The universe has been waiting for your call.

 All it takes sometimes is to just stick your face out there and ask for what you need.  Manifesting is doing just that .. but we tend to forget to ask.  It seems that every time I've done so lately, someone "picks up the phone on the other end" so to speak.  My call is always answered.. even if it isn't resolved.  It's definitely good to feel heard. 

I'm starting to adjust my focus on finding us a place to live at least until the spring.  I'd love to look at buying something - but without the steady 2nd income knowledge right now, it will just make more sense to try to find a place to rent for a short month to month term.

I reached out by email to 2 people today. One is a contact that said they might have an apartment available, and the other is a realtor friend in the neighborhood.   The realtor friend came into the store about 10 mins after I hit send on that email.   We talked briefly - I said .. I just need something til Spring at the least - and I am not worried about upgrades or painting or things like that. I need a place with heat and light, and it would be super if I didn't have to commute super far to work, and where Rob would be able to visit with his friends without having to drive. He said as a matter of fact - they take possession of a new place just up the street from where I work - TOMORROW .. and he'll talk about it and see if there's anything he can do. 

If you don't ask - there's very little chance it will be offered to you.  And something like this, or that apartment, are exactly what we need right now.  Rob's going crazy alone, and to be closer to me at work would mean he could go for a walk and visit.  He could sit on the porch and wave to people going by.  He could walk the dogs. 

Captain? Status Report?

He's mobile.  He can walk without any kind of aids (walker, cane, human spotter etc.)

He can speak.  Sometimes, he can form a sentence. Sometimes, its a collection of words that the listener needs to string together with him to make them make any sense at all.    He has Verbal Aphasia / Apraxia.  These are apparently two different but similar things. (Feel free to look them up at your leisure). He has difficulty forming the words or sounds with the muscles, and the words he comes up with aren't always the words he means to say. 

He currently can not drive, play the sports he played prior to the stroke:  Golf, baseball, darts, hockey. These all require coordination he doesn't possess right now. 

He doesn't not read or write very well.  He is willing to allow someone else (me) to read an email he gets to him when there is a lot of words, however, it seems like he understands a short text most of the time.  We do know that he can read sentences - he does this with his speech therapy and OT homework.

Numbers are still complicated due to the Aphasia.

There is pain / numbness / a void on his right side in his hand, wrist, thigh, knee, ankle or foot that comes and goes. Most of the time, he just says it's uncomfortable.

We get up between 630 and 730am.  We go to bed around 11pm 7 days a week.

He has a regular appetite. His medications are only a self-injected blood thinner (5000 units), and an Aspirin 81 tablet every morning.  We expect the Thrombologist will take him off the blood thinners this week. 

He's generally in good spirits. It's boring to be stuck at home all day with basically nothing to do.  He has puzzles that friends have loaned us, but again..  that's one task.

He plays a couple games on his phone, one that he's always played is Sudoku and it's nice to see that he is back to playing it. I don't know if there is a history or how to look for it, but it would be interesting to see if we could look back a month and see what his time calculation on it was before the stroke and where it is now and how or if it has changed much since the stroke. 

So, When is your Day Off?

   My what?     That's not a thing.     Wait...    Is it? 

I have a couple days when I don't have to go in to work, sure, but apparently, someone said I'm supposed to have time when I don't have to be the one 100% responsible for Rob and his needs.

Well that's interesting, because prior to the stroke, wasn't I just as responsible for my own and my husband's needs as I am now? I mean, he's capable of taking care of himself. I leave him a list of the same basic stuff I'd make for myself to do during the day if I were the one who would be home.  But being a caregiver now, my only time away from my partner is when I go to work.  His day is unfulfilling and when I'm done at work, he wants me to come home and be there with him. I've also learned that I don't have to entertain him, I just need to be where he is. 

We don't have satellite or good internet out in our trailer, so we can't exactly flop down and binge watch anything right now.  So I have been trying to find us friends that are understanding of where he's at that will let us come visit for an hour or so and help engage him and work on his social skills. It's becoming a balance now.  Yoga is my thing on Thursdays. So, if he's interested in joining in (like he did last week for the first time), great, but I do need to make sure I keep doing this for myself whether he participates or not. I just need to remember that it's what I truly want and my body needs. 

But - how come no one else has stepped up and said to either of us  "Hey, can Rob come with me?"

One friend has done it when we're with him ... but  he certainly hasn't shown up to sit and just spend time with him.... and it would be weird if he came over to just pull Rob away to hang out with him right now. When we had the shop, it was easy for the two of them to sit in there and hang out and get "guy time" because I either had other things to do or a friend over.. right now, I'm a very thin trailer wall away.  As much as I was welcome to hang out with them, I didn't always, and right now I really don't have anywhere else to "go". 

That doesn't mean someone can't offer to come get him.

I also just realized that in a couple days, he'll have been home a month.  I don't think his brother has even come to see him.  He did go see him in the hospital parking lot the day before he came home, but I don't think he's seen him since.  Or maybe he did once just after he got home...

So.. I'm clearly feeling the effects of the fact that I don't have any time away from my partner - Now I need to figure out how to change that, still keeping in mind that, prior to the stroke, we didn't have to call it that, and that giving it any kind of name, really doesn't change what it is, except it still could very well hurt his feelings if expressed incorrectly.