Trying to sleep, and I can't at the moment, what else to do at just past three in the morning? I've been wanting to write something here for days, and I just haven't been able to find the time.

There have been oh-so-many changes in my life just in the past weeks, and I just don't know what is going on or how I feel, or what comes next.

The hardest thing (I think, at the moment) is not having a proper room yet. It's been better than half a year, now. We moved into this too-small house, knowing it was too small, with the promise that we would have another room in a month. Not just another room, a safe room, a mamad. We've been living in Israel long enough that when we were promised, faithfully, repeatedly, that the room would be finished in a month, we never believed it for a minute. But we certainly didn't expect that I would be sitting here, more than six months later, in an unfinished room with a bit hole in the wall, water seeping through the walls, with no end in sight. I can't shut the door because there is no proper latching mechanism. It will shut, but then I've no idea how it would be possible to open it.

I melted down today, crying at Adina (my alternative-health-care provider) because I just can't live like this any more. Except that obviously I can, because I have to. I have no choice. What are my alternatives? We can't afford to move again, even if we hadn't effectively signed a ten year lease. And so far it is working, for a given definition of 'working.'

The second thing, which might be the worst thing but I just can't think of it that way, is this numbness. It makes typing difficult and walking almost impossible and life completely unmanageable. Not only do I have peripheral neuropathy in both feet and one hand, I have some weird kind of numbness that isn't tied down to one place or even describable as being in any given part of the body. At the moment the weird, floaty numbness is only in my left thigh, and not very noticeable (I had to grab it and squeeze to be sure the numbness was still there). At other times it could be in one calf or knee, or in one of my lower arms. It creeps up the left leg and hand from the peripheral neuropathy which is in turns numb, pins-and-needles, hot, cold, and just painful.

The worst part, I think, (it is hard to give value to one thing being worse than another overall, since what is worst depends in part on what is going on externally at the moment), is simply that I cannot get to see a neuro or doctor to whom I can talk about this, and who will actually make some effort to properly diagnose a cause, and maybe even come up with some kind of treatment.

There is the possibility it is not neurological or course, but it would be nice if there were some doctor, somewhere, who instead of simply dismissing it as either an untreatable M.S. symptom or as *not* an M.S. symptom, actually tried to do the job for which they get the big bucks.

I'm being kind of ironic there - doctors in Israel simply are not paid on the sort of scale you find in a lot of the rest of the world. They are not getting rich. They simply aren't doing the job I need them to do. *sigh*

We're having some minor financial problems - truly minor in that I have overspent my budget, but only because my disability support is behind be a few months. If/when the money comes in I/we will be flush, enough. Flush enough to (hopefully) finally finish the bathrooms, which were supposed to be completely redone months ago.

It's been over half a year since I had a bath. I wouldn't have thought I could survive it, but so far, I have. I am managing to shower and, if it isn't what I would have, at least I am managing the minimum of personal hygiene, and sometimes not just the bare minimum. We have a shower stall I can barely fit in to, and a shower chair that sits half in and half out so I can wash my hair and brush my teeth, and the toilets... well, we have them and they flush, and we are no longer wasting half of the water in the Negev for leaks. I'd be happier, honestly, with dirt or composting toilets, but in this 'modern' world we have to waste the water whether we want to or not. But the leaks are finally fixed.

I finally have my wheelchair van. It was finished in August when `i had to drive it for close to seven hours (I had to travel in the worst of summer's heat to Rosh HaAyin to take 'delivery' of it), at the end of which, minutes from home, I had an accident that totaled the car. Really, truly totaled it. It was more than a miracle that the only thing wrong was a few bumps and bruises, and I broke or sprained my little toe on my right foot.

Anyway, the van is back and I have been driving it almost every single day (shabbot excluded) for the weeks since I got it back. Wednesday, the day before yesterday, I think I finished the last of the really big errands that I had to do that required the van. As far as I know, I have no more government offices to visit, no more gaps to close. *Phew!* I am completely exhausted, and fall into bed and asleep almost every night before midnight. Sometimes when I get back from the day's driving I fall asleep as soon as I can get to the bed. The bed in the room without the door or window. *sigh*

Tomorrow (later today) my intention is to completely wear myself out on a different sort of outing. I am planning on driving north to the center, to buy myself a new laptop computer, and shop at a store which carries things we can't get down here in the south, and possibly to stop at what I think is the best ice cream shop anywhere. They make their own ice cream on site and it is absolutely, utterly delicious. Then they sell it so inexpensively - a huge scoop of ice cream I have never managed to finish for five or ten shekels, it is almost a crime.

It is surely a crime for my not-really-diabetic self (I don't really have diabetes but I do have chronic high blood sugar, which in Israel they call by the same name as diabetes, even though it isn't the same disease mechanism at all), but I will buy some for youngest son and possibly for The Husband, and I will have at least a taste and relish it for sure.

This is my intention, and if I survive it and drive us all safely home at the end of it, I will surely collapse more completely than I have through all the stress of moving house, TH changing jobs, D3 getting out of the army, going to Canada, (still working on) getting her drivers license, S3's most horrible summer, being car-free, driver-free, doctor-free, suffering an ugly separation from S2 and his wife, and I can't even remember what-all. I still need a bedroom. We still need to completely re-do the bathroom, tearing it down to bare wall and floor and building it back up as some wheel-chair accessible masterpiece with a tub I can actually take a bath in. I/we are still waiting on reasonably large sums of money owed us (but not as large as was six months ago). There are wonderful things on the horizon if only I can try to *not* hold my breath until they come.

TH loves his new job. He is valued more completely than he has been in years. Not that his previous employers haven't valued him, but this employer puts their money where there mouth is, and uses the mouth to say such nice things as well! He is being properly appreciated, and on top of that, they might (just might) send us all to Manila! Is that amazing or what?

Okay, we (the whole family) have a thing with the Philippines. Being able to live there for a couple of months (what might happen, if everything falls the right way and we are extraordinarily lucky) would truly be a dream come true. Whether or not it could really happen, only hashem knows. But just having it as a possibility is more than any of us could have dreamed of just a few months ago.

They will be sending him out of the country, somewhere, regardless of how the Philippines thing works out, probably every year. He will be able to take me, and we will be able to pay to bring along one of the kids. How cool is that?

Now I am in a Philippines dream kind of glow, I can't remember what else - there is a lot else.

Mostly I am very upbeat, happy. Life is good. We are making constant little bits of progress. Last night (for instance) we installed a wall of bookshelves, and moved a bunch of furniture around, giving me a loveseat in my room, changing the entire look and feel of the salon, with room to unpack half-again as many books as are currently in the salon. If/when my room is every finished, or even just has glass in the window-hole, I will be moving my dresser in and hopefully the rest of my clothing and stuff. I had a dream of a fish-tank, but don't know if it will fit. I certainly don't want to get into serious aquarium building if I am going to be leaving the country for months at as time, do I?

Occasionally I am just overcome by a feeling of hopelessness and simple exhaustion. I desperately, and I do mean desperately, need to have this construction project that is supposed to be our 'safe room' finished and be able to sleep at night with a closed door and not have to worry about the weather coming in. I need a bathroom worthy of the name. And I need to be able to settle down to my knitting, cataloguing of books, digitizing of lps, working with S3 on the G.E.D., and getting *his* driver's license - assuming that D3 ever finished getting hers, that is a long story of messed up paperwork among other things.

At times like that it is not helpful for me to go over all the things I have to be unhappy about, but still I cannot suffer in silence indefinitely. It has just been too, too long and too, too hard.

Today, in my melt-down, it felt for real like HaShem was/is 'testing' me. I don't need to be tested. I need to be carried for a while. I've done enough. I've done too much. It is time to get some well-earned rest and have some fun.

That is what this huge outing tomorrow is about - having some fun. I sincerely hope that I manage to. And don't overdo so much that I am set back the last six months. There are limits to what a person can take, after all.

I really hope that I am done being miserable. I've spent so much of my life that way. Time to really enjoy some benefits of all my hard work.

I'm off, now, perchance to sleep, perchance to write a blog post or just play some stupid game until I can, hopefully, fall back asleep for a few hours. One really good thing about these wakeful hours in the middle of the night, is I do get some much needed 'me' time. Something to be grateful for, for sure.