WAGblog

What to do, what to do?

I don't have much time to write this morning but I did want to make a few notes about a dilemma, though not much of one since I don't have a great deal of choice in the matter, that presents itself today, a day that is predicted to reach 98° F with a heat index of >105° F.

Joe's mother, Betty, wants to visit Joe today, and so, because she can't get anyone else to drive her and she is at 89 unable to drive herself, J has offered to pick her up and bring her to the hospital, then drive her home after the visit. But she wants me to come with her for the company...J, doing this on a working day, instead of her usual jobs, gets paid for this, mind you, as is only fair, though we are using my car and my gasoline since she is only getting $100 for the entire day and gas would cost $40 for two round trips at a minimum...

Did I forget to tell you that one trip, one way, is an hour and twenty minutes? Aye, there's the rub, because not only does J want me to come with her on the way out, but after I run interference for Joe with his mother (he won't be alone with her, considers her ministrations abusive, when in fact she is 89 and only trying to care for him) then she wants me to make the return journey with her back to Betty's apartment, so she won't have to deal with Betty alone.

Now I have to tell you the one thing about J, whom I otherwise really enjoy and appreciate, I find exhausting is her constant yanging about her health or her sister's health or something that she is thinking about that she obsesses about or that is on her mind that she simply cannot not talk about...If I say I do not want to talk, then she switches on the radio so I can't even read. If I want to sleep- if I am falling asleep against my will (in the front seat of course, since I could never leave her and crawl in the backseat to really sleep) she might tell me to go ahead and get a cat nap, but she'll just go on talking and talking as if I weren't trying desperately not to hear her. Oh, I sound like such a shrew, and really J is very dear and so kind to me. She takes such care to see that I am okay when things aren't going well, and worries about me when I am upset or when, for instance, I had that kidney thing two weeks ago...It's just that I am so upset about this upcoming trip...I really do not mind J's talking usually, she's okay. And when I've had it, I tell her! She's not so dense she doesn't get it. She can't help her voice or the anxiety that propels her constant talking...

But today she gets to rest in the lounge for an hour or so while Betty visits Joe and I run massive interference between the two of them...Not getting any rest or respite myself, not having had ANY since 8 am...THEN I have to get back in the broiling car and drive back, or be driven (I cannot drive farther than 3 miles myself without falling asleep at the wheel) to Betty's apartment an hour and 20 minutes away, listening to J and/or Betty the entire way. Finally, once Betty is dropped off, I will ignore J's desires for me to stay up in front but simply crawl into back and sleep for the drive home, I don't care what she wants...

But I dread the entire day. I dread it as I used to dread simply getting up in the morning. I won't even have any time to eat...I only eat at home mostly, or if necessary a little bit in a restaurant, but usually bringing most of the food home to eat when alone. Today I have to get through till who knows when, in 98° heat, without even a chance to be by myself to recuperate in any fashion. My temper has already been fraying big time these days...

Speaking of which, I dunno why that is. I do know that I have been scream-startling BIG time to lightning, and to light knocks on the door, which has always been a sign of Lyme disease poorly treated. The fact that I have been blowing up at Karen, and even at J this past week bothers me. I feel myself short-fused, and usually I am not (though Karen may disagree, with almost everyone else I am even tempered for the most part, except this past week...). It worries me. Am I in for a flare-up of the Lyme? How would I know? Well, aside from psychiatric symptoms, which seem in check at the moment...I do not like this simmering just beneath the surface, an angry tension that has no basis for it except that it is there. It's a feeling and is its own reason for existing...As Dr O says, The feeling is primary...

Anyhow, I will write again soon, hopefully tonight, to report how things went, but for now I am just venting, trying to quell some anticipatory anxiety, indeed the profound dread I feel about the coming day. THere are few things I fear more than exhaustion, than having to plough through feelings of utter fatigue and sleepiness and un-doneness...and to KNOW that I will feel this way by the end of this afternoon is just too much for me to bear.

But it has to be done. I don't know what else I can do about it. I could ask J to drive me home before she drives Betty home. She was supposed to do that, promised she would last week. But I'd feel so selfish doing so knowing I was adding yet another half hour onto J's day of driving. but it doesn't feel fair that she gets to use MY car, MY gas, get paid to do it, and also get me to accompany her to Betty's and back when it will exhaust me and it is all in a day's work for her. SHe just has no idea how much this is going to cost me...

TTFN

Posted by pamwagg at June 10, 2008 05:54 AM | TrackBack