Day One-hundred-and-thirty-three: Night storm

And by "night storm," I'm not referring to the weather.  I was laying in bed thinking after about five hours of sleep and had a couple ideas that I couldn't get out of my mind.  Since several people have advocated keeping a note pad by the bed for those ideas, and I hadn't, I thought that I should get up, find a note pad, and write them down.  In this manner I thought to purge my mind and be able to go back to sleep.

Well, either the purging didn't work or the process of finding everything and writing them down took so long that I was even more fully awake, I decided to throw on something warmer and do something productive, i.e., make this partial entry into this blog and catch up on my budget tracking.  The latter is boring enough that it may just put me back to sleep, which is one reason that I haven't done it for so long.  Unfortunately, there are others, including my lack of spending within my budget.  (I haven't really wanted to know how bad it was.)

But, if I want to make this early retirement work, I either need to find a reliable source of money that doesn't force me to un-retire, or spend far less.  Of the two, I know which one I'd prefer.

As for the ideas that kept me up:  starting another blog, documenting my memories (of me) for my grandchildren yet to be born as a complement to my Memories of Marilyn; and writing a Christmas Newsletter for the first time in my life.  The former I would title, "A walk on the wet side of the beach."  The latter would be in part to make up for my failure to send out thank you notes to all who truly did remember Marilyn and her family, offering us much needed solace.  It would also be a good way and reason to contact all of Marilyn's address book entries, some of whom may not have yet heard.

I must also admit that my thoughts were also churning on more mundane matters, for example, rerouting the water supply for the new toilet and wondering whether or not compression fittings could be "fit" onto the pipe regardless of how close it might be to the stud or whether I would need to "sweat" the extension on.  Then I rambled on to wondering whether or not I could even find my "sweating" tools or whether I still had them.  And finally, at least for what I'll report here, what kind of support I would need to arrange for the pipe and whether it would cause knocking or excessive wear.  Another example would be mentally reminding myself to buy my MacBook's extended warrantee along with a dozen other things for my to do list, including remaking a to do list for the items, some of which I've already forgotten.

I'd close and publish this post right now except for my dental appointment.  I think I'm going to have to stay away from blueberries.  There may be other sources but something is staining my teeth and I've avoided all of the other orally ingested items I considered possible sources.

It's a pretty sad commentary on my Life after Layoff when the anticipated two significant events in a day are not being able to sleep and a dental appointment.

After writing the above, possibly to avoid the tedium of entering my spending into my budget, I went back to bed for another two and one half hours.  This did kind of rush me through breakfast, getting cleaned up, and making it to the dentist on time.  But, the teeth cleaning was truly the best experience, for that activity, I've had in a long time.  I'd like to say that it was the meditation as I did try to relax through it but it more likely was the dental hygienist.  It may also have been my relatively little amount of plaque.  All is not good news.  The dentist wants me to come back this Friday to have a couple of fillings replaced.  Since I was thinking of not continuing my dental insurance, now is a good time to be taking care of these things.

As I paused while exiting the dental office parking lot, I had this strong urge to go somewhere, anywhere, but home.  Since I couldn't think of where that should be and had my budget still to do, I came on home--and proceeded to update this entry instead of doing my budget.  I'll get right on that.

I was almost done with my budget entries, including making a list of things to find so I could enter them as well, when I received a phone call.  It was a good call that got me up to date on the Marilyn Westbrook Garment Fund.  The head of the National Lymphedema Network has spent a considerable amount of her time on it.  She reported that a speech she gave to an audience in Albany, New York, may have solicited a good donation from a lymphedema sufferer who is also quite well off.  I hope so.  I really want that memorial to be sustained as a lasting memory.

Then I noticed that it was after 1:00 PM.  After I ate my lunch salad, I was still hungry.  So, I decided to make a loaf of beer bread, primarily because I could enjoy it today rather than waiting until tomorrow.  While it tasted good, especially with a honey topping, it didn't raise quite as much as previous loaves.  (Chunky not funky.)  I don't know whether it was my conversion of All Purpose flour with Baking Powder and Salt or my use of Spaten Pils as the beer.  I think European beers have less carbonation than standard U.S. beers.

I think I finally finished with my budget data entry.  It would be far less a chore if I did it more often, which would help me do it more often.  The size of the chore delays it.