Insomnia/Sick Day Notes

Ugh. I had battled a cold for a week or two, with this weird congestion passing back-and-forth between my head and chest. I never had a sore throat, never felt bad. Just constant plug of yuck in part of my body.

In the midst of that, I took NyQuil for several nights so I could breath and sleep peacefully. I slept like a baby all of those nights. Since I got off the meds, though, my periodic insomnia has returned. Last night I went to bed 11:30ish, drifted off for a bit then jolted wide awake. I came downstairs around 1:30 to read and have a drink to try to reset my body, then tossed and turned for several hours before maybe getting two solid hours.

I hate when this happens. I know my body will eventually get back on track and in a few nights I’ll be sleeping great again. And it’s not like my days are busy, so I can sneak in a nap if needed. Just doesn’t give me much energy or motivation to do things.

Didn’t help that C threw up this morning, so the errands I had planned got wiped out. I tried to nap but my one cup of half-caff coffee was enough to keep me from getting any rest. At least there’s nothing big going on tonight, so I will be relaxed and ready to hit the sack early.

Thus, a few more notes that I planned on holding for a couple days but I’ll share now since I’m kind of a zombie.

Kid Hoops

L’s team got a 12-point win last night. It should have been more than that; they led by 15 at half and then played sloppy and let it get down to four before we put them away. L had 10, including six in that late run.

I forget if I shared this already, but we have new coaches for the winter session. Now the CHS varsity coach and her top assistant/freshman coach are in charge. Our two wins this week were against pretty bad teams, but at least our girls seem to have a much better idea of what’s going on compared to when the previous coach was running things. A good change, and a chance for L to spend time with the people who will hopefully be coaching her next fall.

College Process

I haven’t shared the latest on M’s college search.

You know that she was accepted to IU quickly in November, including admission to the honors program. Then we waited to hear on her next four applications. We got word on each of them over the last three weeks.

First was an acceptance from Purdue. She doesn’t want to go there, but it was serving as her in-state, backup school. It was nice that she got in, though, because she heard of several kids she thinks have similar grades to hers who got deferred admission.

Next came Cincinnati, two weeks ago, another yes. Which was expected. UC is a solid school but not as selective as IU or Purdue.

Then last Friday she got word from Michigan: deferred. Which at first she was thrilled about, thinking that meant she has a shot to get in in April when they open up the enrollment spigot again. However, she read that all out-of-state applications are automatically deferred, so they may not have even looked at her file yet.

I heard from the parent of another kid who was deferred by UM that is not true; he knows of a couple out-of-state kids that got in last week. So we don’t know if M has gotten any attention or not.

Michigan is kind of fucking this whole process up. She’s never visited there, hasn’t done deep research about any specific programs, housing, etc. She just knows it is arguably the best public school in the country. If she gets accepted I think she’s really going to want to go there.

I’m torn. It would be awesome if she got accepted and had a chance to spend four years in Ann Arbor. But basically doubling the tuition we had planned to pay the next four years changes the parenting math quite a bit. And I’m not sure I could deal with her ego if she gets a Michigan degree!

Still, I didn’t want to crap on her excitement Friday, so I told her it was awesome that she’s at least still in the game. I would be surprised if she gets in, simply because it is so competitive and her non-academic resumé is lacking. But you never know.

Now she is stressing about not hearing from UM until April, while both IU and UC need a decision by May 1. I told her not to sweat it, spend the next two months making a choice between IU and UC and then we’ll have a plan in place when she gets her final decision from Michigan.

We booked a spot in UC’s admitted student program in February and will take a similar trip to IU in March. I gave her the task of coming up with some specific questions to ask when we are on each campus so we’re not just repeating what we did over the summer.

I can’t get a good feel for where she’s leaning. For awhile I thought she was higher on IU. But over the weekend she told us one of her best friends since grade school may go to UC, and they’ve talked about rooming together if they both head that way. The good thing is the tuition at the schools is basically the same so she can make a decision purely on where she thinks she fits best.

I honestly never realized how stressful this process is. I applied to two schools and knew where I was going. I only applied to UMKC because my stepdad was going through his first battle with cancer at the time and wanted a local option in case I needed to stay in town.

Health updates

The beginning of the year has been busy on the health tip for our family. Or at least for two us.

I mentioned awhile back that C was diagnosed with a bulging disk. She’s been doing PT twice a week to try to build some core strength and take the pressure off her spine to avoid more invasive treatment. It seems to be going well. I think she’s been consistent with her home exercises, and most days when we go in for PT she says she feels better. She’s been cleared to do anything that doesn’t cause new pain, so she has the ability to be active. She’s not really taking advantage of that, although it is January. I just hope she can be consistent with continuing her therapy at home once she’s released from PT so she can feel better and avoid either injections or surgery.

A couple weeks back I went to a dermatologist for the first time in my life. Being light skinned and having spent too much time in the sun in my life, it seemed like a good time to have a doc who is trained in such matters to take a look at my skin.[1]

Good news is I got a clean bill of health. I did have a spot he was a little worried about. Years ago my primary doc told me it wasn’t anything to worry about, and S had assured me that she also thought it wasn’t problematic. But my dermatologist said while he thought they were both probably right, he wanted to go ahead and do a biopsy just to make sure.

I got the results late last week and it came back benign. I wasn’t super concerned but was still nice to hear. I figure most people are going to end up with sun-related skin issues at some point, so it’s nice to be able to kick that can a little farther down the road. Use sunscreen, my peeps!