Reply #83: We are both off schedule for our

[Jamastiene]

regular sleeping times. I usually sleep in the early morning hours from around 6 or 7 until later in the day, maybe 12 or so. That's usually when my aunt wants to get up. I wake up and get her out of bed and help her on the bathroom and then back off again and adjust her so she's comfortable. Then, I help her make some kind of breakfast and go back to bed for a couple of hours.

Up until a couple (or 3, I've lost count) days ago, I was sleeping at night and she was sleeping what normally are my hours. Last night she went to bed around 1 am and I could not sleep because I was up way later than I had been in recent weeks. Something happens to me at midnight. I wake up. If I'm up past midnight, I'm up for the night.

Normally, I'd prefer to be up at night and sleep in the daytime. The heat bothers me and it gets hot during the day. I like to stay still and quiet (in bed or just sitting still) while it's so hot. I overheat too easily.

We are way off schedule now. I had intended to go to the grocery store yesterday and to Wallyworld to pick up a new slow cooker. My old slow cooker actually started rusting from being in storage. My mother sent a stoneware one over, but it's tall and round like a tall cylinder.

It's hard to put a roast of any decent size in it without cutting it up. It takes away from the fun of cooking it and looking at it while it cooks. Plus, it doesn't cook the same way when the meat is buried in the water. I'd rather some water there to keep the moisture in the meat while it tenderizes, but not dowsed in water. When you have to layer the meat in pieces, at least 2 of the three pieces will be under water if the third piece is to get any moisture and cook evenly. I prefer the more oval (not so tall and cylindrical) shaped slow cookers.

I like the meals I cook to be aesthetically pleasing as well as taste good. I hate cooking every day. Anything I can do to make it less unpleasant, the better. I just like to look at a roast surrounded by carrots and potatoes with onions and a dash of pepper garnishing the top. I can't do that in this weird tall slow cooker I have right now.

So, today, I'll be doing it the old fashioned way...in the oven, in a baking dish wrapped in tin foil to hold the moisture in. I know I'm too sleepy to attempt driving 10 miles (one way) to WallyWorld to pick up the new slow cooker I've been saving for.

We are tight on money, but the reason we are hungry right now is just plain circumstances. I just haven't gotten to the grocery store yet because of no sleep or rest for several days straight. I get way off schedule and stressed out over all the major holidays. I should be put in a quiet room out of the way with the pets over holidays. The holidays stress me out way too much.

Our family all of a sudden wants to get all sociable then. Normally, we are not at all like that. The rest of the time, we can't stand each other or anybody else, are antisocial, and don't even attempt to hide it. We normally compare notes on just how much we hate the phones and the doorbell and the sound of cars pulling up in our yards uninvited. I call it the Dread Olympics. Who hates it worse? Something about the holidays brings out the fake niceties in my family. It's tiresome and phony. I hate it. It always stresses me out.

I also go through a mini-depression at the change of the seasons (Not all four, just Spring and Fall). Oddly enough, winter is my happiest season. Most people are more affected by winter as far as SAD goes. I get severe migraines at the change of the seasons from cold to hot. I still have one from the other day. Not to mention the fact that there is a layer of pine pollen a half inch thick all over everything in the yard. I've pulled pollen grains out of both eyes in the last week, big enough to feel like boulders and swell both my eyes almost shut. No health insurance and nothing I've tried OTC has worked yet.

So, add up the stress of the holidays, how that gets my sleeping off schedule, makes me sickly, and the misery (and the thought) of the hot weather coming on, and it wipes me out and makes me overly tired and headachey. We don't really have spring but for maybe 2 weeks, then it's 100 degrees by the second week of May.

I'm just wiped out mentally and physically right now and too sleepy to drive. I do need to get to the grocery store, but I don't want to go hungry. That's never a good idea. When I get hungry, I get grumpy and sickly.

The people that work at the grocery store already don't like to see me come in. My aunt makes the grocery list out. If you can imagine somebody taking a double sized roll of toilet paper and writing a grocery list on that all the way to the cardboard inside, it's similar to what she does.

I usually have to break up the shopping into two trips just because the buggy won't hold all the paper towels, drinking water, and other larger items plus groceries. She has no clue how small the buggies are. She remembers them being huge and holding everything she wanted plus some.

I liked it better when I made out the grocery list and planned the meals. I got out of the grocery store more cheaply and we could eat without me being too tired to even cook it. Now, it's an ordeal.

What's worse is my mother bought my aunt a subscription to the local newspaper. That means the grocery store circulars are in both the Wednesday and the Sunday papers. That means my aunt looks at the sales and thinks they'll actually have that stuff in stock and the shelves will be full.

We all know that's not how those sales really work. Usually, the shelves are empty of that one thing that's on sale. If it's buy one get one free, there is one left by the time I get there.

Just thinking about going to the grocery store is a chore to me any more. I'm so tired. I'm sorry I wrote a book for a post, but it's complicated. It was the only way to explain it.