down to a five. Control of my right leg is reduced making walking something I must be careful with. Hate to fall. Unless it gets real bad I am going to push on. It is sunny and will go up to the 80’s today. Not going to waste that if I can help it. I never know how long or severe these will be.

Been up and moving for a couple of hours now. Refilled the five flats I am going to start more seeds in. This time I will try to care for them better with the hope more seeds will sprout. I’m pretty much going to plant everything because most of these seeds are old so much of it won’t come up anyway. So out of the three hundred plus seeds I’ll be happy to get fifty plants. Who knows, I might end up with three hundred but I wouldn’t put money on it.

This slow down is the kind that literally puts me in slow motion where I even walk in slow careful steps. Took a Hydrocodone for the migraine and wore sunglasses outside. Plugging along. I won’t drive when like this.

Oh, here's the end of yesterday.

That was interesting. Couldn’t make this stop double spacing after I pasted the Asperger thing on. Had to copy and delete it, then paste it back in. Took a bit of time. We got our new power line pole put in. They had another one on the truck that they had removed earlier so I asked if I could have it. Now I have two poles, the one they left and our old one. Just think, it wasn’t long ago I was at the landfill where I planned on cutting some poles into manageable size and bring them here. Instead Cherie and I picked up the railroad ties that are now the raised garden beds out front. We tried to lift part of a telephone pole and quickly figured out it was more than we could handle. Now I have two full poles sitting in the front yard. Clueless on how I’ll get them to the back but I’ll figure something out.

I’m working on figuring out what to plant where with this new space. I think I’ll just pick the squashes and focus on them, otherwise I’ll get confused. Right now I’ll go online to look up how to grow pumpkins as the seeds have no instructions.

It’s 5:00 and I’m still slow. Lost a whole day. Watered the melons and now the pumpkin seeds are under the sprinkler’s watering attention.


I went out to turn off the water to the sprinkler. It had never been turned on. Not unusual, especially when I’m slow. I had dragged the hose out through the opening I cut in the fence to access the back garden bed and left it between two of the hills I had made for the pumpkin. There I left it laying on the ground, not even set up. Something distracted me so it remained, lost from my mind till I returned to turn the water of.

I gave up on planting seeds for making decisions are particularly hard at these times. Not hard decisions but simple quick ones like where to set something down I had just picked up to move out of the way. Sometimes I will just put it back because of the indecision. With three hundred spots to start seeds in and thirty or forty different kinds of plants, some of which shouldn’t be started indoors and transplanted. It is more than I can juggle right now. Hell I can’t remember to turn the water on.

So I just sat down with an ice tea on the lawn chair I set up in front of the garage. I enjoyed the wind and warmth that washed over from the protection of the garage and just relaxed. I was tired. These partial seizures always drain me. After I started to nod off a couple of times I called it quits and came in.

I was talking to someone sometime in the recent past. He or she was a fellow blogger. Not sure if we talked or E mailed, just remember what I said. It was about how much I whine on the blog, how little was real positive. It’s got me thinking. You know, one of the reasons for this blog is to give others an idea of what a traumatic brain injury is about. It is never the same from individual to individual and varies widely depending on the severity of the injury. I am pretty lucky and have met several survivors who are in much worse shape than I.

So I must put the bad with the good to do this. Unfortunately I remember the bad things easier than the good ones so I’ll have to work on that. Every day is filled with little precious moments and it is these things I want most to remember years from now when this beat up brain goes downhill.

2 comments:

Gaz said...

Hello bob,i come across your blog though byronb and a friend of his is a friend of mine,i have a question,pumpkin seeds,you want to grow them?....what for? .....you dont eat em do you?when the kids were young and you do that halloween think,the smell....its rank?

Bob Westbrook said...

The pumpkins I'm growing are smaller sweeter ones for making pumpkin pie among other things. I am trying three different kinds. Pumpkins are akin to squashes I think. Never had it but I've heard about toasting the seeds.