My Ambien-withdrawal program is not progressing as rosily as I had hoped. While reading last night, I felt come over me the sleepiness that Stephanie Romasewski talks about and decided to go to bed at about 9:30. At one point, after what felt like three hours awake, I decided, as she suggests, to get up and do something enjoyable – calligraphy, of course. I never looked at the clock. I just wrote until I felt the sleepiness again and again went to bed. I woke this morning at 7. I looked at my Fitbit. It showed that I actually was in light sleep for 80% of that first period, which actually turned out to be 2 hr and 32 mins. So, I was asleep for 2 hours of that time. The second sleep, I was asleep in less than 15 minutes and slept for 5 h 25 min. Tonight, I’m just going to stay in bed, no matter what and see what happens. I am obviously sleeping more than I think. I wonder if snoring is waking me up. Speaking of which…
I picked up my anti-snore device. It’s actually called a myofunctional sleep appliance. Right, Jolene?
This is a serious device. I’ve been exercising/wearing it for an hour a day for three days so far, and it is quite intense. It feels like it is remolding my maxillary tissue. See that little tab at the top? The exercise is to push on that with the tongue. Doing that creates a suction that pulls the teeth together and pushes the device up. If I relax my mouth, the device slides down, and my mouth is open. When I take the device out, it feels like there is a clump of tissue in the upper corner of each side of the mouth, behind the last molar, at the peak of the cheek. I texted the dentist and told her that I would like to see her after this first week, just to make sure that my mouth looks okay. I thought the device might be too big. She said that’s perfect, just keep your mouth closed the entire 60 minutes. Okay.
Latest calligraphy update. The practices I have been posting here are the same ones that I post to the calligraphy Facebook group. The past couple of days, I have been reviewing my work before I post it, using a red pen to show where I made mistakes. I thought, someday Ash is going to say something, or maybe give a thumbs up. So yesterday, I posted this one:
…and Ash finally commented: “I like the red marks.” You think he could have at least said that my ovals were improved?
I walked into town this morning, and Barbara met me at the bottom of the hill. We came back here for coffee and a “chat,” which lasted 4-1/2 hours. Love that woman. I’m excited about her and Kathy meeting. I know they will hit it off.
This is one of my favorite views as I walk into town:
I had a strange experience here last night. As I was on the couch reading, I heard a clicking sound coming from the kitchen. I got up to investigate and zeroed in on the refrigerator as the source. It sounded like an ice maker was operating, but this refrigerator doesn’t have an ice maker. I unplugged it, and the noise continued. I plugged it back in and decided to just ignore it. As I was walking away I heard a BOOM! It sounded like someone was hitting my front-door window with a pole. I froze in place for a short time and then went to the door and locked it. I turned on the light, looked around a bit and saw nothing. I texted Jerry and asked him if he could come down. He didn’t respond right away. After a number of minutes, I told him to forget it, that everything was fine, but he did come down. He looked around, found nothing going on and left.
This morning, I looked out my front door and saw that one of the banana trees had fallen. I texted Jerry and asked him if a banana tree makes a loud noise like that when it falls. He responded, “Only if there is someone there to hear it.” That got an LOL.
A short time later, I discovered that a 5-pound dumbbell, that I was using to weigh down a book, which was flattening some cards, had fallen to the floor. Yes, that was the boom.
BTW, the refrigerator is fine.
The insect patrol was here today. The spraying feels sort of violent and noxious, but I have to weigh that with the feeling of seeing cockroaches. Spraying is the winner here for me. Barbara and Sally have both told me that they got used to them while living in New York and Chicago. Wisconsin never provided me with this conditioning.
The books I have been reading and listening to lately, Walking Through Walls and Battle for Your Brain, both deal with utilizing the power of the electrical activity of our brains and bodies to heal. I am wondering if this is going to be the healing technology used by Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg and their new philanthropic organization, CZI. They said their goal is to cure all human disease by the end of this decade. It will be interesting to see how this pans out. I was always a bit skeptical (and also very ignorant) of energy healing, but these books are making me think differently, and it looks like this may be where healthcare is headed. I wonder how the pharmaceutical industry is going to respond to this. Although, I did learn that Zuckerberg bought a company called Control, which deals in this technology. I also learned that 23 and Me is partnered with Glaxo-Smith-Kline. My guess is that the latter will one day be approaching people who had their DNA analyzed by 23 and Me and letting them know about any genetic disease they have that could be treated by their drugs. We’ll see. Always something new.