cpanea

Over the past few weeks I've been adjusting to a potential new reality in my life.  Continuous Positive Airway Pressure, or CPAP for short.  Supposedly I stop breathing about 5-10 times per hour, which is mild, but still warrants assistance electronically.

Enter the CPAP machine.  It's a small box with a built in humidifier that blows air through a tube into a mask on your nose and/or mouth to keep the airway open at all times through the night.

I'm still in the adjustment phase and can't really say whether or not it's working as I've yet to sleep through the night with the mask on.  Usually I wake up in the morning to find it disconnected from the hose sitting on the night stand and the pump has been turned off.  I do weird things in my sleep.

I have another week and a half to test it before I need to decide if it's the thing for me.  If so, then it's back for another sleep study at the lab and then I have the machine, likely for life.

I laugh a bit because the cause of my insomina as of late is the machine itself instead of other causes.  Oh well.  I'll keep on trying.

merge with caution

In driving, many people know that they need to yield the right of way when merging into traffic.  You get up to speed in the merging lane and then wait for an appropriate car-sized space to fit into before signalling and pulling onto the road.

This concept seems to be a bit more convoluted when considering marriage.  You're not necessarily merging one person's life into the flow of the others.  You're supposed to combine to become one, as the Bible suggests:

“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate. (Matt 19:4-6 NIV)

I'm beginning to think this concept, always romanticized at weddings and on Sunday mornings, is more complex than easy.  Robin and I have been talking about what it would look like if we were married for a while.  These conversations usually went along the lines of this:

Tim:  What's it going to look like when we're married?
Robin:  We're going to have a house, and kids, and a puppy!
Tim:  Uh...

But in all seriousness, the concept of two people uniting into one is harder than it seems.  You have two independent individuals who have had 25+ years each of honing their ego to the point that they are extremely stubborn and know what they like and what they don't like, coming together to be regularly in conflict with what the other person likes.

In practice, questions arise along the lines of

• Which rice cooker are we keeping?
• Where can I put my single bed in your one bedroom apartment to have a place to hide when you snore?
• Whose bank are we using?
• Joint accounts? 
• Where are we going to keep the puppy?
• Two cars or one?

Some of these questions are easier to answer than the others, but they still need to be discussed.  The next four months will consist of many more questions and long discussions as we work towards the end of May and the day where we say our vows and finally, after almost 4 years together, join together into a lifetime of journeying together, based on love and mutual servanthood.  As with driving, it's a delicate dance where one needs to always look before they leap and merge with caution.