…and if you're patient, you'll end up with a scarf.Scarf #2 in the Make Harry Potter Scarves For Friends project is now done. Silly me forgot to take a photo of scarf #1, which was a Slytherin scarf that was a stealth birthday present for a friend, in that "You just thought I was making this for someone else, didn't you?" kind of way I'm so bad at.

Update, 28 June 2005, Wesley's Slytherin scarf. … thanks, Mary, for the photo.

This photo's in honor of the goofy madness that is stuffonmycat.com, and just because I figured Edmund was too corpulently nonchalant to care if I stacked a scarf on him:

(I was right.)

* * * * *

So yeah. Other real news. We're back to a swath of doctor's visits again. I've been off, doing that wacky Real Life thing, and we now have a doctor's diagnosis to go with what's been known in this house for a long time: I have a chronic sleep disorder.

It's not that I don't sleep. I do. Every night. The problem is that the sleep I'm getting isn't good-quality sleep. If someone's in the room with me, it can take hours for me to fall asleep. I keep coming back to the phrase 'painfully aware,' but that's the best phrase I've found: I'm painfully aware of every movement made, every breath taken and exhaled, every sheet or blanket moved. When I do finally fall asleep, out of absolute exhaustion, it's not restful sleep. The same noises that kept me awake, wake me up, over and over and over … ad infinitum. I end up waking up every 60-90 minutes, then dropping back down into sleep again.

The next morning, I'll know I've gotten sleep, and technically will have gotten the 8-9 hours I need, but I'll be so tired the next afternoon that I'll want a nap.

There are multiple factors that could be affecting this. Not to burst your oh-so-romantic image of me, but damn, I snore like a buzz saw—and have since I was a child. We don't know if I have sleep apnea or not, but I've got another doctor's referral appointment (date TBA) to have my throat and lungs checked to see if they are an additional source of problems. (If they're bad, I wonder if they'll amputate?)

In the meantime, I've been put on Lunesta to help me fall asleep more quickly, and—more importantly—stay asleep once I fall asleep. Jeff said that when he left this morning, I was sleeping soundly. Right now, I don't feel terribly tired, but this afternoon will likely be a better indicator. If my energy doesn't flag in mid-afternoon like it usually does, I might be on to something here.

* * * * *

While we're on the thread of doctor's appointments, I have a scary one next week. After years of skirting around the issue, I've finally got an appointment with an audiologist for a hearing test. I'll finally find out if I have some degree of hearing loss (anyone who has ever seen me try to understand a conversation with any background noise says the answer is "yes").

I'm a little afraid to find out the results. Sure, getting an answer of "yes, you have some hearing loss" would explain a few things, but what if my hearing comes back normal? Why do I have trouble comprehending speech when there's background noise? Why does so much speech sound muddled and indistinct?

Either way, next Tuesday, we'll finally have some answers.

* * * * *

…and if you need more cute, might I suggest dailykitten.com. Every day I look at that and think "You fat little brats used to be that cute. Where'd it go? Did you eat that too? Do you have your own gravitational field yet?"