In a little over two weeks, I have the second surgery. The stress has been driving me nuts; I doubt it’s a coincidence that my blood sugar has catapulted to over 200. I have another week of work, my insurance still hasn’t cleared my root canal with my dentist, the housing lady still hasn’t gotten back to me to acknowledge that we need to meet to renegotiate rent because now we will all be living on my disability, Long-Leggedy Beasties is being steadfastly ignored, sob–and my rewrite of the very first book–the trilogy–is like rolling in a huge wad of flypaper: Just as soon as I free one piece, something else gets stuck. I even had to dive in and do a nip and tuck on Max, because he will now chronologically come first in the series.

But the most irritating part of my life is that I can’t seem to sleep well. There are three big basic types of insomnia: difficulty in getting to sleep, staying asleep, and waking up too early. I have all three.

Worst of all, I have something called Restless Legs Syndrome, where just when I’m about to drift off, this electric impulse shoots through my body and I have to move my legs and sometimes my arms. The med my long-suffering shrink suggested (Mirapex, or pramipexole) doesn’t seem to be working. I went off my anticoagulant so I could try a dose of an NSAID. Nada. What did work was Percocet (courtesy of dentist above), and can’t you just hear the threatening chord of music there?

Luckily, I’m not stupid, having just had to wean myself off oxycodone for Knee #1, so I’ve just happened to take the one. (Dental tip: Take the antibiotics, stupid. They cool down a “hot” tooth and are a far more effective way of dealing with the pain than narcs. Who cares if it messes with your GI tract for a few days? Eat some yogurt, and stop whinging. Oh, and take all the antibiotics, which is your way of keeping resistant bugs from spreading.) But, ooh, that night of uninterrupted sleep was nice!

So I’m dealing with my surgery anxiety in the possibly unhealthy way of looking forward to the drugs.

The down side of the narcs, though, is that for some reason they slow my creative processes down to a crawl. (Picture Flash the sloth at the Zootopia DMV.) Don’t expect much from me while I’m on them. Coloring is a lot of work; I just hope I can find something good on Netflix, having exhausted NCIS at last. And then there’s the pain they’re treating. Not kidney stones or bad cramp pain, just a gnawing sort of ache and the discomfort of your leg having not enough space to accommodate all the swelling your body wants to do. Le sigh.

But at least I’ll sleep.