I seem to be in a sort of mental tail spin. Classes at Hope are over for this year. Yesterday morning I had a 6 month check up. I worry unnecessarily about these. I mostly am ashamed that I haven’t lost weight since the last appointment. This anxiety drives up my blood pressure at the office. Dr. Fuentes told me that we were just going to accept that I have “white coat” syndrome which drives it up. Usually they take it twice and the second one is considerably lower.

After this appointment (which other than my usual “white coat” dealy went well) I came home and crashed. I had skipped morning coffee in case they wanted to draw blood (they didn’t), so I was looking forward to having some and relaxing a bit.

Somehow I managed to forget that I had a lesson scheduled at 10:30 with an organ student. I remembered it around 11:15. Eileen and I drove over to church and I apologized profusely to my student.

Last night after my first martini (I only  had one then red wine with my pizza), I had a call from Mom’s nursing home. They wanted to send her to ER because her urinary tract infection was causing her pain and she was having difficulties. By the time I got a hold of anyone Mom was already at the ER.

This morning Eileen and I drove over to check on her. She is suffering from some confusion which apparently comes along with the infection. At least we hope that it’s connected. I think she is more comfortable at the  hospital and they are aggressively treating her infection. She’ll probably go home in a few days.

Last night I dreamed about my dead cousin, Alan. Both he and my Dad were in the dream. My Dad appears pretty often in my dreams, but I haven’t dreamed of Alan for years. Later in the dream I was talking to my sister-in-law, Nancy. I was going to talk to her about my Dad, but then I remembered that she didn’t have a Dad (this was in the dream… her and Eileen’s father passed away a few years ago) and decided not to bring up my Dad.

This last little bit is amusing to me, because it reflects some behavior I have developed at this stage of my life, namely keeping my fucking mouth shut once in a while especially when I deem my insights unhelpful.

Eileen and stopped over at Mom’s nursing home and grabbed her hearing aids and glasses. We will deliver them this afternoon. The nurse thought that Mom’s lack of hearing and seeing might have caused her to underestimate Mom’s cognition. I’m not hopeful about that, but will drop off the stuff along with a couple of books Mom might want to read. She doesn’t usually read in the hospital. It is a traumatic event in her life and leaves her pretty exhausted.  But I will take her some books just in case.

After getting Mom’s stuff, we came home and had breakfast and I emailed the fam about Mom. Jupe continues to tailspin.

Eileen wants to go buy a Christmas tree, so I’m off. No pics today.