Sunday AM

I''ve been told I need to post again.
Some people love to read my posts, I presume, and Elaine asked me last evening to post again and up-date everyone.
I've been busy with so many things, and I really have neglected to post all the activities and happenings.
There's some progress being made with the house at Creekside.
We are now doing plaster and drywall upstairs.  I was beginning to think I would never see this day.  Things have taken so long and been so slow.  Penny has shown a great skill with the plaster work, much to her joy and mine.  She had never tried her hand at it, and she's really pleased that she's doing it so well.  It's really just a chore that takes a little skill and a lot of practice, but she took to it right away, and she's quickly building speed and confidence in her ability.  Randy, of course, is pretty good at it, and is a great help.
I tried to work some on plaster in the upstairs sun room yesterday, but we had not run the air conditioning , so I was mostly sweating and burning up.  There was just a little plaster left in the opened bucket, and I didn't want to open another bucket and start the mess with it, so I gave up around 7:30 and washed up the dishes that had accumulated, picked up some tools and put them away, and did a little general cleaning up.  Then I left early and went by the Family Dollar Store.  Fern gave me a case of cookies that had been mashed to feed to my birds (the ones I have left).
I didn't stay there long, as I was too tired to have much of a visit.
I came home, did a quick feeding, and got into the house and began nightly rituals, getting ready for bed. 
I think I need to tell about my appointment with the sleep disorder clininc in Morristown.  It didn't go too well.
Dr. Little decided that he wanted to check my sleep disorders, so he made me an appointment with the sleep disorder clinic, and I showed up to 'sleep' for them.  I warned the nurse in attendance that it might be a little interesting for her, and she seemed a little dubious at first.
The room was really nice, a bit small, but well-furnished.  It looked like the bedroom in many homes, with a queen-sized bed, a chest, and a night stand.  They were black, and seemed a bit worn, but nice.  The mattress was hard, and I despaired of sleep right away.  I had no idea how bad it could get.
The nurse explained to me what they did, and took a list of medications I regularly took.  She asked if I were going to take my Ambien for the night, and I told her I had before I left the house.  She seemed surprised that I had been able to drive over there after taking it, but she had little idea just how things work for me.
I changed into my regular bed clothing, and she began to wire me up to the monitoring system.
She came out with this vast array of wires, electrodes, and clamps to hook up to me in various places.  The ones she hooked to my head had to be glued on with what seemed like a mixture of flour paste, silicone caulk, and super glue.  It was somewhat rubbery, white, and stuck like outdoor flooring adhesive.  In long hair with some hair spray and a few hair pins, it was a true delight.  Perhaps for her.
She then put two straps around my chest and stomach, which somewhat resembled the belts they use (according to the television accounts I've seen) to electrocute convicts or to bring monsters to life that have been sewn together from the body parts of other people.
These belts, too, had wires attached to them, and they were supposed to monitor activity, heart rates, and, I'm supposing, stomach activities.  I figured that part should be interesting, as I hadn't eaten anything sinse lunch, and the nice nurse had given me some peanut butter and crackers, which almost always disagree with me.  So much for maintaining one's dignity.
She then hooked up a lead to my first finger on my right hand, which was the least invasive of all the leads I had been treated to.  There were leads glued to my face below and above my eyes, behind both ears, to my chest in two places, to my back in two places,  and to both legs and both feet.
Then she turned on the closed-circuit monitor to watch all this pleasant activity.
I was wired like a Sony.
I asked her how I was to go to the bathroom during the night, should that happy event need to happen, and she told me to just sit up on the side of the bed, and she would see me and come and un-hook the monitor to let me go.
I suppose that her wishing me a good night was just a formality.  I knew by this time that it would not happen.  Not there and not under those circumstances.
I soon learned that the mattress on the bed was a cleverly disguised rock with some sheets stretched across it.  We have an air bed at home, and this contriveance was not an acceptable alternative.  I tried in vain to distract myself by watching television.  That didn't help much, as there were very few cable channels for a selection.  Most of the early night consisted of me watching some concerned naturalists extract snakes, alligators, monitor lizards, and other dangerous animals from the back yards of families with small children who thought that the assorted animals were put there for their pleasure.
That wore out pretty fast, so I then began the ritual of surfing to find something entertaining or informative (NOT about how to catch a snake or alligator).
I finally found some sort of religious channel with a wide array of deeply disturbed self-proclaimed preachers and faith healers who thought they had a direct channel to God's own ear.
One little lady was fairly entertaining, and I thought that she might be some distraction from the torturous treatment I was supposed to quietly endure. 
She had a sickly sweet voice, a condescending attitude, four chins, and a wig that looked like a cross between astro turf and badly-worn carpet.  She prayed for people to get jobs, some people who were trying to get their 'loved ones' saved, for world peace, and for the American economy.  I don't know why she just didn't ask God to give her some hair that she could manage and an affordable membership at a health club.  She could have also used some counseling.  I was laughing so much that the nurse came in and told me I was disturbing her other patient.  I figured he was already pretty disturbed, or he wouldn't be there in the first place.
I then found another religious chanel that had a pathetic older couple on that thought they had found the only true route to God, and they were it.  They told of some children's ministries they had been a part of, and showed some rather terrible pictures of their own family, which were highly-glossed and glared in the studio lights, so that you couldn't tell if there were people or wild animals in the photos.  I don't know why they thought we needed to know the names of their children and where they lived.  I hope some crazed stalkers were not watching, lest they get some ideas for new victims with which to take their pleasure.
The poor old lady looked like she had been in some sort of terrible accident which had split her face in two at some previous time, as she had a long scar running the length of her face from top to bottom.  Perhaps she had just laid on it and caused a wrinkle when she was able to sleep, which I was NOT!
I fought relentlessly with those wires, leads, belts, and the varmit glue traps all night.  I had to get out of bed and make it up several times, where I had torn all the covers off all the way down to the mattress.  The nurse occasionally came in to try to help me, but was of little comfort. I felt like that was pretty nice of her, sinse I had been such a disturbance to her other patient. There was just no way I could rest in such an environment.
I finally changed the TV back to the lady with four chins, and she bored me to sleep praying in some sort of 'heavenly language' which I have not yet learned to understand or speak.
I guess I slept about an hour when the cheerful nurse came in to wake me and send me home.  I allowed as that perhaps I might have been the most restless patient she had ever had, and she assured me that I had been.  She said that several times, she thought I might have gotten quiet and was going to get to sleep, but I would jerk and become restless again.
I hope they make some money selling that tape to America's Funniest Home Videos.  Dr. Little might consider using it to show people how NOT to sleep.
I drove home in the early dawn, but had a buzz like never before.  I stopped at the Down Home for breakfast, but the glue in my hair was itching and burning like poison ivy, so about all I could think of was getting home and taking a pain pill and trying to sleep in an environment that I had some relation to.
I called Steve to tell him about my night of pain and torture, and regaled him with the account.  I darkened the room, took a scalding hot bath, laid the phone off the hook, took an Ambien, and went to bed (a REAL one).
I slept until after 1:00. 
I'm just DYING to hear Dr. Little's recommendations.  Perhaps general anesthesia???