Tag: insomnia

Morning Glory

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Crochet is so addictive. I found a new pattern last month and asked my hubby to buy it for me. We put it in my E-book on my phone so that I can easily access it. The pattern done by Crazy Cat Lady is a mosaic crochet variable with several different options. The first one I tried of course turned out much bigger than I expected.

Snow finally arrived with a howling wind winter storm and the days that I did the most work on the project, the radio, the tv and an audio book kept me sane. I still have trouble with whistling wind storms and anything over 20 mph can just about drive me insane.

The project is finished and does look okay. There are things that I would have changed had I known how big it would be. Nevertheless it is pretty.

Books keep me going. I don’t know how anyone can function without books. So many people spend their time watching tv, or playing video games I wonder at the lack of productivity. Yes, I can see evenings spend in relaxation, I do that some also. But most of the time my fingers simply can’t sit still. I am such a fidget artist.

Morning glory is a weed around these parts. No one in their right mind would plant the ground cover here. It simply takes over everything in the garden. But our worst problem is bind weed. It has no flower, and wraps itself around upright growth like a boa constricted. It’s power to choke out the pretty plants is so frustrating. Why I think of morning glory with this pattern is beyond me. Perhaps it will all make sense someday.

“Oh that will be glory for me” is a hymn line chorus that has also been taking over my awake moments in the night hours. There is a verse about having a “night song” that I often think of when I am struggling to stay asleep. Though I think I finally found the right supplement to help me.

Magnesium comes in several types. Citrate and glycerinate are the two ai am now familiar with. Calcium with magnesium citrate is best for bone health. I have been taking this for several years to aid my post menopause body and avoid osteoporosis which runs in the family. Also, it helps keeps my mood on an even tide! Recently I was introduced to magnesium glycerinate to help as a sleep aid. What a world of difference it is to have full night sleep in my life again.

Next up on the crochet list is more yarn. I have used up my stash and taken out two unhappy old projects in the midst. I need to find some crochet three smaller than standard 4 ply that will not split and make me frustrated while doing mosaic patterns. I do enjoy most baby yarn so perhaps that is the preferred option over sport weight. though I think I will try a smaller hook size on the next project first.

Learning how to do the year or a signature in the project is my next challenge. And doing the year came first. I could have moved it up a row or two to be more symmetrical in the pattern but next time will be better right? My hubby always teases that one might need a “get better soon” card when attempting some projects. Not a card because there is illness involved, but a hope that one will do a better job next time!

I managed to get the year into this project. It turned out okay.

Quick updates are not easily completed with so many interruptions. And how can I be the source of so many of my own lack of focus. Since the snow storm, the the snowmen collection has been packed up. I actually got so dizzy trying to pack up them. So I asked my hubby to finish. My eyesight simply would not let me move from the surface of the display to wrapping them up. This was just not enjoyable at all.

Back to the books that have kept me sane. I had a couple of silly romances. But now I am going through the book by Dr. Jeffrey Rediger called “Cured.” This book will probably lead me to other books. Or not. I got the book finished and found it somewhat lacking. It basically convinced me that everyone has is individual and special and can only follow their own conscience and listen to their own body. Everyone has their own journey. Each dash is special.

Meanwhile I am back to my pattern study and doing a couple of back pack bags. I also finished this project. And then found another pattern to do. The month of March ended with a commission project for a high school senior. That should be fun once I ever get startedQ

One of Those Days

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SUNDAY: Well, today is one of “those” days. I slept less than three hours last night. So now I am overtired and cranky. Decision making is very minimal. Lack of sleep really affects my eyesight. So this morning when we were preparing to leave the house for church, I found the bedroom door closed with my nose. Really?

Really?

We are trying to leave the little dog home more often with freedom of space and choice. And while he has grown up finally, it has only been about one month since the last full bladder accident. So rather than letting him have the whole house, shut the doors right?

And then, I decided that I needed a scarf to stay warm. My outfit was not complete. So I headed back to the bed room for the matching item. When I found the door with my nose, my initial responsive word was “dang-it-Really!”

MONDAY: Reality going blind sucks. Just over a week ago my grand-doggie found my eyebrow with the top of his head. He is one of those bouncy dogs that does not greet on a sit. His excitement puts a spring in his bottom and jack-in-the-box will spring at the most inopportune times for a blind lady. Going down to greet my little 15 pound Shih Tzu found the forty pound head with mine.

Really!

There are some adaptive learning curves that simply don’t work in practice. Being a very active and boisterous little girl, I have grown into a statuesque old lady. I really don’t enjoy the bodies requirement to be still just to save my other parts. My eyes simply do not work right anymore.

How do I manage to keep up with the change of pace? I know that lack of physical activity is what is driving my inability to sleep at night. Who wants to teach a bland lady how to work out and get tired enough to sleep?

Maybe I should put on a helmet and take up boxing.? That seems like a dumb idea when there are so many things jump out of nowehere to clobber me already.

Maybe I should take up running on a treadmill mill just to keep moving but who is gonna read all the options on the screen? Where is the speaking options on that equipment?

Maybe I could do palettes or something? but it requires being able to see and know what the directions are for each move and no one ever explains things well enough. Besides my mirrow image response is zilch because I do not see the actions to copy.

Okay. Really…

TUESDAY: Yesterday we both had bad visits at the dentist. Very rough hygienists that should probably have flunked his schooling. Anyways, decisin made to find a new dental clinic. And good news I slept for the first night with no sleep aid meds at all.

Today is a rough day. Another week will go by with no glasses on this nose because it hurts too much. My sinuses are already angry over the knock on the door. Scripture says, “Ask and it will be answered, Knock and it will be opened, Seek and you will find.” Well, I just think I’ve learned one should use the appropriate tools when asking, knocking or seeking. And sometimes we simply aren’t asking the right questions.

WEDNESDAY: Another night slept with no sleep aids. Unfortunately, my poor sister is taking up my lot in life. She is going through much stress in life in preparation to early retirement. Yep, going blind sucks. The rest of the family is doing well, I think. Haven’t talked to very many of them lately. It’s still a good day to take the back seat for a full rest as tomorrow is grandkid sitting day.

One of the Freyja patterns by Tinna T. Iceland mosaic crochet artist. I have learned alot about the craft from her.Thanks. Tinna!

THURSDAY: No mishaps. Just a quick story about hte kiddos. I sat with the littlest one while the others were at home school co-op day. It seems this social experience is a highlight for three of the momentary mommas. My sister, sister-in-law and my daughter all living this lifestyle of parenting 24-7. We do enjoy hearing about the learning curves in their lives. In other bits and pieces, I took the older two grandees with my short Kona walk in the afternoon. The oldest had to bring her binoculars to “look at nature.” The second child was wearing boots, shorts, a winter jacket and gloves. Hilarious picture!

Epilogue: Friday is here. I made it through the week with no more mishaps. Yet…. Doing more book study lists. Also finished the scarf above that I don’t like. I made a mistake on the first rom of the pattern beginning with the upside down heart. Oh, well. It was intended as a practice run. Today is supposed to be a greenhouse working day. I have not had coffee for three days, and this morning all it seems to do is make me sneeze. I did this to try sleeping well. It may have worked but I am still not sure. I have been doing some breathing exercises as I try to fall asleep and that has helped. Kona really needs his groom session. And what other random facts could I tell you? Still working on “The Complete Sherlock Holmes” stores. I thought of it after I learned Great-great-Grandma Chris and her name was Anna “AndersDitter” Holmes. Those Scandinavians surnames are odd. Our family history lessons are fun as we hunt for obituaries and places of residence. The “Bygones” of the past still have stories to tell!

Love Multiplies

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This past week I spent several nights wondering why sleep had flown the coup. I mean really why does the mind just decide to stay awake? The normal routine had seemed to fail me once again. How many nights of little to no sleep can one have. I am no super hero. This body began to scream for some actual rest.

Much of the last ten years for me has been sleeplessness. There are benefits to wakefulness all night long. One of these is the many hours i have spent listening to my mp3 player read the Bible to me. I would not be alive today but for the sanity that the constance of God’s word has lent to me in those hours of un-sleep.

Lately, it seems the beast of awake has taken me under wing again. Sometimes, I don’t know it is good or bad. Surely the enemy does not want me to spend all those hours meditating on God’s word. Am I really that anxious and fretful that my mind will not slow down long enough to sleep?

Tonight, I have a little sinus bug that is putting a tickle down my throat that is so annoying. I got up to study some words that I have been pondering and find out what God’s word has to say about them. The first word is charity.

Some of us grew up reading the King James Bible and know the word from it’s long list of attributes in I Corinthians chapter 13. It is otherwise know as the “Love Chapter.” Many people choose this passage for sermonettes at their weddings. The long list of character traits to charity are often used in substitutional studies. Like putting Jesus in the place of Love, or even using one’s own name. Finding out one’s fault comings is simple when doing that. But looking for faults is not one of Charity’s blessings. Over looking them, IS.

The next word that stuck in my mind is Mizpah. Oh, boy, you might say, where did that come from? Well, in the Bible it is a momental stone to commemorate a parting in life’s travels. Like perhaps more of a “Rite of Passage” when two people go in separate directions. This happened in Laban and Jacob’s life. And was not meant as a bad thing, but rather a reminder that they both had the same Lord watching over them. Paul had many such partings in his ministry as recorded in the Book of Acts.

Today, the meaning is often skewed to be a marriage or love “Stone” like a diamond ring or something. I don’t think it was meant as such, for married people should not separate on life’s journey. Just my own opinion. (Sometimes it happens, okay, I get that.). And may I not de-emphasize that as a married individual, my husband and I are not together 24-7, so yes we wear the modern wedding bands.

Is Mizpah a commemorative stone of the the passage of life from this earth? I don’t think it was meant as a memorial either. But the separation blessing it certainly seems to be. What ever am I thinking of this so deeply for?

Today, my first daughter told her people what the gender of her coming fourth child is to be. Not for this blog, I might add. The moment of covenantal blessing for me came after the video was recorded and the eldest child expressed her wishes for the hoped for gender. Mama just chuckled her tell tale laughter and then later expressed, she had shed a few tears also. The cupcakes of color and been devoured, God has already decided. So I expressed my own prayer filled blessing. “Love multiplies. It does not divide, separate, or subtract. It always adds and then multiplies. More to love, means more love. Love multiplies. And we will live this little one just like we love you.”

I cannot put myself in my daughter’s shoes. She is walking her own journey through life. I had two daughters. Though I wanted more, God chose not to do that for me. Now, the Lord has granted my daughter the gift of childbearing. Charity begets charity. Love multiplies.

Neither can I walk in my second daughter’s working world. I am so proud of both my daughters. Their faith walk, their journey through life following the Lord’s leading inspires me to keep faith also. While it seems we have less connected moments that what I had imagined there would be through the “adult” years, there are brief moments in time that seem strong in the memories. One night recently we sat around the kitchen table once again with the ever growing family. For a brief moment that evening with either daughter on each side of me, I felt rich. Rich in this world of spiritual blessings and physically rich by the gifts that God has given me in my daughters.

This beautiful doily is a bit of my own fabrication. I dropped the original edging and added more hearts. The “mizpah” or commemoration is that love multiplies and we shall have more grandchildren, “the Lord willing.”

Thus far

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Struggle bus rather than sleeping is one of my common life challenges. So the other night when my brain took off on it’s highway robbery, I found myself thinking about all these things once again. Setting up stones…. Our acreage is full of really large rocks. Many of them were picked up from the fields around and placed in the “rock pile.” Once years ago, someone lined the driveway with the rocks to keep drivers off of the lawn. My father-in-law still hates to see the rocks even in landscaping. My preference is to put them into the landscape and garden areas, rather than a pile that grows weeds and trees.

Not many people know what an Ebenezer stone is. Or even have ever heard of such a thing. Milestones are more commonly recognized, like growing and walking, driving, graduations, etc. Middle of the night statue building and laying stone walls while sleeping? Never.

My favorite Bible verse is from I Samuel 7:12, “Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen, and called its name [a]Ebenezer, saying, “Thus far the Lord has helped us.” What makes this verse a Milestone Marker for me? The idea that one thing is ending and another beginning has always intrigued me. Marking transitions in life, whether they be new jobs, careers, or life changes is important. But most important is recognizing how you got there and how you will accomplish the next. “Thus far the Lord has helped us!”

New phones are never easy for the visually challenged. But for me, I simply put the new one down and it takes weeks rather than days to learn everything. We get use to doing things a certain way, and when that way “expires” life moves on in a different manner. Sometimes rather slowly.

Brain fog that follows a sleepless night is probably the worst The ability to function well and do anything with precision is hard. So I spend the majority of the time crocheting some pattern that is very repetitive. The past two weeks I finally finished my virus stitch shawl that I started two years ago. It is quite beautiful. And yes, it makes me look like I was born in the wrong century. I don’t care. I love making and wearing shawls

This little area of the yard is passed by daily. It is very strongly and “Ebenezer” for me. “The bridge that once was…. “. Has such a story. The wood was once a fort over the sandbox, then the fort in the trees, and now the bridge on it’s own island (haha). The wheel was found in the lilac bushes. The only wagon wheel we found on the place so far. The basket that came from my sister’s driver’s mother’s attic. The stones that were brought in years earlier from the field. Each piece has it’s own history. Then there is the tree stump planter we just made from one of the sixty plus year old trees in the grove that are falling one by one. This year being three years into drought, many of the trees are simply hallow and tired of standing up.

“Thus far…”. Birthday celebrations are in the works for both of our moms this year. My mother at eighty and his mom at ninety. Celebrating life is so important. “The Lord has helped us”. We can see the elderly living this even more so than ourselves. For them, it is sometimes hourly that the Lord helps them. Each day holds it’s own Ebenezer as they march from sunrise to sunset. Waking each morning requires a call to the Lord for help just to rise out of the sleeping chamber. Of course it is because of the tale of Christmas and Ebenezer Scrooge that many of us think of old as grouchy. But sometimes I make a mental list of all the challenges our mothers face each day just to remind myself that my milestones are few.

Last night I survived an allergic reaction without an EpiPen. And we made a symptom checker that told us “NEXT TIME” these things occur, it is time for the epinephrine. . It was rather scary, and though I new something was not right, it did not occur to me at the time that it was an allergic reaction. Now I know. Thus far the Lord has helped me, but my husband says, next time the Lord will have to remind us to use the EpiPen!

When Mother Cannot Sleep At Night

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For my daughters from my garden of prayers, here’s a poem from the midnight hours by yours truly -love to all -mom.

When mothers can’t sleep at night

They pray until their hearts are broken

They sow seeds of tears

They write letters to hide away in drawers

When mother cannot sleep at night

She reads her Lord’s words

She whispers her cries for souls

She spreads blankets of love and mercy

She lifts her praise to the Almighty

When mother can’t sleep at night

She swaddles her little babies

She soothes her feverish toddler

She comforts her dreaming daughter

She consoles her fitful son

She sends heavenward prayers of hope

When mother cannot sleep at night

She weeps for dreams now lost

She aches for arms once filled

She writes lists of to-do’s and wish lists and gift lists and plans holiday meals

When mothers can’t sleep at night

They tend prayer gardens

Hold candle light vigils

Read old leather bond Bibles

And they hold fast their faithful watch

Inside outside

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“therefore encourage one another with these words.” I Thessalonians 4:18

Whether or not the weather cooperates is usually how outside gardens survive.  Farming and springtime become a constant weather watch in our neighborhood. There’s always the few who do things no matter what. But the seeds never lie. Frost that kills the cherry blossoms means one less pie. 

The other day I made it out to the gee-oh house just before the rain came pouring down.  “Guess I’ll be here for a little while or get soaked on the trek back to the shoe-box house.”  We spent the previous weekend re-sealing the joints and the polycarbonate glazing with more weather proof materials. So this week will be a test to see if we finally found the answer to the leakages.  Wind and rain, ice and water find their way through cracks of any size. Hopefully by the time we finish the outside–we’ll have an inside that is outside!

Finding therapy that works for our ailments can sometimes be more challenging than we expect. For some acupuncture helps.  Others turn to the essential oils.  Still others release, toxicity through sweating via sauna or excercise. I chose to go to my greenhouse. Sunshine provides me a tropical zone right in my own green field.

Suffering from pain and insomnia creates a cycle of physical pain that must have a checkpoint. I have full understanding that there are drugs-medicines that can aid my troubles.  A number of years ago though my husband decided to reward my once upon a time motherhood  nap time reading to my children by purchasing me an MP3 bible.  

When I was just nursing my firstborn child, my mother handed me a tiny Gideon New Testament. So I began reading to my children. When my second daughter arrived I had learned to balance my full scriptures award Bible from my own childhood on my arm and hand .  In that way I was able to read through the Bible and continue my own rapid reading schedule during her toddlerhood. It was during that timeframe that she claims I read through numbers and chronicle just to get her to fall asleep.  It was admittedly more successful than my later attempts to read Chronicles of Narnia for their bedtime story reading.  However, we all believe that Lennea’s abilities in remembering names might be gifted by God to her simply from these nursery days.  

My grandmother, the girls’ great-grandmother had a gifted memory also.  She could remember dates and birthdays like no one else! Although she did not pass this incredible memory on to me, her love for dried fruit has nevertheless been passed on.  Therefore when I studied the geodesic greenhouse and understood that I could host up to two tropical fruit trees in its space, I began begging for a fig tree.

Perhaps I wanted one so much because it’s delicate nature is one that I can really relate to. My temperature intolerance has led me speak out loud that I’m allergic to the cold.  It’s icy winds feel like knives slicing through my skin.  Because the anesthesia that they used on my first caesarian did not function as expected I can say with full clarity that I know what it feels like to have knives slice through my skin. It was traumatic. 

Recently we had a family meal with some extended family members.  During the meal my little nephew began his frequented mealtime temper tantrum.  Following this occasion we discussed the child’s feelings as “delicate.”  This reminded us of a classic psychologist’s movie Inside out  We recommend it for children and family’s who struggle with verbal expressions of feelings.  Learning to communicate at an early age one’s self-awareness is so important. 

It is in that spirit of self-preservation that I am sharing this with my readers. Sleepless nights are the trials of many that I know personally.  Whether turning to medicine, natural therapies, or prayer and Scrupture–know that this battle for sleep and adequate rest is not just yours alone.  Pain is part of this world we exist in and most likely will not  be conquered during this life. Finding hope in small things and in the bigger picture can help.  In the end it’s my faith in Christ and our eternal home that keeps me going.   

My crochet grandmother’s favorite book in the Bible was Thessalonians’s.  She had many verses underlined in the two part letter. This one after the description of  our future hope and home is one of my favorites.  Chapter four verse eighteen-

“Therefore encourage one another with these words.”