Detoxlog some number + 5

All in all, the detox seems mostly over. It's not, of course. The leap to nothing at all, from 5 mg a day, is next week. I still can't eat normally and I'm still spending too much of the day in the lav. My BFF made banana bread and that seems to have reset my stomach, so I'm not always nauseous now. I'm sleeping pretty soundly and I'm handling the pain. But the large range of special effects- the body jerks, the wee-wahs, the panics, the puking, are gone... at least for now. One never knows.

We still await news about my brother. No news may be good news, but it's stressful and wearing. I keep sending him funny emails, anyway. I'm hundreds of miles and 2 mountain ranges away; I can't do much more. They aren't even reachable by phone. I don't know if they're downstairs in his father-in-law's home or at the hospital, or what hospital. It's always been like this with him, long as I remember. Uncountable times, since the early 70s. The banshee cry goes up, we all start preparing, days go by, and we hear nothing. And every time, we're mindful that this could be It. So you can't blow it off or get too unserious about it, either. But boy, especially between my closest brother and me, it's tough to not be cracking about it. That's how we deal. At funeral after funeral, I see Billy and me standing off to the side, him shooting one liners and me trying to not laugh out loud. Just a few minutes ago he sent me a joke. This is how we survive.

It's a sunny Saturday; the snow is done for now. It is pretty, though. The wind hasn't been up enough to knock it from the trees, and all the limbs out to the smallest, are frosted with an inch or two of blinding white. The former snows, now hard waterstone mounds on the ground, are made white again. I'm watching some poor soul struggling to shovel the steps up to the Shrine. This is the last winter I'll look out on this scene; a month from today I'll be in transit with all my worldly possessions to my new home. And a whole different life, again.