(no subject)

Okay, so staying up past three was a bad idea. Even if I did manage to write seven pages (just not on any of my WIP, sadly. This is something that's been nagging to be written that may never be shared). The house at night sounds kind of scary when I know it's empty and when Scott's C-PAP is with him in Chicago. I kept starting at noises that were just the creaking of an old(-ish) house. It didn't help that I'd reached the point in being tired where I was wired enough to stay up for another three or four hours without working at it.

Still, I thought it would be a good idea to be able to get up by noon, so I tried to sleep and then dragged myself out of bed at eleven thirty. I'm still working on getting myself to wake up fully.

I don't know if Scott and Delia will be home tonight or tomorrow. Scott wanted to come home today, but I told him that was crazy. It's a five hour drive. He wants to be back for my birthday tomorrow and wants to get some down time this weekend, and I can understand both motives. As long as he and Delia are out and about without me, he has to do all the work of taking care of her. It's less than it used to be but more than it would be if they were home. She gets clingy when it's just the two of them, to the point that she won't sleep away from him even though her cousin wants them to sleep in the same room so that they can be up, giggling and playing, all night.

A friend came over last night. We watched some Fullmetal Alchemist (which I can't seem to manage on my own) and talked anime/manga and fanfic. I didn't pull out the munchies in spite of having planned to do so. Oops.

Now I have to decide-- Do I nap or try to write? I think I'm tired enough to nap, but I hate to lose the (potential) writing time. I suppose I could read. I've got about thirty volumes of manga stacked next to my bed. Getting rid of some of those would be Good Idea. Writing's more appealing, though.

(no subject)

Anybody out there know anything about a medication called Modafinil a.k.a. Provigil? I'm doing the standard web searching-- the NIH website, the manufacturer website and so on, but I'm curious about anything any of you know from personal experience.

My psychiatrist has suggested the medication as a possible treatment for my fatigue. At this point, we're still in thinking stages. We won't try anything until September at the earliest, and we be starting at a very, very small dose as the stuff apparently has the potential to increase anxiety. My doctor simply wants to give me time to think about the medication and to research it so that I'm making an informed decision.

If I do decide to try this medication, I'll probably have a please-drink-my-booze party later this summer. This med's not something compatible with alcohol, so I wouldn't be drinking once on it, and Scott won't touch the stuff. No point having it in the house then. Pity I invested a few months ago in a few bottles, mostly sweet schnapps, meant to last a few years.

(no subject)

A couple of weeks ago, Scott signed up for one of those trip to Disneyworld contests while he and Delia were out shopping. We didn't win that, but we did win a child's bike. The catch was that we had to listen to a sales pitch for fire safety equipment to get it. Scott and I considered the cost of a kid's bike and decided that we could spare a couple of hours to get one.

The bike is, unfortunately, a Bratz bike. We peeled off the decals, but the seat, handlebar pad and handlebar bag all have the name on them. (We tried to lose the bag and water bottle, but Delia found them almost immediately.) If we can get rid of the rest of the branding, I think it'll be a good bike for Delia. Fortunately, she has no idea who/what 'Bratz' are. This bike is sixteen inches and replaces her old twelve inch. Both bikes have built in training wheels. This one has both a hand brake and a pedal brake. Scott's gotten it assembled properly. All that's left is inflating the tires and letting Delia ride.

The bike sat in its box in the living room for a couple of days. Delia wanted to open it immediately because she wanted to know what was in it. I thought she might figure it out by reading the box, but she figured it out by peeking through a hole in the box and seeing a wheel. She's utterly thrilled and considers the bike an additional birthday present (which it kind of is).

The salesman is very personable. He's a fireman as well with this as his second job. Part of the sales pitch involved showing us a DVD about home fires and having us do a short quiz on fire statistics. Both are scary and left me with extra fire anxiety for days (as I'm sure they're meant to do since that makes people more likely to buy. It's just worse for me given the pre-existing anxiety troubles).

The difficulty in selling me fire safety equipment is that I've always believed that, if our house catches fire in the middle of the night, we'll all die. During the day, we'd probably get out fine but not at night. I don't know if any equipment would help that. Scott's more inclined to buy equipment, and he's right that we ought at least to have fire extinguishers. I can also believe that ionization smoke alarms don't have a very long useful life.

I'm going to leave most of the decision up to Scott. He's got a better feel for whether the information offered about the materials and techniques used to build this equipment is potentially accurate and whether the differences from the standard equipment mean anything useful in reality. I was impressed, though, that the salesman pinpointed the study as a potential fire trouble spot. That matched my opinion of the room. It's full of dust, active computer equipment and paper. Scott didn't like hearing that one, and realistically, there's not much we can do to clear it up while keeping our computer access.

(no subject)

One of the sage plants that I thought was going to make it died. It was at the back of the raised bed and came back with a few leaves very close to the ground. I think that, if it had been warmer, the plant might have survived even with the neighboring plants blocking the sun. The cold weather combined with the big sage plants nearby just overwhelmed the poor thing. So-- Note to self: Plant purple sage at the *front* of the bed because it won't come back in the spring tall enough to cope with being in the back.

Delia's pre-school gives seedlings as Mother's Day presents (in flower pots painted by the kids). I got a basil seedling. I transplanted it into the small raised bed, with the rue and the ginger. I also took the seeds from last year's gift, a cilantro plant, and scattered them in that bed. Of course, that leaves me with the problem that I don't know which-- if any-- of the things sprouting in there are cilantro. It could all be weeds. I'll wait and see what I recognize. If I ever recognize anything.

Our poppies are blooming. We've also got iris blooming this year. They're a lot happier when I go in and yank out the groundcover around them (last year, I didn't, and we got no flowers. I think we lost some of the bulbs entirely).

The rhubarb also bloomed. I've never seen that before. I actually ended up calling my mother to ask if that was normal. I wasn't sure if it only bloomed because I hadn't harvested any of it. With the cold weather, I didn't want to yank stalks and leaves for fear of damaging the plant's chances of survival. I've not dealt with rhubarb before I got this plant, so I have no idea what it needs. Mom did suggest that harvesting stalks after the plant had bloomed wouldn't be a great idea. She said they'd be very woody at that point. I don't feel a burning need for rhubarb, so I haven't tried it. I may later in the year. Maybe if I pull enough stalks the new growth will be more edible.

We've definitely got moles this year, at least in the front yard. I haven't noticed them in the backyard, but I haven't been out there much. I don't think Scott's noticed yet. He'll be cranky about it, especially since the grass is dying over their tunnels. Delia, on the other hand, will be thrilled. She won't care whether or not she ever sees a mole. She'll just like the fact that more of the yard has dirt loose enough for her to dig. She got new gardening tools for her birthday and has been digging in a little corner of the front yard that died off due to having a bag of dirt or mulch or something on it for too long.

I wonder if our lawn proud neighbors hate us...