I’m Tired

I don’t have a blog post prepared so I am winging it. The past week was a tiring one. It started off with a dental appointment to put a crown on a tooth that had previously had root canal. The process of preparing the crown left my mouth sore. I don’t know about you, but I don’t enjoy when they insert the tray with the gooey stuff in my mouth to make an impression of my teeth. I remind myself to breathe so I don’t gag. I prefer not to have someone putting their hands in there to drill either- the vibrations cause my ears and sinuses to ache. Invariably my jaw is sore afterwards. It took a couple of days for that to settle down. Great start to the week.

Then I went down to New Jersey to accompany my mom to her pulmonologist appointment. I wanted to go (Mom, don’t feel guilty!!). I don’t mind a road trip. I listen to podcasts, NPR and music. As long as traffic isn’t bad, I’m good. I wanted to be there to hear directly what the doctor said, to support Mom and to spend some time with her. The issue is that the visit to the doctor was not great. I’m not going to go into details, but we left with more questions that we arrived with. Mom is doing okay, but not as good as we would like and frankly, I worry about her. (Mom, don’t feel guilty!!) It is hard being 3.5 hours away.

That night, after the unsettling appointment, I had a zoom bookclub. I signed up for an offering from my local library – the club meets virtually to discuss 7 Pulitzer Prize winning novels that explore the American experience. The assignment for this meeting was Humboldt’s Gift by Saul Bellow. I’m not going to digress too far on this, it could merit its own blog post, but I would describe the read as a slog. Reading a book should not be a slog. I fought through it, at least in part out of respect for my fellow bookclubbers. The facilitator of the session, who I like very much, opened the meeting by confessing that he couldn’t get through it! Part of me regretted that I had put in the effort, but, in fact, I’m glad I did. It wasn’t great timing in that I had other things to do, but I did get something out of the experience. One thing I learned: I will not read another Saul Bellow novel. I read one in college, Herzog, which I also remember as a painful experience. I think two is quite sufficient for my lifetime. I may write more about Mr. Bellow’s novel another time. I enjoyed our discussion which centered on whether we feel an obligation to finish a book we have started. What do you think?

The week proceeded with preparations for Passover. Last year we did a virtual seder which worked out pretty well, all things considered, but certainly isn’t what we prefer. This year, since Gary and I are fully vaccinated, our children came and we zoomed with my husband’s sisters. I love having a full house. I loved having Leah, Ben, Dan, Beth and our granddaughter here.

Our granddaughter woke up at 4:15 a.m. Saturday morning. I didn’t want her to wake her parents – she was starting to cry and we had the monitor in our bedroom – so I went in to her. She settled quickly. I didn’t. I got back into bed and thought about everything I needed to do. About 6:00 a.m. I fell back to sleep. Our granddaughter woke up at 6:15 a.m. Fortunately, Gary was happy to get her and I fell back to sleep for another hour and a half. Despite that I got up not feeling particularly well rested. A small price to pay, but as I get older it gets harder to rebound. I thought to myself, “I don’t want to be 61!” as I brushed my teeth. Of course it is better than the alternative.

During the weekend we laughed, we chatted, we prepared the seder meal (three of us combined efforts to make the turkey and it paid off), we ate multiple meals actually. We played Trivial Pursuit. My granddaughter not only chose me to put her to bed both nights, but said, “Nana, I love you.” Nothing is better than that. I will treasure the memories and look forward to the next time we get to be together.

Now it is Monday morning. I don’t have a blog post prepared. But that’s okay.