I have heard that there is a Chinese curse, "may you live in interesting times," which we certainly do. Yesterday, I am sorry to say, was interesting. Not all bad, not boring, but definitely interesting. Ray was still feeling pretty sick, but had to go in and meet with a student who had questions. I also had plans. We had a brief walk and I managed to come up with a recipe for supper. I was feeling cheerful in the morning and in the Christmas mood, wearing my red turtleneck dress and green hat and light green pea coat. My children are coming, it is time to plan holiday (and wedding) events.

I took him to his office (when I say this, what I usually mean is, he drove himself to his office and then I took the car). Then I headed to Siri Thai, for lunch with my friend Michael, Executive Director of The Stable Foundation. He is a lot of years younger than I am and has a master's in public administration, but I don't think I am wrong to call us friends. TSF used to rent space from ALT and I have been in various meetings with him over the last few years. I knew that he wanted to talk to me some about fund-raising for TSF, which I had talked to him about once before and I thought he wanted me to do volunteer case management. I wasn't sure what I was going to say. But he actually suggested he might hire me sometime in the next month for a part-time temporary case management position, connected to a grant they received some time ago but are only now receiving and must use up before July 1. I must say I was very excited and enthusiastic to imagine working again. It has been so long, and I have tried so hard to make my accommodation to not working, that I wonder if I will find it difficult. I don't know how much it will pay and suspect my hours will be less than ideal (evenings and weekends?). Not to mention that it has been several years since I did case management (at IHN, while also being director). However, it made me kind of giddy.

My next stop was to pick up Jean at 1:15 for her appointment at the oncologist. This is when the day began to get really "interesting." The light on my dashboard--the Prius has lots of electronic symbols--with the red exclamation point came on and I felt some hesitation in the way it drove. I called Ray, I called Mary Jean and got her to pick up Jean, not wanting her to be in the car when it died. I drove to the dealership and left the car with them. I had their shuttle take me to the doctor's appointment. Meanwhile, my Dad picked Ray up and brought him to our house to get the truck and he met me there.

The doctor was the sleep doctor, Dr. Das, who introduced me to my new CPAP machine (actually his staff did most of the work). He told me I stopped breathing 79 times per minute! This is sort of ridiculous, because I am sure I don't breathe that many times a minute. Either I misunderstood him or he misspoke. In any case, it is a lot of times. I have been rather leery of this whole process. I feel like this might be questionable medicine, one of those fads that come and go. However, our Blue Cross HMO is paying for it--I only have to pay $15 every time I go to the doctor. I began using it last night--more later. As we left there, I called the dealership and left a message--$79 diagnostic fee regardless, but they were to call with the details of what needed repairing and how much it would cost.

Back home, gray and in the 40s. No eggs. I proceeded with supper. The Toyota dealer finally called. The hybrid battery was going; it would be $2963 to replace it...plus $1300 for a new catalytic converter. No telling how long it would hold up. After driving it that day, I didn't feel like we could even bring it home. It might go at any moment. I asked if it could be driven as a gasoline-powered car. "No, I'm afraid it doesn't work that way." Of course not. I had known this was a possibility. The car has over 180,000 miles on it and is almost 10 years old, one of the best and least expensive to maintain we've ever had. But now, really, when we were just scraping by with my not working? It seemed terribly unfair and I am actually grieving for our car that has been so much a part of our lives.

However, we went right to the website to look at used Priuses (Prii?). There are three at our dealership, all 2010s, all around $20,000. A lot for a used car, but I can't really imagine buying anything else. Thank goodness for the glimmer of hope that I might actually become employed within a month. There are also two jobs worth applying for in Sunday's paper. One, I applied for on line immediately, and the other I will do so today. Although the odds are long. I also called the credit union I recently joined, Robins, and applied for a car loan over the phone. She talked to Ray, as well, and we are pre-approved for up to $25,000! Our credit scores are both A+ and they will give us a fairly low interest rate, less than 3.5%. In addition, we can opt to defer repayment for 90 days. If we stretch payments out over 6 years, it will be less than $400 a month. Surely I can find something that will pay me that much in the next 3 months! So, an interesting day for sure. We have an appointment to test drive at 10 this morning.

Ray tried not to go to bed, but let me feed the pigs by myself. I had no scraps or leftovers for them, but the walk there and back mostly restored my good mood. He was somewhat better than the day before.  We finished preparing and ate our supper, the last featuring peppers until next year. I have four smallish old green peppers left and will use them as the need arises, but I will no longer search out recipes that use vast quantities of them. And, in fact, there is nothing in the garden now I feel obliged to plan around. There is a lot of dill, but it volunteered, so I don't feel like I have to use it unless I come across something that calls for it.

Ray managed to stay awake through Wheel and Jeopardy. (He is always hoping we will somehow catch up on our backlog of recorded shows--I refuse to watch more than one episode on the same day, so it hasn't worked yet). Now the day got even more interesting. Perhaps from all that had happened, I was pretty charged up and not ready to sleep. I watched two more shows and puttered around a bit before going to bed and starting a new book. It turned out to be quite engrossing and the light was bothering Ray, so I moved into the other room.

hooks up to a machine that blows air into my nose

This is perhaps more information than you want, but this is how things work sometimes. I would normally sleep in the red room in this situation, but I had stripped the bed when Amelia left after Thanksgiving and had not yet made it up. But I didn't want to put fresh sheets on and then sleep in them right before Molli and Adrian arrive on Saturday. So I slept in the little "bamboo" room, or sewing room. It was piled with stuff, including quilts and blankets on the single bed, but I eventually made myself a kind of comfortable nest in there. I liked this room, and I could see out the door and big windows, where the moon was shining. I brought my book and my glasses and my drinking water--and my CPAP machine. I have slept without it all this time and it seemed sort of silly to feel like I had to start now, this very night, but it didn't seem to make sense to put it off, just because I was in a different room and already having trouble sleeping. I read a while and began to doze. I got up and turned off the light and managed to get the thing on, but was no longer at all sleepy. What with the car and the job possibility, and the different bed and the interesting book, I gave up and took off the mask and turned on the light and read some more. I went through the same process again an hour or so later, including an attempt to fall asleep without the machine as well. Eventually, I gave up and finished the d**n book, slept some with the machine on and some with it off. I really don't know how much. It was 7 when the brightening sky woke me. I love my open house with all the windows, but not a good place for me to sleep in.

One of the strange things about the machine is that they ask me over and over if I am tired and fall asleep during the day, or wake up feeling like I have slept badly. I always say no. I usually sleep a good bit less than most people I know and don't feel tired or sleepy until I sit down in front of the TV at night. So, the promise of a better night's sleep is intriguing to me. At this point, I don't know how much I slept or how much of it was with the machine and I can't say I am better rested than usual. But we will see. Perhaps I will start sleeping only 4 hours a night or so!