Rough

   Damn Sam yesterday was a rough day! I'm hoping today goes a bit better! Geez. I mean, yeah, I understand this is going to get worse before the end comes, and I'd better steel my nerves if I'm going to come out the other side with any form of dignity, but still, YIKES!. I'm coughing a lot more phlegm now, than I was. That's not always a bad thing, more of a pain in the ass thing, but not always bad. The new end of the stick is, when I wake up from naps (which are practically uncontrollable now) I cough up a lot more blood for a lot longer period of time. It seems that I cough deep into my lungs as well. Not that puny upper respiratory cough, like a sore throat or drainage cough, but way down there cough.  What I cough up is a beautiful shade of bright red, and at first not a lot of phlegm with it. As it settles in the phlegm increases and the blood decreases until it's all pretty clear. I'm taking mucinex to thin the phlegm out, hoping that it will clear more easily, and in most cases that's true. It is certainly disheartening to have that big a swing in just 3 days. Saturday I was able to cough and clear really easily. Sunday and Monday the same, although Monday there was a definite increase in the amount of blood I was bringing up. Tuesday, however, that knocked my socks off. I'm glad now that I gathered up the three kids still at home and discussed that I was going to be coughing up more blood and to not get excited unless I was excited. For whoever suggested I do that, cudo's. Thank you very much. I don't know why I didn't think to do that on my own, but I hadn't. Your suggestion helped with the kids quite a bit, thanks.
     It was rough in the fact that I got to the point I was kinda spooked to fall asleep for any length of time. That's not conducive to being a good patient. I know when my body says sleep, that I should. It's working its ass off to heal me, and though it's fighting a losing battle, I'd be better off if I just gave it the chance to do what it does best. I think that happens with a lot of us. How many of us, when we've had a bug strong enough to keep us home from work, fought sleeping? I won't lie, I did. A lot. Foolish really, because what am I going to miss? The Price Is Right? Big deal. I know when I did finally quit fighting it and went to sleep, I woke up feeling 100% better. Now why I didn't make that connection, Mr Obvious, is beyond me. So now, I find that I kinda enjoy the little naps during the day. It'd be nice to get five or six hours of straight sleep at night, although I don't think I'll see that again. Generally two to four hours is about all I get in a row at night. For instance. I woke up at about 1 AM, coughing my ass off. Then I feel like I need to wait a bit before trying to fall asleep again. That stems from putting myself back out, and waking up in ten minutes coughing even harder than what woke me up. So about Two I went back out. Didn't wake up until about 0430. In those two and a half hours, though, I felt really refreshed. And still don't feel all that sleepy. Yesterday I was typing this blog and dozed off I don't know how many times. Or wrote stuff that was so far outside the walls that I didn't even have a point of reference as to why it got that way. Strange feeling indeed
    It was rough in the fact that my voice is almost completely gone. I have to struggle to form any words and make them understandable. I have to speak a word, take a breath, speak a word, and so on until I get the sentence out. I also have to make it more quiet than I had to in the past. Not that it was overly loud to begin with, but it's even more quiet now. I don't really know how much longer I'll have any voice at all. That will be a bit of a sad moment for me, not that I didn't expect that to be the case, but I sure would have liked to be able to speak again, to the point everyone understood me. And something other than a nice string of cuss words would have been nice. Although my penmanship has really gotten better, and I can write faster now. Silver linings, remember?

   Last week at the Safety Meeting, my boss asked me "What are the good things in your life? I already know the bad things, what's the good that keeps you going on?".  I hate when he asks questions that should be damned easy to answer and just aren't. Seriously, one would think that you could rattle off half a dozen different good things, right? I was stumped. I know there are good things going on with me, I see them every day. But how to put those into words, since they are mostly feelings and not the overt things like the bad. So I thought about it as we walked to our vehicles. And thought. Probably the most quiet he'd ever heard me in the over 2 years we worked together. Here's what I came up with

 Friendship: Real, cyber, old and new. Every day it's a pretty steady stream of people on Facebook or out in the real world wishing me the best. Just visiting. Letting me listen and be part of the group that I'd been in for years. Having old friends come a long way to visit. (It had happened before Kise and Daric visited as well). That's always a good thing.

Breathing: I used to laugh and answer "Well, I'm on the right side of the grass and breathing", when people would ask how I am. A new breath on a new day. That's the ticket. I'm beginning to cherish them more and more

Being able to get out and around: Besides taking some road trips, just being able to drive myself to my therapy sessions, or to the field offices is a great feeling. That may not always be an option, so I'm gonna revel in it as long as I can

 Watching my grandson: I know I know, it's way down here on the list, but this isn't done in a prioritized manner. Just watching him get bigger, (i see it when I think his mom isn't, because I didn't see my kids get bigger, suddenly they just were) listening to him talk to his mom and YaYa. Pretty cool stuff

Getting a hug from the kids: Always a damn good thing. No matter how bad my day was, I'd come in the door and the kids would yell "Daddy!!" and run up and give me a hug. They are older now and don't do that, but we still get hugs. Those I truly cherish.

 That's just a few. The list goes on and on. I've said before, your day is what you make of it. If you start out pissed off, chances are your day is going to suck dick for skittles as well.  I don't like that. I try to make each day count. Try to be a little productive, even when I'm stuck at home.

 Book of Rock: Don't fuck around. Get done what you have to, in the best manner possible, and as quickly as possible. Get your work done, then you have all that extra time to screw around in. Set that daily goal, hit it, and the rest of your day is yours.
 That doesn't mean you should set your daily goal so ridiculously low that even a trained chinchilla could finish it. What it means is that your set a goal that challenges you. Hit that goal, you'll never feel like your not accomplishing anything within your job. I can't tell you how many times I've had young guys come up and say "I don't know why I bother, I never get ahead of my job". No shit? Really? What was your goal today? "didn't have one". And THAT'S why you feel like you don't accomplish anything. Shame on you, not the job or the boss, you.

 Why did I like working in the oil field all those years? Because I did see at the end of every day, what I'd managed to get done. Stuffing boxes packed, wells cleaned and cleaned up around. Finding leaks, checking this and that in a daily routine. There was always something to look at that was the measure of what you'd done during the day. Every working person needs that. Otherwise your job looks more like a ball and chain than it should. Your job should always be a reflection upon you. And at times mine looked like I didn't give a rat's hairy ass. And those times I didn't. Those didn't last long, but it doesn't take long for something you take pride in to slip into that mess you'd rather not have your name tied to. That was always my fault, not anyone else's, just mine. And I was able to correct that.

  Treat yourself to something that's only for you, today. Big or small it doesn't matter, just find something that's only for you and get it. In the long run, it'll be a blessing