it is now 2:16 am. do you know what time it is? or rather, why am i up so late when i have to work tomorrow?

the story is as follows.....

i had two reports for Court that i had to write and fax over to the various participants before Monday at 8am. i had finished the first one yesterday morning. the second one, which was a tad more complicated, i had to have ferment in my preconscious mind until i returned home at 10pm. after i returned, and after i joined the One Spirit Book Club online (great books on Eastern Philisophy, medicine, psychiatry, etc., and since i attended a three day conference with various psychiatrists, psychologists, and the Dalai Lama, i felt inspired), i wrote the report, faxed it, and printed a copy. the print copy came out first and had several typos, so i canceled the fax copies by disconnecting the USB cable that runs from my laptop to the printer (i was to lazy to get up, walk four steps to the printer, and press 'cancel.') i corrected the report, reprinted it, saw it was perfect, and refaxed it.

except the fax didn't work.

so i unplugged and replugged the cable.

it still didn't work.

so i restarted my computer.

it still didn't work.

so i went through my fax program and sent a test fax signal, which worked.

and yet again, my fax did not work.

so i went to get my CD-rom of the program so that i can reinstall my all-in-one drivers. i had put it into the top right hand drawer of the dresser i use as a computer console.

and it wasn't there. John had moved it and forgot about it again.

so i went and woke John up at approx. 12:45am and made him come down and look for it, since he was angrily insisting that he hadn't moved it and that it was still there. he came down two flights of stairs to the basement and looked through the drawer. the CD-Rom was not there (i could have told him that, but he didn't believe me.)

he looked at me stupidly and said, 'i don't know where it is. you must have moved it.'

i refrained from homicide and looked through all of the other drawers. it was at the bottom of the third drawer i looked through. he started to lecture me about how i had moved it, but i cut him off and said, 'if you'll say that you moved it and forgot about it and that you're sorry, i'll forget about this.'

so he did, and went upstairs to sleep.

i reloaded the drivers, and it still didn't work. i finally shut the all-in-one dwon, unplugged it, replugged it, and turned it back on.

the fax worked just fine after that.

i was thinking about this little episode when i was surfing people's blogs and reading some of the caregiver's blogs. i was also thinking of my 81 year old mother, who was diagnosed with congestive heart failure (her doc didn't tell her, but i know the symptoms and the treatment) and given Lasix to clear up the edema in her legs. her doc told her that she MUST rest and sleep, which she hasn't been doing much of, being my dad's primary caregiver (with a 24 hr aide, me, and her friends) for over 2 years. she finally told me that she would allow me to help her clean her house and put away all of the papers that litter every surface of her house. (i also told my dad that he better behave and stop keeping my mom up all night because he's bored, because if my mom dies he's going into a nursing home. my mom refuses to set limits on him. he very *beep* off at me, but he's been quiet for the last two nights.)

from my mom's behavior and from these caregiver blogs that i have been reading, it seems that caregivers, especially when they are women, lose their identity and become part of the person that they are taking care of. i imagine it a kind of process that one undergos when one becomes Borg (resistence is futile.you will be assimilated! (google Star Trek for further details).)

well, i would rather be put down than become Borg. i am my own person, and i like it that way. my identity is mine, and i don't share it with anyone.

i really have difficulty imagining how my becoming John's caretaker is going to work out. i am not very good at standing behind John helping him get through the day while slowly turning into Seven of Nine (Tammy Wynette's 'Stand By Your Man" always made me puke, except when i sang it about Hilary Clinton.)

i really have to figure out another way to do this.

30. I WILL NOT, WILL NOT, WILL NOT become assimilated into John (or anyone else, for that matter.)