Sheep Guarding Llama

I can’t believe that we are already up to the end of April.  We have been talking about this vacation in May for so long that it seemed like some far off dream – something that we would never actually do.  And here we are, days away.  The month is here already!  What is amazing to me is that many people take vacations every year.  If they do they must spend their entire year planning their vacations.  How do people find the time to do this?

Today marks one entire week that I have been caffeine free.  I dropped the caffeine cold turkey a week ago today and haven’t had any problems at all.  I wanted to get off of the caffeine for three reasons.  One for my heart – even though my check-ins each week are good I would like them to be better, second for the money since we spend so much on coffee and soda and third because caffeine is a problem for international travels dealing with jet lag.  One of the best ways to fight it is to not have any caffeine.

So, in theory, I am ready for Europe now.  Just over one more week to go without caffeine and I will be standing on the tarmac in jolly ol’ England.  I’m going to have enough to deal with when we get there without dealing with jet lag too.

I’m busy reading “Under the Tuscan Sun” having finished the first two sequels.  I decided that going back would be good.  The books is nothing, whatsoever like the movie other than both are set in the same general region of Italy in the same century.  Very weird.  They must have just really like the name of the book and winged it from there.

On my way home from work I went to Rockfish and picked up dinner for the family.  We haven’t done Rockfish in a while.  After grabbing the fish I ran across the street to Yogurt Zone and picked up froyo for Dominica, Liesl and I as well.

While driving home I finished “Under the Tuscan Sun” and moved on to reading “Everyday in Tuscany” which is Frances Mayes’ twenty year anniversary retrospective on her life in Tuscany.  The original book was started in 1990 and this one in 2010.

We watched some more of Travels with Kids tonight.  We’ve now seen all of their mainland European shows which are almost entirely places that we are not going with Venice being the only exception.  At least we got some good ideas about Venice.  We will be there for one day now with our finalized plans.

Yesterday I spent nearly the entire day working on projects.  I worked until my brain wasn’t really functioning any more.  I was quite productive, though, so I am happy about that.  I had a lot of things that I needed to get done and I wrapped them up, or mostly.  We are feeling like we are in the home stretch now before going to Europe.  Less than two weeks to go and so much to do that it is hard to think about anything else.  Not because we are so excited but because there is just so much to be done and so little time in which to get it all done.  Heading to another continent for so long with the kids is a bit nerve-wracking.

Today is my homework day.  I have tons to do so I pretty much barricaded myself into the office and just chugged away on that all day long.  Not fun but it had to be done.  I am so behind and I am really concerned that I am not going to have nearly enough done before we have to leave for Europe and doing it from Europe is going to be painful, to say the least.

By the end of the day I did finally get my homework caught up.  I am no longer officially behind.  Certainly not ahead, but no longer behind.  That, in and of itself, is a pretty major accomplishment.

I got us take out from Brookhaven this afternoon.  I made it in time to get food from the buffet but it was a breakfast buffet today all breads and meats so there really wasn’t anything for us to eat from that.

I did give Oreo a bath today.  Or a shower really.  A nice, long relaxing shower.  He likes that.  We have new shampoo and conditioner for him from his vet appointment yesterday that he seems to like.  It is very soothing.  He was very soft after his shower.  His mange is still awful and it makes us so sad.

We discovered that there are “Travels with Kids” episodes to watch on Hulu Plus.  We found this show long ago when it was only one or two seasons and didn’t travel anyplace in which we were interested so we never really got into it.  They’ve done a bit more now so we tried watching it again.  We are always looking for travel shows.

Sleeping without my CPAP makes me a much lighter sleeper than I have probably ever been.  I am so used to the noise of the compressor running right beside my head that now anything that I hear causes me to wake up immediately.  It is a bit of a problem.  Last night it was legitimate.  I heard Liesl wake up and start crying so I was in her room in minutes, before she was really even awake.  She had had an accident and her diaper didn’t hold up so her bed was wet.  So I cleaned her and changed her and brought her in to sleep with us.  That was three thirty in the morning.  Only about three and a half hours of sleep for me.

I ended up being unable to get back to sleep.  I lay awake in bed until nearly five hoping that I would fall back asleep but it never happened.  So finally I got up and just went into my office so that I could at least get some work done since I was already awake.

Today was a crazy busy work day for me.  So much to do.  I was incredibly productive though.  So that worked out, in a way.

I worked the entire day and really got no time to hang out at all.  A bit exhausting.

This afternoon I stayed home with the girls and Dominica took Oreo to his vet appointment.  His vet is more worried about him that she has been previously.  His mange is back really bad, not that it ever went away to any degree.  She has him on new, gentler medicine, more anti-biotics and has us feeding him as much as he will eat without getting sick.  We had felt that he was getting too thin and were slowly upping his food intact as it was.  But now we are giving him much, much more.

 

 

It’s Friday.  I have my calendar blocked off because I have so much work going on that I am unable to get my head above water and no way to catch up at all.

I got up early this morning, around seven, so that I could get back to work.  That was just four hours of sleep.  Not horrible but not as much as I would like.  Dominica said that I snored just a little bit as I was falling asleep but did not snore during the night.  So that is good, I just need to keep up the weight loss and hopefully I will never have need of the CPAP again.  We will be monitoring that closely for the next two weeks leading up to our trip.

I worked for about two hours before going into the office.  I am already over halfway through reading “In Tuscany” and will likely be done with it tonight.

I came home at lunch and worked on projects like crazy.  I got a ton of work done and feel good about my lunch time progress.

This afternoon at the office was busy, as to be expected as it is Friday.  I ended up having to work until around six thirty.  Except for Nicki, I was the last one in the office.  She is traveling to New York this weekend and isn’t coming back from there until three days after Dominica and I head up there. So I will not likely be seeing her again now until July.

On the way home I ran over to Brookhaven and picked up Friday night dinner.  That is becoming our accepted ritual.  Friday night take out from the club.  This evening it was soy glazed tilapia.  Dominica is always happy whenever they have tilapia.

After Luciana went to bed I made a run to Centennial to pick up some Tres Leche for tonight and then ran over to the yogurt shop and got Dominica, Liesl and I some frozen yogurt.  I came home and we all watched the movie Morning Glory which Dominica has been trying to get me to watch with her for months.  I had some time since the two big jobs that I needed to do were still running and were not ready for me.  One is a database load that has been running all day and the other is a file transfer that has also been running all day.  I check on them periodically but after a full day of running they aren’t likely to be wrapping up “any minute.”

We were in bed around eleven thirty.  When I put Liesl to bed tonight we tried something new.  I read her one of Hans Christian Andersen’s faery tales, a short story like she normally gets, but then instead of ready a few short stories I started reading to her from the book “Rabbit Hill” which I read in my childhood.  We didn’t make it very far before I noticed that she was asleep in my lap.

I did end up finishing “In Tuscany” tonight and since I finished both sequels I went back and started reading the actual book “Under the Tuscan Sun”.   I had skipped it as I have seen the movie but now that I am reading it I realize that the movie is really not even loosely based on the book.

My latest article on Datamation was published this morning: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love BYOD.  My article is the main headliner this morning and my article from January is still on the front page of Datamation as well.  This is my first time with two articles running at one time.

Dominica is starting to panic a bit about how much luggage space we are going to need to be able to carry everything while in Europe.  Things are taking up more space than she had planned.  She is working on a “packing light” article for our new travel blog Kidding Around Europe today.  She also ordered new stickers that have our Kidding Around Europe logo on them (the one that my cousin Sara made for us) for Liesl to hand out while we are overseas.

So last night we were talking about the packing and luggage situation and trying to figure out what could be done.  That’s when it occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, I had lost enough weight that I no longer need the CPAP in order to sleep.  I’ve been wearing the CPAP for over seven years now and have logged more than 17,000 hours on my CPAPs.  It is like a part of me.  I almost hate to see it not be used, it is a part of who I am.  I’ve had it for most of the time that I have been writing SGL.  For almost all of our marriage.  My kids have never known me to not need it.  Even Oreo never knew me without it.  I moved to New Jersey with it.  Back to New York and on to Texas.  It is a part of who I am now.  I’m not even sure how to fall asleep without the ritual of putting it on or having the white noise that it produces being right beside my head all night.  But carrying a CPAP through Europe would be awful.  We get to bring so little and it is both large and fragile.

So last night I went to bed sans CPAP for the first time intentionally in forever.  Dominica monitored me as best as she could to make sure that I was not snoring.  It was a restless night, mostly because I am not used to sleeping without the CPAP so the lack of the noise and the lack of the head gear was odd.  And Oreo seemed to be extra restless (we fed him a larger than usual dinner) and that probably contributed.

So I got up this morning feeling fine and the assessment from Dominica is that she did not hear me snore once the entire night.  So far, so good.  That is only one night but that is extremely encouraging.  It would be so awesome to be away from the CPAP for many reasons.  For one major reason, it is just annoying to have to deal with it all of the time and to keep it on the bedside table and to carry it in the car at all times “just in case”.  But also because by needing a CPAP I am automatically disqualified from getting personal health insurance in the United States.  It is a black and white issue, according to the insurance companies that I have spoken to, having sleep apnea simply means no insurance, period, end of story.

But in regards to our upcoming European adventure the CPAP was going to be even more of a burden.  CPAPs in the airports are time consuming as they have to go through special scanners and take extra time and management since you have to remove them from the case, wait for them to be swabbed, pack them back up, etc.  It is more effort than a laptop, for example, because the CPAP does air filtering and processing it tends to pick up a lot of things that trigger sensors.

Not having the CPAP simply means one fewer bag to carry and as we will be completely on foot carrying everything all of the time that is a really big deal.  On its own the CPAP is not large but when it is a part of the overall luggage scheme it is burdensome to the extreme – mostly because of the form factor.

The CPAP was also a concern on the night trains, of which we will be taking several, as there is unreliable power there and we were unsure that a CPAP would function.  Setting up and packing up a CPAP in the hotel room every night was going to be awful too.  I hate traveling with the CPAP, it requires tons of effort – especially if in a hotel that does not consider the needs of a CPAP and does not have power outlets near the head of the bed within reach of a bedside table.  It can be quite problematic.

This means that I will be able to nap on planes and trains too!  Something that I have not been able to do in as long as I can remember (well, seven years.)  I think that it is hard to actually account for all of the ways that not having a CPAP could improve our lives for the next few months.  This is really huge.

I had a lunch meeting today out at Canyon Creek Country Club.  I had to meet Jenn out there at half past twelve.  Dominica and I have driven past Canyon Creek before but we have never stopped in so this was my first chance to try out one of the other country clubs.  I always enjoy doing that.

We had a nice lunch.  The weather was awesome today so we sat outside.  Surprisingly the grill was busy but outside was just one table of ladies who had been out playing tennis and Jenn and I at another table.  Such a nice day and no one taking advantage of it.

I finished reading “Bella Tuscany” this morning and today started reading, and made good progress through, “In Tuscany”, the second sequel memoir to “Under the Tuscan Sun.”  I’ve not read the first book in the series, even though I own it, because I have seen the movie and wanted to be sure that I would have time to read the second two before we travel over to Europe.  I assume that I will have a bit of time to read while we are over there as well but I wanted some stuff to be read before we go.

This evening was a very heavy work evening for me.  I worked pretty much from the time that I got home until three in the morning.  That was exhausting.  I played with Liesl and Luciana a little and they both came into my office to hang out with me from time to time but I didn’t watch any television, play any games or get to hang out with the family really tonight.  No relaxing for me.  I got tons of work done, though, at least.

Dominica stayed up with me, longer than me, actually, while I worked.  She did some work and some travel planning.  We have all of our flights and all of our major trains booked now.  Major progress.  Our credit cards are also suffering as all of our travel expenses are on there already.  Boy is that hurting.