Which explains why I haven't written on this blog in a month! The nice little sweet cottage where I am now living, in Glen Ellen, hasn't been able to sustain a connection and I haven't been home enough (work, Mendocino, dog sitting, more work) to figure it out and make it happen. Thus, no blog posts. At this moment I am at work, just letting the two or three people who check this blog regularly to not give up hope: I will return. Sadly, perhaps they have already given up hope and have gone elsewhere for their quota of boring, useless news. Sigh.
To recap the past month, I moved in the week before Thanksgiving, have gotten pretty settled and I think it will work out well. It's less than 250 square feet but it is very homey and seems more spacious than 250 sq feet. I will try and get a photo of it for you, but words will have to suffice at this point.
I also had a catering gig with my daughter one night, got to dog-sit the cute Hannah for a week, went to Mendocino for two nights with the kids, their mates and dogs and met John and Diane there and had a lovely, relaxing time. We all enjoyed it and we all hope it can become an annual pre-Christmas get-together. There is something so nice about a nice hotel in a beautiful setting where one can retire to one's room when one needs quiet time, and where dogs are not just tolerated but openly invited.
Then Christmas Eve was upon us, my favorite day of the year. Dar and I drove early in the morning to get live crab at Bodega Bay, a beautiful drive for a worthy cause. (Who doesn't love fresh cooked crab, I ask you?) Lots of tasty bites, lots of good champagne, crab, more snacks and tons of gifts to open, it was the best Christmas Eve ever! (I say that every year, of course.)
YUMMY!
In the middle of all that was work, work, work.
And now it is the last day of the year, the last day of the decade. We can only hope that 2020 is a good year. Better than 2019. We can hope for it and we can do our part to help make that happen by voting, making others vote, by eating better, monitoring what we can do for the environment, helping good causes either with monetary donations or the gift of volunteering our time, loving each other, being kind and generous and by trying to be happy and make others happy. Whew! It's a daunting list of things to accomplish but I know we can all do it, do our part, and have a good year.
I hope to be back writing again soon. Thanks for reading.
It might seem an impossible mistake, but I have some Advil that are not round, they are long and capsule-shaped and they are a dark rust color. The Ambien I occasionally take are the same color and roughly the same size. In a normal life (not mine!) they would NEVER share the same pill bottle for obvious reasons.
Yesterday I woke around 7:00 to get ready for work, took my shower, reached for a tiny traveling pill bottle, shook out my blue blood pressure pill and a tiny, oblong dark rust colored pill that I was, at that hour, certain was an Advil. (The Advil was in a separate bottle, since they would NEVER share the same pill bottle. HA!) Down they went with a glass of water. I was staying at Jenn's, so I went into the kitchen to cobble together a salad for lunch since there is little food available where I work. After about ten minutes I began to feel quite odd. A little spacey, light-headed, couldn't quite figure out where my feet were. This never happens to me unless I am drinking heavily (which rarely happens these days) and thus I was a little unprepared for this bizarre physical weirdness. Especially before 8:00 in the morning!
Even with the fuzz in my head, a light bulb went on in my spongy mind and the realization that I had taken an Ambien instead of an Advil became a certainty. Holy cow! I was due at work in 15 minutes. What to do? My son was up, I mentioned it to him, he suggested I not go to work. Not an option. He suggested I not drive. Again, not really an option, I was fine. (Again, HA!)
I floated out to the car, lunch in hand, and somehow my car knew the way; I got to work safely (it's only 3 miles after all) but when I walked into the Clubhouse, my coworker looked and me and very hesitantly said "Good morning..... are you OK?"
I wasn't. It was not unlike being drunk, the room was shimmering a bit, tilting a little, my thoughts were as scattered as tumbleweeds in a wind storm, my eyes were a bit unfocused and things remained that way for a couple of hours.
Trying to stay awake after taking a sleeping aid is quite difficult. Ambien is a sedative and can be a hypnotic. It is an immediate release drug, so no wonder it hit me within ten minutes. Once the drunk feeling dissipated (after about 3 hours) it was a struggle to not curl up and take a nap. My shift was over at 5:00 and I was certainly "sober" but very tired. Back at Jenn's for the night I spent a bit of time just staring into space, my mind and body exhausted.
Lights were out before 9:00 pm and when the alarm went off this morning at 5:50 am, I felt like I could have slept for 8 more hours but so, so relieved that I actually just got a good 8 hours of sleep.
We learn life lessons everyday if we are paying attention. Small ones, big ones, some important and some trite, but lessons nonetheless. There will never be another Advil-Ambien mistaken identity in my life, of that I am certain. Lesson learned.
vs 
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