This Past Week.

Saturday, I was supposed to work 12 to 6. I got a call at 8 that morning asking if I could come in at 10 and work until 6:30 for a full eight-hour shift, so someone could go home early. I did.

Sunday, I was supposed to work 12 to 6. I got a call, as I was driving to work, asking if I could come in at 2 instead. "Two until when?" "Close." Someone had called out. I covered.

Monday was a normal eight-hour shift.

Tuesday, BJ, Sam and I left the house at 7 in the morning, picked up our friend Raequan at 7:30, grabbed some breakfast, and headed to Chicago.

Oh my goodness, Chicago.

We went to the Brookfield Zoo first, and were there for four or five hours. We saw almost everything, and I took a million pictures of almost everything. The three best things, that had HUGE impacts on me, were the three things we paid extra for: the dolphin show, petting (de-barbed) stingrays, and the butterfly house. I was exhausted and in pain by the time we left, but I was also excited the entire time, like little-kid excited, it was AWESOME. The dolphin show almost made me cry from pure kid joy, the stingrays were so adorable and wonderful and calming, the butterfly house was a photographic dream, MAN...it was fantastic.

Next was The Chicago Diner, a vegan/vegetarian restaurant recommended to Rae by a co-worker. I want to make this co-worker cookies for suggesting it, because OH. MY. GOD. Some of the best food I have ever had. The milkshake was to die for. The atmosphere was fun and cozy. The waitress was amazing--she helped explain the menu without being pretentious or condescending, answered our questions about the food and Chicago, and even drew us a map of cool places to go within walking distance. The whole experience was...awesome.

Next was Navy Pier, which was basically just shops and restaurants that we enjoyed toodling around in. After that was Mitsuwa Marketplace, a Japanese store BJ and Sam are fond of visiting, and Woodfield Mall.

We didn't get home until past one in the morning, although that was mostly the fault of the GPS on my phone, which is, in a word, moronic. Honestly, the best parts of the trip were outside the car, because being in the car meant following directions from a phone who didn't understand the real world we were currently driving in.

But yeah. That was Tuesday, in Chicago.

Wednesday was Aurelie's birthday. The original plan had been to go to Lake Michigan, chill for most of the day, then go back to Goshen for dinner and drinking. I met up with Aurelie and Allie at Quincy's, gave her her presents, had breakfast, hung out for a bit. She changed her mind about the lake--as was her birthday girl prerogative--and decided on a movie instead.

I was fading quickly at this point, having only gotten about five hours of sleep after 14 hours in Chicago after five hours of sleep, and realized that it was either go to the movies and hang out, or go to dinner and the bar later. I chose the latter, Aurelie said it was fine, and I went home and crashed for a few hours. Sadly, crashing didn't mean sleep so much as not-moving-or-thinking, so it was only half as restful as hoped, but still.

I picked Aurelie up and took her to Buffalo Wild Wings, where a bunch of people came out for her birthday dinner. After that was The Constant Spring, which was full of a different birthday party, all of which were drunk and doing karaoke. Beatles's karaoke. While drunk. I was displeased.

Still, it was good people, good time, Aurelie had a blast. Mission accomplished. :)

Still didn't get a whole lot of sleep that night, either.

Yesterday, Thursday, was an eight-hour pre-closing shift. I started out fairly upbeat and able, went downhill to exhausted and hungry, ate, and became just plain exhausted. I was basically pathetic and whiny from four o'clock on to the end of the night.

Today, I don't go in until 4:30, and I close. I got a text from the Morning Shift asking if I could come in at 2. I might fall have if I didn't have a To Do list that literally can't be done the rest of the weekend.

And then it's four more days of my six-day work week after that. Then three days off. Whee!

There, now we're all caught up. Now if I could just get a couple of hours of time where I'm awake and don't have shit to do so I can call all my parents and not be a terrible daughter...

Whyyyyyy

Bluh.

My days off were good. Busier than expected, but good.

Today was an early day. I was originally scheduled to close, 4:30 to 10:30, but I saw that a co-worker of mine had a 7-1 shift. He usually has late shifts and would be miserable, and I thought about how cool it'd be to get out so early, so I switched with him.

...WHY?!?!?!

I got maybe an hour of real sleep last night, the rest of the night was tossing and turning and not-recharge-sleeping. Getting up was painful.

Got to work, and it was fine...until it got busy. And then it got busier. And busier.

Then the power went out.

It was only for a few seconds, but it meant that everything shut off and had to restart. And the customers either didn't know or didn't care that we had a delay, what with not being able to expedite or ring up any orders.

Whee!

It was only six hours, and the insanity made it go by quickly, and now I'm out and have the whole rest of the day to write...as long as I can stay awake.

My options now:
[o] take a nap, take a shower, go write
[o] take a shower, go write
[o] take a nap, go write, shower before bed
[o] go write, shower before bed

I usually avoid napping, I always wake up feeling cranky and groggy and just...off. But seeing as I got barely one full hour of sleep last night...I might be able to make an exception.

And my bed looks pretty comfy...

Moar Sleep Nao?

Blargh. Exhausted. I need a day where I wake up naturally, no alarm clock, and maybe then I'll actually wake up feeling like I could take on the world, and not just want to crawl back under the covers. There's a NEW pattern going on, where I wake up after one cycle, almost exactly four hours after I fall asleep. Every night. BAH.

...Not much else to say right now. I'm tired. I haven't had the time to take pictures, so I haven't really had anything to edit or upload, which makes me unhappy. Still having a hard time with life in general, but I seem to be slowly heading uphill instead of down. Just keep swimmin'...

Bounding and Bounding and Bounding...

I'm tired and sore. Sleep was rough last night, and I had a long day, so I'm completely exhausted. I had the stressful pre-closing shift and had a couple of small but unexpected expenses come up, so my body is a mass of knots.

Frustrations abound.

I would kill to be able to take a week off of work, just to sleep and think and sit out of the endless cycle for just five minutes.

Oy.

The funny (or sad?) thing is, I didn't have a bad day.

I'm just exhausted. And frustrations abound.

Life. Stuff. Meh?

I did it again and completely forgot to update yesterday. Yargh!

Nothing really special about either day, so far. Work, Bones, stuff. I got crap sleep last night and had to get up at 7:30. I'm about to head off to do some shopping before ambushing Ryan when he gets off work. Hum de dum.

In other news, I've been putting up pictures over on my phototumblr :D

Okay, time to get out of work clothes and get into something comfy and head off, la de da...

Just Keep Swimmin', Just Keep Swimmin'...

I am currently even more tired than I was yesterday. I think I might have gotten a bit more sleep...but not by too much. Ryan's fever broke around 5:30, which was of course a good thing. The fact that it woke both of us up was not. Neither of us really got any real sleep last night. Like...at all.

But his fever broke! This is a good thing!

The plan for tomorrow is, if his throat is still really sore, he's going to go to the doctor, with or without my help. Tomorrow would be five straight day of a painfully sore throat, which is just too damned long. He seems much better tonight, though, so...yay.

I was dumb and cranky and pretty much useless for the whopping five hours I worked. Tomorrow is a full eight hour shift, starting at 10:30 in the morning. I'm waking up at 9 to see if Ryan needs me to call out to drive him to the doctor. Obviously, the hope is no.

The hope is also that I don't catch this head cold. It's looking good--I've been drinking a lot of liquids, eating lots of protein, taking lots of vitamin C and echinacea, etc etc. My biggest "symptom" is exhaustion, but that's not necessarily from any illness.

Everything else over the past few days has gone by the wayside. Chores of all kinds have taken the back burner to taking care of Ryan and myself and going to work--dishes, house cleaning, recycling, even my daily photography. I owe my Tumblr many pictures now. I hate it, but I'm just too tired, and there's more important things to worry about.

One more day, then two days off. I can make it. Wish us luck and health!

It's Addictive, I Tells Ya.

Sleep is wonderful. After three nights of absolutely CRAP sleep, Wednesday night felt glorious despite still being pretty crap, only six hours at the most and frequently interrupted.

Last night, I got nine almost-entirely-uninterrupted sleep. The only interruption was when I woke up briefly at 9, but then I fell back asleep for just over an hour.

Bliss.

Things are looking up after a perfectly shitty beginning to the week. I can't get into a lot of it, but the point is that life isn't quite as hopeless as it was beginning to feel, and that's really nice to have.

Tomorrow is a short day (five hours, wouldn't be surprised if those got cut), Sunday is closing, Monday is FREEDOM! I have reserved Ryan for the day (he also has it off), and I have no idea what we're going to do, but he's already agreed to not even look at the computer if I ask it of him. We may end up spending the day leveling on WoW, I'm not sure, all I care about is having the choice, having the whooooole day with my Ryan. :D

For now: more sleep! Cuz dang that shit is GOOD.

Indiana Weather: It Means It.

I couldn't tell you how much sleep I got last night. I tossed and turned, dreams melded with being wide awake in the dark. I felt hyper enough to be up and at 'em at 6, then my alarm was going off for 7 only 2 seconds later.

It was a rough night.

I went in to Starbucks, found my boss, and asked "Is it too late to say 'no, I don't want to work at 8 in the morning?'" She said yes, and I said oh, and the day went on.

The day included snow! First it was the saddest, most pathetic Charlie-Brown snow you'd ever seen. Sad little flakes that didn't add up to anything.

I left a little after 6 because the sky had turned white, visibility was beginning to look hazy, and I was afraid of it getting cold enough to freeze.

It's still snowing. Big ol' wet snowflakes. Ick.

I got some writing done, although not nearly as much as I would have liked. I think I just work better when I don't have work-work. My current word count is 8,112; ideally it would be 8,335. I'm not that far off, but I just had a hard time concentrating.

In case the rambling nature of this post wasn't enough proof for you.

Tonight is a raid night, although I'm not participating. I may spend the evening poking at other photography projects, or I may try to plug in my ears and unplug my internet and bang out those last 223 words. Meh. We'll see.

Tomorrow is another day off. Ryan has work at 9:30, meaning we'll be getting up at 8:30. There's an area write-in at Indulgences, a pastry shop a few minutes away that has caught my eye before. It's only from 8 to noon, so I'd get 2 1/2-3 hours at best, but still. An excuse for a pastry shop and a write-in with, at the very least, my super-cool municipal liaison? Sounds good to me!

Wish me luck!

o.o

So, of course, I had crap sleep last night. Fourth night in a row. And just in time for an early day. An early game day. An early home game day against a rival.

...>.<

In all honesty, it wasn't nearly as bad as I was expecting, and my co-workers (who usually do mornings) said that this wasn't bad at all. It got busy, yeah, but not horribly so. And all in all,it wasn't a bad day, even considering that I kept getting grounds in the Pike (and never did figure out how >.<).

I have to say, though, that it was odd to have lunch around...lunchtime. Noonish. What the hell? Who does that? Oh, right, NORMAL PEOPLE.

Boss Lady let me leave an hour early (because she's AWESOME), and I immediately went home and crashed for around 40 minutes. I always regret taking naps during the day--I wake up with a sour stomach, dry mouth, groggy head, and cranky attitude. However, after six hours of sleep (not all in a row!) and seven hours of work, it was really just out of my control.

I am currently nomming on some fettucini alfredo and breadsticks (yay Fazoli's!), and may make tonight an early night. There's a raid that 3/4 of the household is involved in (guess who ain't?), and did I mention I was tired?

Tomorrow's a "normal" day for me (2 to 10:30), and Monday is off. Monday is also the beginning of the week that I turn back to my NaNo plan and start picking at it to make sure it's workable. Only two weeks left! Meep!

Now, back to the pasta...

Writing and Druid and Sleep, Oh My!

I seem to have returned to a sleep habit I thought I had rid myself: waking up every hour or two. I got rotten sleep Tuesday night, and was bone-deep-exhausted all day yesterday, and what kind of sleep do I get? Interrupted. Ergh.

At least what I did get was more or less refreshing. Oh well.

I've hit a wall in the story planning. I don't have writer's block, since I can't start actually writing until November first (and I am dying to). I just ran out of planning to do until then. Ryan's suggested letting it all sit for a week before going back to it, and maybe that'll help. Here's hoping.

Meanwhile, I do have the eighth book in the Sword of Truth series to finish, plus I've started reading another book: Drawing Down the Moon. I've been doing a lot of thinking, lately, about Pagan stuff, specifically Druidism. Starting to do some research to see how to better incorporate it into my life. Stumbling onto The Order of Bards, Ovates & Druids certainly helped me a lot...I'm basically already following the beliefs and principles, without any organization or ritual or anything like that. I'd like to have more of it in my life, hence reading the only book on Paganism I brought with my from Connecticut*.

That whole paragraph was basically to say that I can spend my non-story-planning week researching Paganism and Druidism and planning for Samhain. Whee!

I am really excited to move back toward that area of interest...looking back on my attempts to learn about it as a teenager, I was going through too much other stuff to really let it fully absorb. When I started reading DDtM yesterday, I recognized that I had read it before, but it still felt new. Hard to describe.

Although, I'll admit, I'm not looking forward to JC questioning my reading material. Did I mention he's one of seven children in a heavily Republican and Christan household? Did I mention that he was home-schooled in this same household? Yeah. That's fun to work with. All he has in his head for the word "hippie" is "pot addict," so, now that I've called myself a hippie in front of him, he thinks I'm a pothead...the end. Throwing Pagan and/or Druid in there will be FUNTIMES.

Time to get ready for the day. One more eight-hour shift, then a day off! WHEE!

*I do have A Book of Pagan Prayer here in Indiana, but it's fairly single-minded, you know?

Just A Little Nap? Please?

Well, if my two days off had returned any of my energy, today killed it off right quick.

Today, Ryan had orientation at Target from 9 to 1, and I had work from 10:30 to 7. Please note, still, the presence of only one working vehicle between us. In order to meet all of our requirements today, I had to be dropped off at my Starbucks at 8:30, two full hours before I was scheduled to begin work.

We did not realize that we would have to get up around 7:30 in the morning, until around 1...in the morning. Obviously it was too late, by then, to get to bed on time, but we were even more screwed in the category of Getting Any Real Sleep. I finally fell asleep around 3:30, and Ryan around five in the morning.

So, today I was at work from 8:30 until 5:30* on roughly four hours of sleep, and Ryan was at Target from 9 to 1 on two hours of sleep. His was orientation, so all he had to do was stay awake and pay some sort of attention, but me? I was a complete moron at work. Messing up everything, mishearing everything, staring at people with a vacant expression my face until their words fully processed in my brain...just a complete bloody idiot. I am impressed with Robyn that she didn't stab me.

Ryan and I are both in that giddy, wow-are-we-tired state of exhaustion, and will probably collapse around 10:30 or 11. This is a good thing, as we have to do the same thing tomorrow, except Ryan will be there from 9:30 to 3.

On the upshot, part of the reason we were up so late: I BAKED! I've owed Ryan cake for quite a while now, and of course I picked last night to have the urge to finally make it. It is, of course, the Mocha Chocolate Cake that David taught me. It is the most delicious cake in the world.

We actually haven't tasted yet, as it wasn't fully done until that point of Up-Late-ness where eating things is a Bad Idea, not to mention eating Sugary Things, not to mention the Extremely Filling Cheesesteak Dinner. And we only ate tonight's dinner a few minutes ago, so have not yet had a chance today to descend upon the delicious cake.

It's even iced! With David's icing recipe! I tasted bits and pieces last night--to check for flavor and quality, of course--and it tastes exactly like his. That makes me very happy. :) I can't wait to share it with the roomies!

As I mentioned, tomorrow is going to be similar today, so I best be off to wind down and long-term-prepare for bed. Not that I'll need much prep, seeing as I'm pretty zzzzzzzzz....

*I was scheduled to get off at 7, but the shifts were instructed to cut hours, and I happened to be one of the shortened ones, and I almost wept with joy when I was able to leave. Seriously. Tears threatened.

And I wonder why I'm always tired.

On Saturdays, I open up work at 7 AM. This means I have to get up at 6 AM. If I want a full 8 hours of sleep, I need to be slumbering by 10 PM Friday night.

This is how my Friday night usually goes:

9:30 PM
I should probably head to bed soon. I may not get a full 8 hours (and hell, would I know what to do with them?), but I should try to get as much as possible.

10 PM
I should probably go to bed soon.

10:15 PM
I should probably go to bed soon.

10:30 PM
I should probably go to bed soon.

11 PM
Ryan: Dear, it's 11 PM.
Me: And?
Ryan: I just wanted to let you know. It's 11.
Me: Okay...
Ryan: In case you were unaware. It's 11. Pee-Emm.
Me: Ryan.
Ryan: Ruth.
Me: ...
Ryan: It's 11 PM.

11:10 PM
Ryan: It is now 10 after 11.

11:15 PM
Ryan: It is now quarter after 11.

11:20 PM
Ryan: It is now--
Me: OKAY! SHUT UP!

11:25 PM
Turn off computer, start bed prep: brushing teeth, taking pills, moving morning-prep things to living room so the chances to wake Ryan are minimized, putting bag together so I can leave on time, etc.

11:30 - 11:50 PM
Listen to Ryan talk about something WoW-related that he decided to mention as I was getting ready for bed. Listen with half my brain, remember the conversation at 11 with other half.

11:50 PM - 12:05 AM
Chase fly around room with awesome new fly swatter while cursing like a sailor.

12:05 AM - 12:25 AM
Climb into bed, I talk at Ryan, who is too nice to just leave the bedroom while I'm yakking at him even though I should be asleep.

12:30 AM
Ryan leaves the room. I read a magazine or book to try and quiet my mind for sleeping.

12:30 - 12:40 AM
Fly reappears on bedside lamp. Try to ignore it. Try to read. Try to ignore it. Try to ignore it. Try to ignore it.

12:45 AM
Do you watch Family Guy? Have you ever seen one of the episodes where the giant chicken comes in and there's a drawn-out, over-the-top fight scene between him and Peter? Yeah that. But with replace Peter Griffin with me and the chicken with a fly.

1:00 AM
After one final swat, decide that the fly is dead even though I can't find the body. Turn off the light. Ryan asks if I want the door closed so the music won't keep me awake, I say no, I like it, it helps me fall asleep.

1:00 - 1:30 AM
Each song change wakes me up a little. Each squeak of the office chair wakes me up a little. Random words in the songs will wake me up a little. The cat moving around upstairs will wake me up a little. Every time I wake up, it feels like I've been asleep for 3 hours, when in reality it's been less than five minutes.

1:30 AM
Ryan finally comes to bed. I use his arm as a pillow and make a happy little "mmm" sound. When he tries to take his arm back, I inform him that "mmm" is part of the English dialect known as Girlese and translates into "Your arm is mine now, ha ha."

1:45 AM
Finally fall asleep.


All I can say is: thank God for energy drinks.