A pretty good day

Even after two long naps yesterday, I slept through the night. Unfortunately, Marty had a bad night and he was up watching TV and working on the computer in the middle of the night, but eventually we both got back to sleep. I woke up for good around seven, in a bad mood after a lot of confusing dreams of which I could remember only fragments. I wanted my breakfast, but Marty was still sleeping and I wanted to let him sleep since he'd been up during the night.

Lauren arrived at nine. I like this system (which was Julie's idea), as mornings are my worst times and she is very helpful at getting me settled. I didn't have breakfast until after she left, around ten--Marty reheated the omelet, potatoes, and sausage from yesterday, plus some biscuits he had gotten at KFC (I'm still on this biscuit kick). Because breakfast was so big and so late I haven't had any lunch, just lots of liquids (seltzer, iced green tea, and ginger ale), and I'm going to have a chicken pie (another favorite) for dinner. I asked Marty to bring me a pastry treat and he brought an elaborate mocha cupcake that I think I will slice in half as it's very big and very rich (and looks extremely yummy).

Laurel came about eleven and I asked her to neaten up so the housecleaners would have clear surfaces to work on, and to get fresh sheets on my bed. I like having Laurel here. Like Judy, yesterday, she seems to pick up on when I feel like talking and when I'd rather be left alone. My new volunteer, Tim, came in the late morning and I decided I wanted to sit out on the porch in my wonderful chair. It is a lovely day, just a little bit cool, so I threw a light blanket over me. Tim and I talked about a bunch of things, and he said he'd be glad to come back next Monday, or even sooner if I wanted. But I'm also having a second volunteer, Karen, who is coming on Wednesday, so I said next week would be fine. This afternoon I got a call from another volunteer, Barbara, who said that although she doesn't do Reiki she does something similar, and we made an appointment for her to come next week. I'm curious to see what she does and whether it has anything like the effect that Angela's treatment had on me.

After Tim left I was very sleepy and thought I would take a nap, but I lay with closed eyes for awhile and never actually got to sleep, but fell into a very restful reverie for awhile which was almost as good as a nap.

It was very exciting to see a comment the other day from someone who read about my blog on a palliative care blog, and when I went to read that blog she had really complimentary things to say about mine (http://dying.about.com/b/). Just as I spent much of my career promoting dialogue between mental health professionals and people at the receiving end of treatment, now I seem to be doing something similar for hospice professionals and hospice patients. When I first started this blog, it was mainly to keep the people in my life up to date on how I was doing, but now I think I have more readers who don't know me than people who do.