Living with a dog with a small bladder is like having a newborn again. You sleep in short chunks with multiple mid-night wakings. After having just climbed back in bed after yet another late night trip downstairs with Molly, I have so many random thoughts floating around…

• Note to self: I sleep better if I claim my half of the bed from an Equatorial perspective (top half) rather than a meridian (right half) perspective. At least with the dogs… not sure about the pilot. 😆 These days when the Munchkin is gone to his dad’s, I end up with the Pug and the Bulldog in bed with me, while the lab is in the dog bed in the floor next to me. Did I mention they snore? They all snore…

• I am so behind on writing and homework right now it’s not funny… and I’m having so much trouble forcing myself to actually work. But the end of semester looms… and panic is starting to become a daily feeling.

• I miss my pilot. The worst part of this time in our airline life is not knowing when I’ll see him again. He’s working so hard to get through this challenging point in his career… and I’m so proud of him. But it’s hard. For both of us.

• My mother is so freaking amazing… she cleaned and reorganized my office this weekend and I can actually work at my desk now.

• There’s something really special, after having been blessed with a best friend for 22 years, to having a relationship with her daughter.

• The money for the semester never seems to last through the whole semester. I think one thing I miss about working, besides having a social life, is just knowing there’s a paycheck coming.

• It’s only 38 days until Rocky Mountain Christmas vacation! Hooray! I’m so looking forward to Christmas with both parents and my sister. It will be good to be away from Indiana over the holiday, so close on the heels of losing my grandpa.

• I don’t like having a friend living with chronic pain… but I do appreciate having someone who understands where I live who I can text at any hour to commiserate. My sweet friend in Georgia is dealing with a mess of back issues. I hate hearing how she hurts, how the pain is getting to her emotionally. But it is so comforting to be able to turn to someone who gets what it’s like to live this illness life, who knows how it feels to feel like a burden to others, who really gets how frustrating this can be and how much you just want to go back to “normal.”

• I had grand intentions on doing the “30 days of Thanks” thing this year… but lately I’m struggling to find the good. Not that I’m not very blessed and incredibly “wealthy” by so many standards. I have a home, a family, a beautiful child, an education, food to eat… but as I fight my own body every day, sometimes just to get out of bed, you get trapped in this internal place where it’s very hard to get outside oneself and recognize all that is there.

• Hypocortisolism is no joke. At a time when my pain is relatively well-managed, nothing is more infuriating than having to rest (or nap) after just a few hours… and on the days I force myself to get up and go all day, to then have to spend the entire next day (or more) recovering. I feel like I’m sleeping my life away these days, and I hate it. Thank God for my momma, who is helping me keep it together for my Munchkin. I’ll be glad when my new treatment starts working, in the hope that I can stay awake for more than a few hours at a time and maybe start to feel human again.

With that, I think I’ll try to catch a couple more hours sleep before class… hopefully…