Tuesday January 29, 2008 12:35 AM

Yes, it's past 12:30 in the morning and I'm up. Jim is STILL at Miele waiting for the wiring crew to finish. We're hoping they'll be done by tomorrow....oops, today....sometime this afternoon.

Jim didn't get his teeth yet. He went to Vanni and Vanni had them set in wax for try-on. He's got to tweak them some more. Because Jim can't open his mouth that wide since his vagus nerve is damaged, Vanni has to create more space between the upper and lower dentures, otherwise there wouldn't be room for food to fit in between the teeth and they would be useless to Jim. He goes back in two weeks. At that time, the teeth will still be set in wax, but if everything looks o.k., Vanni will finally have them set into dentures. So I guess we're talking ANOTHER month.

I think the Lexapro withdrawal is starting to ease up a little for me. I read about some holistic doctor who recommended four supplements for Lexapro withdrawal symptoms, so I tried them. They are "conjugated linoleic acid", "Omega 3 fish oil", "Vitamin E", and "Calcium with magnesium". Now, I'm not typically into supplements or one to tout things that are "all natural". After all, shit is all natural too but I certainly wouldn't eat it. But I figured I would try the supplement combo. If it works, fine. If not, I could use the stuff anyway. Omega 3is good for mental health, and I should have been taking calcium years ago. I'm starting to feel less fatigued, but there's still a strange "sound", if you can call it that, in my head. A sound is not really the right word. You know the sensation in your head right after you get shot up with anesthesia but before you go under? It's like a slight ringing sensation. But I finally dropped three pounds in one 24-hour period with very minimal effort on my part, so it's worth it. I'll take the ringing sensation over not fitting into my jeans any day. Yes- we women are so vain. But I don't care. I want to make sure I'm a good-looking corpse. Ha ha ha. My shrink would definitely over-analyze THAT one. He has no sense of humor.

One good thing about having to be camped at Miele....I've started working on my family tree in earnest. I've made contact with one of Jim's cousins in Italy and we've been trading old photos. I also was on the phone with my Aunt Laura for a couple of hours the other night, and she told me a very touching family story. It has absolutely nothing to do with Jim's and my health, but I thought I would post it here anyway. Hey...it's my blog and I can do whatever I want with it. So here goes: My grandmother's father (I'll call him Mr. Dupper here because his son and he had the same first name and the story would get confusing) came to Hoboken from Amsterdam with his wife, the first Mrs. Dupper. After about a year, his wife decided she really didn't like the United States and she wanted to go back to Amsterdam, but her husband wanted to stay. They couldn't resolve their differences so she left. Shortly after she got back home she realized she was pregnant, but didn't want to tell her husband for fear of pressuring him into leaving the U.S., which she knew he didn;t want to do. A couple of years later she wrote him a letter and informed him that he had a son, whom she named Frank. Mr. and Mrs. Dupper wound up getting divorced, and Mr. Dupper married the second Mrs. Dupper, who was also Dutch, but was already living in Hoboken. The second Mrs. Dupper had a daughter, my paternal grandmother, Louise. Mr. Dupper used to work on the docks in Hoboken loading and unloading cargo from ships. One day, while Louise was very young, Mr. Dupper had a mishap with some of the loading equipment on the dock, and he fell into the water and drowned. They didn't find his body for two days. Now that Mr. Dupper was dead, the second Mrs. Dupper decided to travel to Amsterdam to meet the first Mrs. Dupper and settle her husband's estate. While there, they met each other's children, and decided to purchase a single pair of earrings. They gave each child one of the earrings. The idea behind it was that they wouldn't know where life would possibly take their two children, but if Frank and Louise ever found each other again, they would know that they were brother and sister by the matching of the earrings. When Louise was grown and had children of her own, she was living in Lincoln Park, NJ and of course her kids had grown up hearing the earring story. One day her kids were going through the local phone book, and they said, "Hey Ma...there's a Frank Dupper that lives right in Pequannock....do you think that might be your brother?" and Louise said, "No way. My brother is in Amsterdam." Now I don't know if it was Louise herself who ultimately made contact with this Frank Dupper or if it was one of her kids, but sure enough, that Frank Dupper in Pequannock, only a few miles away, had the other earring. And they stayed very close for the rest of their lives. Both died within the last few years. Nice story, right?

Well, it's after 1 a.m. now and Jim still hasn't called to say he's on his way home. Ay yai yai. Don't expect me to be chipper tomorrow morning.

Sunday January 27, 2008 8:08 PM

By the way....Nick and Judy and Jim's brother Nicky dropped Jimmy home this afternoon, and Jimmy comes walking in holding a pad of scrap paper. On one of the pages is a drawing of a train, which I thought was excellent. I asked who drew it, and it was Jim's brother Nicky, so drawing talent must run in the family. I saved it and am putting it into this blog.

Sunday January 27, 2008 6:00 PM

Jim and I have one theme of the last three weeks: EXHAUSTED. We've been switching off nights and weekends at Miele. Friday night I got home at 2 a.m. It was very dangerous for me to be on the road. I was actually seeing double. I had to drive with one hand over an eye so I would only see ONE set of lines and ONE set of cars ahead of me. God only knows what my driving would have looked like had a cop seen me. But then things would have gotten interesting because I would have flunked walking the straight line but blown a zero on a breathalyser. I actually pulled off the road and took a half-hour nap, but it didn't help.

This wiring in the building was supposed to be finished by LAST weekend, but the crew ran into some supply problems, so here we are. Since they were supposed to be finised, Jim and I had made babysitting arrangements for Jimmy for Saturday night (yesterday) and we were planning on going to my friend Brie's house for game night. Yeah, it's just a bunch of adults hanging around planning Scene It and Scattergories, but it would have been the first night Jim and I had been out together in about a year and a half, and I really wanted to go as a couple and not by myself. But the wiring guys wanted to work late last night and there was only going to be people in the Miele building from 10 a.m. till about 4 p.m., so I was going to cancel my plans, which really had me very upset. The wiring guys had wanted to finish up on Saturday so they could fly home to Illinois today...after all, they've been away from their families for three weeks too, but the wiring crew told me not to cancel my plans. They know Jim's tumor story and they felt bad for me, so they extended their trip. Jim's up at Miele since 10 a.m. today and will be there until about midnight. I told him if he's too tired he should see if his brother Nicky is home and spend the night there. I don't want him almost getting into an accident like I did Friday night. I doubt he'll listen to me, though. I know I wouldn't listen. I'd much rather sleep in my own bed, so I'll take chances.

So we did go to Brie's, but we were both very tired. We slept right through Jimmy's karate class Saturday morning so he missed it, but he'll live.

Turns out Jim's appointment with Vanni was not on January 23, but on Jan 28th, so maybe tomorrow he'll get teeth.