Done yesterday (20090923)

( raw notes )

Wow! For a day when not a whole lot happened, I sure seem to have a lot of notes. Of course, a lot of that is a partial transcript of my IM conversation with a sales droid at Nokia, finding out that the shiny new n900 Linux phone is expensive, not subsidized, and works only with T-Mobile.

Another chunk of it is my OVFF air travel itinerary. I'll be getting in around dinnertime on Thursday, and leaving Monday afternoon. I'm doing it on credit-card points, but air travel via Wells Fargo points seems to have gotten a lot more expensive.

I spent a lot of the afternoon comfort-eating for no particularly good reason, and feeling too weird and sad to get much done, while men with noisy chainsaws took out our South-side neighbors' dracena tree. I'm sad to see it go -- it made a good landmark for the house.

I had a good talk with Colleen about some of the issues that came up over the weekend, mostly around her feelings of exclusion when someone comes to visit me and not primarily her. Don't laugh -- we've been married a third of a century, and this only really started coming up a year and a half ago. One of the ways she used to deal with it was to leave the room and go do something else; that's why the fact that she's able to use the kitchen again is such a big deal.

The other bit of deep discussion, this morning with Naomi, involved the fact that I DO NOT LIKE the way things happen inside my head before I have a chance to think about whether I want them to. Instant reactions like snapping at people when I'm busy. Emotional responses like panic attacks. Naomi suggested training myself to pause before speaking; maybe count to 3 or take a deep breath. This will help with the automatic snapping, at least. Thinking about my emotional reactions -- basically mindfulness -- will eventually lead to thinking before I react, even if I have to start out thinking about them in retrospect.

We'll see.

Colleen took a couple of unsupported steps from the commode to the bed again. It's a start. She can make fast progress when she's determined enough -- I recognize that look now.

I should have taken cyclobenzaprine along with my naproxen -- my shoulder was hurting more in the morning.