At 8:30 this morning, I rolled over and looked at the clock next to my bed. It seemed both earlier and later than 8:30. At the same time, somehow.

It seemed much later than an 8:30 on Monday morning usually feels, because I’d been in and out of consciousness for so many hours. Thinking about how the day was going to go, with one phone line not working, had kept me awake part of the night, and it made me a little more aware of the passage of time than usual. If I could harness that nervous energy and get up and around earlier in the mornings, I might be better off. But I’d be half dead by mid afternoon.

At the same time (as I might have mentioned), it seemed much earlier than 8:30 on Monday morning should feel, because I hadn’t had enough of that restful kind of sleep that I never get enough of. I hadn’t even fully surfaced yet, and I was already dragging. Somehow I made it to 6:00 pm before totally collapsing into the recliner, and I hardly moved for the next two hours. There’s a routine that my body is comfortable with, and it was all off today.

This would have been a great day just to stay in bed. I was up and down, in and out of my chair all day long, switching the one working phone line back and forth between the telephone and the fax machine. I had to remind people more than once that I couldn’t do anything that required an Internet connection. (“Why don’t you download last month’s bank statement?” “Uh, because I can’t.)

I don’t know what time to expect the repair guy tomorrow, because the phone company wouldn’t tell me anything except that I needed to be home between 8 am and 8 pm. Getting up in time to be ready at 8 am and not knowing if I might have to wait twelve hours is already stressful, twelve hours ahead of time. It’s going to be another of these non-routine days.