Buying Candy in a Dream State

Apparently last night when I was very sleepy, I ordered some Basset's Allsorts, with next day delivery.

I have a vague memory of wanting licorice yesterday, but I don't actually remember ordering them. This is what happens when you have insomnia for three days in a row.

Oh, well, if I can't sleep, at least I can have licorice. 

Muttering

Night before last, I did not sleep until nearly four a.m., and had to get up at 5:30. (It's advising season, and I need to be in my officer at 6:30 to catch my students before their classes start.) Last night I went to bed at 11:00 pm and slept until 10:00 a.m. Why can't my body make a decision?

I've got new books from Jodi Picoult and from Kate Atkinson to read. And it's almost the weekend!

I'm also writing new reviews for Asimov's and for Interzone. The Interzone one is a very cool book with worldwide disaster plus gay wizards and rocks. As with Jorts the Cats, it's like someone made a present just for me.

Also it looks like fall might finally arrive. Tomorrow is a high of 76, and then (after a stretch of highs in the 80s) this Thursday coming up, temperatures plummet!

A Brand-New Jennings

The new baby, which was being expected by my nephew and his wife, has arrived.

My nephew gave the eulogy at his father's funeral last week, and noted that his new child and his father probably met each other on the way -- one going, one coming. It's a nice thought.

I got to meet and hold the baby yesterday. He's perfect. I'd forgotten how tiny and how soft new babies are.

Chilly Sunday Morning

It's in the mid-60s here, sunny and chill. My favorite weather.

I've caught up on grading, and actually finished and submitted a story. Also I made bagels. Today: more grading, more writing, and the gym.

Just a Reminder

Even though the pandemic has officially been declared "over," we are still losing between 500 and 3000 people a week to it. That's just the deaths. Far more than that are suffering long or short term disabilities due to Covid.

But since it's an article of faith among the conservatives in my state and elsewhere that COVID-19 is just a "bad cold," or lately a "bad flu," I don't expect much to be done about it.

How many American dead so far? 1,084,282.

Non-Stop Work

I finished and submitted the review to Asimov's. Now I'm powering through all the grading I did not do over the past week.

I'm also wishing I had something delicious to eat for dinner tonight. What's some comfort food which won't take very long to make?

ETA: The cat is really enjoying the cooler weather, which allows me to leave the doors open.

Updates on Everything

The funeral was yesterday. One of Scott's sons and my little brother (who is for fuck's sake 48 now) gave the eulogy, and then we all had BBQ in the church's community room. I saw my nieces, whom I hadn't seen since they were very tiny. Now they are very tall, ages 14 and 12.

Fall has arrived. It's 60 degrees here now, and the forecast has highs in the 80s and lows in the 40s and 50s for the next ten day.

I got very behind in all my work over the past week, for obvious reasons. Going into overdrive to catch up -- a review for Asimov's is due, plus all my grading. I finished the reviews for Strange Horizons, and am about halfway through the next one for Interzone.

I've been having a lot of nightmares, again for obvious reasons. Last night I dreamed our house was full of junk and trash, and the more I tried to clean up, the worse it got. Then a big storm hit and the roof was leaking and all the junk in the house got soaked. This is probably some sort of Freudian dream, what with house = family or self, and so on.

We also haven't exercised in a week. Maybe tomorrow.

Now that the heat is broken, I might make some bagels. Bagels and lox would cheer me up.

 

Scott Jennings 1959-2022

Scott was born fourteen months before I was, both of us in Renton, Washington, where my father worked for Boeing and my mother stayed home in our little pink trailer with (soon) three children under the age of four.

My earliest memories are of Scott, who must have been three years old then, making breakfast for me. He would take slices of white bread from the wrapper and make smiley faces with ketchup, and then we would eat them while we watched cartoons on the little B&W television that was all our family owned. (My mother, already pregnant with my brother Michael, went back to bed after she got my father off to work.)

Later he and I roamed the little trailer park -- people let small children out on their own back then -- and I would be remiss if I didn't tell the famous story of how he pushed me into a red ant pile when I was four. On purpose, I always swore, and my mother would swear he had done it on accident. I remember we were balancing along a brick flower garden border. Red ants means it must have been in New Orleans -- we moved there when I was three and Scott was four.

Later we moved into an actual house in an actual subdivision. You could buy houses on one salary back then. Soon after we moved down, five year old Scott took a machete from the garage and chopped down all the bushes in the hedge out front. He was gardening, as he ingenuously explained to my mother. I think he just liked wielding the machete, myself.

When he started school, later that year, the local schools were still overwhelmed by all the children moving into the subdivisions that were springing up in the area, to handle the people transferred in by Boeing, which was handling contracts from NASA at that point. Scott had to go half days, and the next year so would I. We went afternoons. It was a big shock to me, about halfway through the year, when the new elementary school opened, and we had to attend school from 9:00 to 3:00.

Around that time, my father sold our old car (a Dodge Rambler, I think? He would know, but I don't remember). Scott loved that car, and for years would, every now and then, complain about my father selling it.

My mother ran a cub scout pack for Scott and my younger brother Michael; later he would be a boy scout. He joined the local baseball and football teams that sprang up. His dream then was to be a famous quarterback, but when he was eight, he was diagnosed with diabetes, just a few months after my grandfather, my mother's father, died of it.

After that, his life veered into a new path. In junior high, the football coach refused to let him play on the team, saying his diabetes made him too much of a risk. Honestly, my parents should have fought that. But they did not. After that, Scott focused more on board games -- chess, for instance, was a favorite. I remember him coaxing me to play him, even though I was absolutely terrible at chess.

And as he grew up, he played with city teams and coached his sons on their teams. Sports remained one of his interests throughout his life, as did all games. He was a lifelong Saints fan, for instance. He also loved Star Trek novels, and had shelves and shelves of them.

He married my best friend, Toni, when he was 22 and she was 21, and after finishing college -- him with a degree in math education and her with a degree as a medical technician -- they moved a few blocks from my parents' house and had two sons, one in 1987 and one in 1988. He taught in the New Orleans school district for years, some of it at my old high school, before he retired due to his failing health.

After he left teaching, he worked a series of less stressful jobs before retiring on disability. He and my sister-in-law planned to move to Fayetteville as soon as she retired, which she did this past spring. They moved up right away, since their second son and his wife were having a baby. Scott was looking forward to his first grandchild, so much. When I rode home from the hospital in their car, there was already a car seat installed in the back.

People with Type I diabetes are living longer these days -- my grandfather died at 57 -- but they still die younger than non-diabetics. When he was in his 20s, he would say he wasn't going to live to 50, and then after he turned fifty he would say, every year, that this would be his last Christmas. It got to be a family joke, though it doesn't seem so funny now. He said it a couple months ago, one of the last times I saw him -- "This is going to be my last Christmas." 

We all laughed. 

His wife and sons are asking people to donate to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation in his memory.

My Brother

The EEG showed very little to no brain activity, so my SIL and her sons decided to take him off life support, and he passed away quietly a few minutes later, with her and my oldest nephew there with him.

I've sort of known this was coming for the past few days, but it still feels like a shock. 

ETA: Some photos

My brother Scott

From left to right, my father, my oldest nephew, Scott, and my youngest nephew

Update on My Brother

He is not responding to stimuli. I don't have to tell you this is not the news we were hoping for.

They're running a 24 hour EEG. We'll know more after that.

Another Update

Okay, they've got his temperature back up to 98.6 now (37 Celsius, which is how they actually do it), and they've begun weaning him off the sedative/paralytic which they have to use with hypothermia therapy. Apparently that's going to take most of the night. In the morning, if he's not responding, they'll bring in the neurologists. 

My SIL is having trouble sleeping. "Do you have any Xanax?" I asked.

"Oh, [her sister] brought me some. I might take half a one. I've never taken it before, and I don't know how I'll react."

Me, stunned: "You've never taken Xanax?"

"I had to get drug-tested!" she protested. Then she admitted, "Once, when I had a prescription for it, I didn't even fill it."

"Wow, I hate you," I said. In the background I could hear her sister and my nephew mocking her unceasingly. 

I mean, if I had my way, you'd be able to buy Xanax out of gum machines in the grocery store. It should be a major food group, that's all I'm saying.

Update on My Brother

He's still being warmed up -- apparently it takes awhile. My SIL says we'll know more around five today.

The doctors are talking about putting a pacemaker in, but that's only after he wakes up and responds, if he wakes up and responds. We're just waiting now.

My Older Brother

My older brother had a "cardiac event" yesterday -- his heart stopped beating. This is the brother that just moved up here to NWA Arkansas to help out his kid whose wife is pregnant. (Baby is due in early October.)

My SIL got his heart started again, doing CPR, and the ambulance and fire truck showed up fast. He's in the ICU now. They're doing something called hypothermic treatment, which is when they lower your body temperature down to 89 degrees and hold it there for 24 hours. This helps your heart to heal and somehow (they're not sure how) helps avoid brain damage.

They got him down to the target temp last night at midnight. In 24 hours, they'll start warming him up again.

I spent yesterday afternoon in the hospital with my SIL (who was my friend first -- we were best friends in high school and then she married my brother, so we've been friends since we were fifteen). Got home last night at nine o'clock and went to bed almost at once and just woke up, maybe half an hour ago. I feel like I was rode hard and put away wet, as they say in these parts.

We'll know more tomorrow.

Nightmares

So last night I had my usual insomnia, finally falling asleep around one o'clock, and then at around four a.m. had a terrible nightmare in which the town started flooding, and the floodwaters kept rising, and everyone pretended it wasn't happening and then suddenly water was pouring into my house, rising terrifyingly fast, and I couldn't find the dog to get out and the kid wouldn't leave (he was about ten in this dream) because he said people would start saying we were at war if we left (what?) and just as we were all about to drown I woke up. It was one of those dreams where you're pretty sure it's really happening for a little while.

Then I had insomnia for the rest of the night. I lay in bed trying to fall asleep and unable to. Got up once to take the dog out and make sure no flash flood was happening. It was a lovely clear night, with a waxing moon and brilliant stars, but even when I was sure the dream was just a dream and went back to bed, I still couldn't get back to sleep.

So I got up and Dr. Skull and I took the car to get its tires aligned except the place where we take it doesn't do that anymore so we went to another place and they still do alignments but they're booked up for a week, so we made an appointment. In the tire shop was an old guy wearing a LETS GO BRANDON hat and smoking a cigarette. When we left to come home, we smelled of cigarettes. (He was waiting for his car; he wasn't working there. The people working there were very nice and wore hats with the place's logo on them.) 

Now I'm drinking coffee and trying to stay awake. Sleeping all day would not be a good idea.

Weather

The last three days of summer: highs of 99, 99, and 100.

Please let it end.