Losing a part of me

Yesterday was one of those days.

Wednesday afternoon my plan was to get some sleep and then wake up in time to connect to the Erev Rosh Hashana services that my synagogue broadcasts. A bunch of different things happened to keep me from my bed, and when I finally did lie down at 5:00pm, my phone rang… it was a Lodge brother in crisis, and I spent over an hour talking with him and helping him with his issue. I am glad I was able to be there for him, even at the cost of two hours of sleep. I then fell asleep for a couple of hours, but I did not mute my phone. When I get seven text messages in short succession it usually means that there is an urgent matter that needs to be dealt with. It turned out that it was just seven completely unrelated texts that came from different people, and it was a coincidence that they all came within a minute. The alert was enough to wake me up, and I could not get back to sleep. I decided that rather than lying there frustrated, I would get dressed, take Princess Sophie for a walk, and then I would call my wife so that we could light the candles and say our prayers before I joined the services online.

Why did I go into all of that detail about Wednesday night? Essentially to say that I was so exhausted yesterday because between Wednesday at 12:15am when I woke up and Thursday evening at 5:30pm when I went to bed I got two hours of sleep. I got through my class just fine, but I am glad that in the afternoon I did not have a lot to do. I could not go to bed because my cleaning lady came… had I known what the previous two days would be like I would have canceled that in a heartbeat, but I was committed. I finally got to sleep at 5:30pm with the hopes that I would be able to sleep through until my alarm went off at 12:30am. In fact I did one better… I slept through the alarm and it was 1:05am by the time I got out of bed and got going. I am glad I did not sleep through my class!

I am feeling much better today than I did yesterday. I was telling Leslie that with all of the difficulties in my life I am still a very blessed man, and I am grateful for so much. I am grateful this morning for having slept last night, and my class is going well. My weight, which has been up every day for nearly a week, finally dropped slightly this morning. Hopefully by the beginning of next week when I fly to Maine I will be down below 300 lbs. again. I will try!

Have a great day folks!