An “Ordinary” Day – 12/22

Sleep has been weird – I’ll go into detail on that some other time. But I woke up at 5:30 this morning, and waited about 15 minutes before getting up. My stomach was signaling hunger. I’m told that one of the ways to avoid nausea is to eat more frequent small meals – keeping a little something in the stomach – and since it had been about 10 hours since my previous meal I decided to get up and eat.

Kevin has been sleeping in the spare bedroom. My sleep is restless, and he is a light sleeper, so it’s just working out better that way. I miss him a lot some nights. This is going to be a long 20 weeks. So when I got up this morning, I let the dogs out and chose Raisin Bran for breakfast. Seems I’m leaning more toward the chemo side-effect of constipation rather than the chemo side-effect of diarrhea (suits me just fine… I hate diarrhea). I also took one of my anti-nausea meds (Ondansetron) just to ward off any of THAT nastiness.

I showered, lotioned up, and dressed in normal clothes (jeans, t-shirt, sneakers). I like to feel normal, and dressing normally makes me feel more normal. I even put on a little eye-makeup! Then I sat on the couch in the living room and did computer-y stuff… Facebook, email, blog. Kevin got up after a while and had some cereal for breakfast. We read the newspaper, chatted, normal stuff. My project today is to really clear and clean off the kitchen counter that is our drop zone (y’all have a drop zone, right??), and then to put up all the Christmas cards we’ve been receiving. So I did some clearing, while Kevin worked on his project. Let me tell you about HIS project…

It has NOTHING to do with cancer or chemo. It’s got to do with beer brewing. Kevin brews beer. He started with a kit batch about 5 years ago and it has blossomed from there! He collects and/or builds beer-brewing stuff like a fly-fisherman does flies… except beer-brewing stuff is bigger. He even built a nice big fermentation cabinet that is out in the garage. Anyway, he’s been having trouble keeping the fermentation tank warm enough for the beer to ferment in his timeline. So he got this idea of how to keep it warm. It involves a sous vide, tubing, straps with tubing holders (sewn on my sewing machine), and nylon cords. It’s complicated (in my mind anyway) and quite a project, but he’s so creative to figure out a way to run warm water around his tank at a constant temperature. Here’s a picture of his invention (the sous vide isn’t attached in this picture, and I think it will look different than this when he’s done)

Kevin’s Project… He’s so creative!

Now that it’s late afternoon on this normal day, this is what has happened. I ate cottage cheese and blueberries for my mid-morning stomach-settler snack. I talked on the phone with my dear SIL, Kathy. I got sucked in to Facebook. I made reservations to come back to Yakima on the Saturday after Christmas… (I’ll be spending Christmas with my parents in Des Moines, WA). I ate half a turkey sandwich and applesauce for lunch. I took a nap… after I took a picture of Kevin’s invention. The counter is not yet cleared and cleaned, but it’s closer. I am learning to let things happen as they happen.