Strange nights
I didn't sleep at all last night, and I'm going to be up again tonight. Ma had a very odd episode Wednesday night. While still asleep she apparently sat up on the edge of her bed and emptied most of her nightstand drawer into the wastebasket. She then turned her wheelchair so that it was facing towards the door rather than towards her bed. Either before or after doing this she put the wastebasket on the wheelchair seat. At least, we are assuming she did this because that's the way she found things in the morning. I sleep like the stunned so I didn't hear anything. I sat up last night, fooling with some icons. Every time I heard a cough or a groan or some mumbling (she normally talks in her sleep) I was up and into her room with a flashlight. Never left the middle of the bed. I'm fearful she'll try to walk in her sleep and fall down. I'll be up all night again tonight.
My cousin Jan came for lunch Thursday afternoon. I always enjoy her visits, as she is very good company and always has lots of news about her brother and sister, their families, and her grandkids and great-grandkids. Being childless, I'm a stub on the family tree, but I enjoy sitting down now and again with people who just plain look like me.
We all wear some variation on the family face, but I find it amusing that my maternal family genes seem so much stronger. It's as if spouses' genes come in hopefully only to go down in utter defeat. We hardly know they're there. The family characteristics are very noticeable in the old family photographs and tintypes one of my cousins has. It's very interesting to see your face looking back at you at a different age and with a different hair-do . And believe me, it's not that we're so comely. The women tend to be either very tall and solid or very short and stocky, but always with round faces, dark hair and eyes, big boobs and big butts (to the despair of my second cousins and my neice), and--which has always been a great trial to me--not much neck. When I was young I longed for the type of swanlike neck seen in Pre-Raphaelite paintings, but I've resigned myself to my lack of cervical height. Besides, it would look kind of odd with the rest of the package. If someone told me there was a whole town in Quebec that looked just like me I wouldn't be at all surprised.
Well, no noise from the room down the hall, so I think I'll grab some books. Right now I'm re-reading Little Dorrit for recreation, Greek Religion by Burkert, and Worlds at War, subtitled The 2500 Year Struggle Between East and West by Anthony Pagden. The Dorrits are flush with their newfound money and have just gone to The Continent where most of the family are behaving like the most dreadful parvenus.