keep watching Drew sleep, listening to him breathe, and feeling the tiny panic in the back of my chest that he will stop.

I remember that feeling. Taking care of someone is hard. I'm really glad, for both of you, that Drew's home.

Erin, that sounds like a perfect moment. Glad you got to enjoy it!

I'm still adjusting to not hearing the snoring, because the mental programing is "no snores equals either no sleep or no breath".

Once that conditioning is gone, I hope you never have to worry about it from me again.

Now if I can stop my stupid brain from taking the damn mask off in the middle of the night.

When my sister first started taking her asthma medication, my mom would wake up in a panic and run to check on her several times a night, because she'd gotten so used to hearing sleeping breathing noises from my sister's bedroom that the lack of noise woke her up.

I hope Drew's recovery keeps going well, Pix, and that you can relax soon.

Vent:

Dear Mom,

I really am disabled. I've been disabled since 1995 and even the government doesn't seem to think I'm faking it. So why are you demanding that I clean out the refrigerator, wash other people's dishes, do weekly vacuuming and dusting of a large amount of square footage? If I could do those things without putting myself into a great deal of pain and making myself worse, I would have a job. And if I could have a job, I would no way in hell be living here.

Your loving but perplexed daughter

{{{Spidra}}} figure-it-out~ma for your mom.

I'm watching "A Bit of Fry and Laurie." They're so young and fresh-faced I just want to smish them. One of the sketches I could swear they were peering into the future to mock Stephen Fry's podcast.

I am 20 minutes early for date#2 with gal #2. It is 93°f here. 15° hotter than my place. Thankfully we are meeting at a Jamba Juice.

Much empathy, Spidra, from one whose mother thinks I'm making a fuss about nothing over stairs. Which she has in ridiculous numbers at her house.

I did the initial test for 100 pushups and got 8, which is more than I thought I could, but puts me into track 2 which means a harder program going through. Tomorrow I do my first set!

Ay, Seska. I have a friend with MD (most of whose siblings have MD as well) whose parents were in such denial about it that even when their kids were in their 30s they still hadn't done much to make their house accessible. One of his parents was a doctor, too!

EDIT: Good luck on the 100 pushups program, Sean.

I'm getting my iPod and then going down with ice packs on each forearm to try to clean the fucking fridge.

Ugh. Hope you don't end up in too much pain, Spidra.