All The Ghosts Of Christmases...

 Got up this morning at the crack of ... 8:45 am.  A place where my body very much said "roll over and go back to sleep" but the wee puppy, Frejya, who was rather considerate in telling me "OK, Pops, enough laying around, I have a finite-sized bladder..."  She didn't step on my face, though, which I did appreciate.  In thankfulness, I got out of bed, and then stepped closer to the open Bedroom Window.  

Yeah.  I like to sleep in a cooler bedroom, which is, when you have a bedroom in the basement with a window almost always possible.  During the summer time our central air conditioner does do a fine job of keeping the basement a bit above "hanging meat locker" temperatures (which is below forty, for those wondering), but in the winter I usually take advantage of our natural cooling.  Which, last night, being that very special of nights each year, didn't see much.  In fact, yesterday, I'm told our high temperature was 47.  Our overnight low was ... 45.  Yah.  Christmas in the Frozen North.  One might think the Vikings were on their way to a Super Bowl win, but ... well, let's just say the football game yesterday did a pretty damned good job at putting that one pretty much out of reach.

But I got up, did my morning stuff, then headed upstairs.  My evening routine typically consists of walking the dogs around the nearby school parking lot, usually around or slightly after 9 pm, then heading off to bed, to prepare for a 5:20 am wakeup.  Yep.  That's my normal routine.  But I got up, and then noted that my cell phone was not in the place where I usually leave it - charging on the paper tray of my now-dead-but serving a purpose Samsung Color Laser Printer.  I'd bought it about 20 years ago now, I think - or probably around 15 maybe, when I got a good deal, but it has given up the ghost, unable to route paper from said paper tray into ... well, the usual places paper goes where toner is converted to images/words that appear on the paper.  It, like the Cannon Inkjet, a sub-$50 "I need something that prints resumes" printer are both non-functional, and not yet disposed of - I have ideas that I may be able to do something useful with the parts inside a laser printer.  Or maybe not.  But anyway, the cell phone wasn't there.

It wasn't there because, last night, I specifically removed my electronics before heading out into the rain to walk the dogs.  I had an umbrella, which needed one hand, a flashlight, which needed another hand, and ... well, then there were dogs.  They can usually get around the parking lot with only one wrist, and the occasional hand or two, involved.  But wet electronics, well, they tend to become non-functional - which then gets into a whole other mess.  We'll skip that.

And last night, when I came in from the walk, I took my evening pills, filled my mug up, and headed downstairs.  Halfway down I remembered the cell phone, but knew exactly where it was and that it would survive the night.  So I put myself to bed, and in getting up this morning, didn't grab the phone as I galumphed up the stairs.

And then marveled that it was Christmas morning.  I was heading up the stairs at roughly 9:30 am (I'd checked the news and my email on this computer), and it was quiet.  That's how Christmas morning works when you don't have children at home any longer.  I got upstairs, fed the dogs, and then got their leashes, and took them out.  It wasn't raining this morning, though the air was incredibly humid - and nearly 50 degrees.  We wandered about the yard a bit, then went back in.  I dithered a bit about breakfast, then decided to bag it and just eat the frosted cinnamon roll my wife had picked out of the donut case for me while we were last-minute grocery shopping at HyVee yesterday.  I grabbed a diet Dew, my morning pills, then set everything down.  It's Monday.  

Mondays are the days I inject my once-weekly Ozempic.  Before you ask, I have no idea how well I'm doing on it.  You see, the week I started Ozempic, my Abbot Labs Libre reader stopped holding a charge.  About every third day I need to charge the meter, so I plug it into the charger I have on my work desk, upstairs.  When it's charging, it cannot read the sensor on the underside of my left arm.  When I unplugged the reader, it would go blank - no power.  

This was back about three months ago.  And since then, I've been working to find a way to get a reader.  There are cell phone apps that might work, but the on-line reviews, when filtered for my cell phone manufacturer, were pretty consistently bad - as in unreliable, did not read, did not read the correct numbers.  I'm certainly not going to download an application that demands internet access, access to my location, and doesn't provide adequate information in exchange.  So no, I haven't downloaded the cell phone app.  I've been playing it by ... well, the feel of my tongue.  I have learned over the past fifteen years or so that the edges of the back portion of my tongue will begin to feel dry - they're not - but they feel dry if my blood sugars are high.  I can certainly give you a number of signs of much higher blood sugars - such as the total gut-busting ache I would get after eating a bowl of ice cream, which I did all too often, a big scoop of ice cream, a medium-sized scoop of peanut butter, peanuts, and chocolate sauce - in a generous-sized cereal bowl - could get me into a bathroom in less than a half hour for a stomach-emptying period.  

Yah, I'll spare you the details beyond that.  But I rely on what I have, what works, so I tend to guesstimate the insulin dose I need, and today it feels like I did pretty well.  Anyway, with both insulin shots administered, and the cinnamon roll (with the expected high carbs I was staring at) and I headed into the living room.  And then I looked at my table for my phone.  It wasn't there.  Wait, what?  It should have been right where I remembered setting it.  On the table, right in the middle, face down, waiting for me.  So I wandered around, looked at all of the usual "oh, I'll just set it here while I finish [X] then I'll take it downstairs."  Nowhere to be found.

I looked around for a while longer, then heard the dogs barking and my wife giggling downstairs.  Sounded like the pups were playing, and she was enjoying it.  I grabbed the kitchen phone and called mine.  I muted the TV, and listened very carefully.  Not a peep or a ding.  :-(  Not a sound.  At all.  Hmmm.  

Back and forth through the kitchen, living room, dining room, entryway, back and forth, back and forth.  A ring coming from the phone I was holding, not a peep from the one I was looking for.  Then my wife came upstairs.  "Have you seen my phone?"  "No, I think I heard it ringing, on my side of the bed.  Don't you know where it is?"

The reason we're married 33 years now is because I have learned the wisdom of not countering the obvious statement there.  "I left it on my table last night.  I know I did.  I did it on purpose.  It's not there now."  I went downstairs.  

And found it, face up, on the floor.  Right next to Freyja's bed.  

So my dog apparently resents my phone and is smart enough to bring it with her downstairs.  Not smart enough to avoid the bread wreath her mother bought and left on the corner of the table, though, but that's between Freyja and my wife.  I managed to extract my item, and this means I can go back to work tomorrow as scheduled and get paid.  

So I hope your Christmas was as restful and interesting as mine!