Flippity-flop

I slept from 9:30 Wednesday night until 11:00 Thursday morning and woke feeling like I'd been run down by a large truck. But you have to love it. After eight days of feeling like a speed bump in a school zone, suddenly, for no reason apparent to me, about 2:00 yesterday afternoon my concrete blanket of fatigue dropped away and I felt perfectly fine.

I quickly drew up a grocery list and headed for the nearby Sobeys. Just in the nick of time, as we were looking at a dwindling supply of fruit.

As expected I put my neck out lifting sacks of food from cart to car and car to granny cart, but my lovely friend Diane came along as I finished loading the granny cart and she took it away from me and pulled it to my door. Nonetheless I sat here reading into the wee hours because my throbbing migraine would not allow me to lie down. Finally an extra pain pill did the trick and at 3:00 am I trundled off to bed and slept as well as anyone who is adored by two loving and somewhat jealous cats will permit.

Of course there's nothing wrong with being smooched awake at 4:00 am and again at 5:00, but by 6:00 am I'd had my fill of whiskery kisses and tuna breath. I got up, took my pill, went to the bathroom, fed both of the lover boys, then shut the bedroom door and slipped back into bed with a lover who knows it's rarely productive of much lovin' to awaken me in the night.

Surprisingly I was awake and quite chipper at 8:30. A quick review of systems didn't reveal anything amiss, I guess I have just caught up on a year's worth of sleep this last week and was ready to get up, even though I'd shopped yesterday. Who'd a thunk it?

When we moved in here we had a lot of help, and things got stacked willy-nilly in the closets. Face it the place is poorly designed to store those things any functioning family needs, like a toolbox, a couple of fileboxes for warranties, legal papers, etc. I have a genealogy filebox, there's a shredder, there's a wheelchair and a walker, cat carriers, linens, and I've already told you that at 5' nothing I can reach only the lowest shelf in the kitchen cupboards.

So I've been sweeping around, vacuuming around, falling over all these bits and pieces forever, and I was sick and tired of it. WalMart had a sale on sturdy open shelving so I bought two sets, a 22" long set and a 30" set - several weeks ago. I hadn't had the energy to put them together or worse, move the stuff from where they are going and then move stuff into them. The shelves are plastic and certainly not pretty but I'll go to Home Despot and get some sliders and cut to size panel or foamcore doors. I have some lovely wallpaper left over from papering the Beach House, and I think I have just enough left to cover sliding doors to cover the contents of the shelves. Tidy and even pretty. If I don't have enough paper I certainly have paint.

But HURRAH! Today I feel good AGAIN! The 30" one is going on the right side of the bed in our room, the 22" on the left. We have bedside tables which go between the shelves and the bed. I emptied the spot on my side of the room, which housed the wheelchair, a kitchen chair, some pool noodles (for stretching my back), a cubby for shoes, a cat carrier, a file box, a shredder and some misc. bits and bobs.

The shelves went together in five minutes and I had them filled just as quickly. [edit: Husband says I have taken great journalistic license. While the shelves went together in 10-15 minutes the organizational mayhem of filling said shelves took the rest of the afternoon. And to think I worked for a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper as a pup. Truth is relative, or maybe what's true is that time is relative.] Nothing left sitting on the floor. We moved the chest of drawers from Tony's side of the bed to mine, putting it against the wall. Then we assembled the 22" shelves and put in the little boxes he uses to organize his medications, and some other boxes.

Now that the front closet is empty the wheelchair and walker both fit in easily. The shoe cubby is also there, along with the box of gloves and toques.

Very nice Flip-Flop of a day.