ASD

It’s called Accumulated Stress Disorder. At least, that’s what I call it. It’s symptoms are continued fatigue, a disinterest in doing pretty much everything, and a severe disinterest in the idea of ‘adulting’. That’s what I’ve been dealing with for a couple of weeks now.

I’ve been sleeping about 12 hours at night, and sometimes I lay down for a 2-hr nap in the afternoon. A lot of days, 90% of my to do list for that day gets shunted to the next day. I don’t want to drive anybody to the doctor’s office, not even myself. I don’t want to go shopping or picking up meds or even just leave the house.

But some things can’t be procrastinated, like doctor’s appointments, grocery shopping and picking up meds. So I do them, and when I get home, I try taking a nap. That can help calm me down for the rest of the day, but it’s the sleeping for 12 hours that seems to help tamp down the accumulated stress.

My counselor suggests I book one day a week as ‘Me’ time. A day with no appointments, no errands, just me at home, writing on my latest Work in Progress. I love the idea. I have said many times that writing helps me stay sane. I used to think the weekends were ideal for this, but this weekend, I ran errands for the family on Saturday, and on Sunday, John decided he wanted to go to Walmart, so I drove him there and home again. Then I took a 2-hr nap to calm down and washed the dishes. Thus, the weekend was full of adulting.

But Thursday was empty. I kept it empty so I could spend the day writing. Well, I had to adult for quite a bit of the day, but I did get 3 hours of writing in the afternoon! I wrote over a thousand words, so I was happy about that.

Italian Cruise 2021 - Day 2

Sunday, 10/17

During our flight to Barcelona, I got woke up rather rudely as the lights were turned on and the flight attendants handed out breakfast. The yogurt was okay, but not a kind I would have picked. Much thicker than I’m used to, but at least it was fruit flavored. After breakfast, they turned the lights back out.

By now, John had opted to use the empty seat next to us, and I was sitting next to the window. Despite having only gotten about half an hour of sleep, I couldn’t go back to it. As the sky lightened as dawn approached (or were we approaching it?) I watched the Spanish landscape pass by under us. There were entire valley systems that were full of fog, which lent the view an eerie look. Some were so large, they looked like seas.

Then we flew out over water, which surprised me. I thought Barcelona was land-locked. Apparently not.

The Barcelona airport is big, with long halls to walk and many hoops to jump through. There was a bottle-neck as our passports were checked. More walking. More walking. Another bottle-neck as our Spanish health forms were checked. John’s sailed through. I don’t know what the problem was with mine, but I must have stood there for 2 full minutes before they sent me on.

Find our luggage. This was at least an hour after the plane landed. Somebody was collecting suitcases from the carousel as ‘unclaimed’. Eventually, John found our 2 suitcases, and we put on the luggage tags for our cruise. More walking.

Finally, we saw somebody holding up a sign for a cruise line. Not the one we were looking for, but ours was standing not too far away. That person directed us to another cruise employee, who was taking luggage and sending it to the ship. After standing around for a few minutes, they took us upstairs and outside to ‘go to the bus’. We walked a couple blocks. The breeze felt nice. Then into a building and down 2 floors to get tested for covid. We were told about this, but thought it would happen at the dock.

Half an hour later, we got on the bus to the ship.

We didn’t have our boarding documents that had supposedly been sent to us, but they were ready for that. They took our passports, found us in their system, gave us our cabin keys (and gave our passports back), and sent us on our way.

At last, we walked onto the ship. Our first chore was to find our muster station, in case of emergency, but that muster station was, for us, right inside the entrance. So while we were there, we booked reservations for a couple shows. Then we went to The Taste, one of the main dining rooms, to get some lunch. John got a pork chop, and I had a philly cheesesteak sandwich. Both came with fries. John finished his meal, but I was so sleep-deprived, I could only eat half of mine. My body didn’t want food, it wanted sleep. And fluid. I did manage to drink 4 glasses of cola and 1.5 glasses of water. John drank about the same. We felt semi-revived after lunch, so went and found our cabin.

Our cabin was so small, it was lilliputtin-ish. The bathroom had been split up, with the toilet in a tiny closet on one side of the entrance, and the shower on the other. There was a curtain that could be closed to separate that piece of the room from the rest of the room. Beyond that, a curved closet resided on the right, the sink, a counter and cupboards on the left. A double bed presided over the rest of the cabin, with–I’m guessing–less than a foot of clearance on either side of it. So, not a lot of room to move around in.

Our luggage had not yet shown up. John unpacked the carry-on suitcase and we took our morning pills. We hadn’t managed to take our evening pills the night before, but it was far too late to worry about that.

John went out to explore the ship, and I lay down and stared at the ceiling. After a while, I got up and unpacked my carry-on bag–mostly–and then I got on the phone and checked on our specialty dining reservations. We had forgotten when they were at, and didn’t want to miss them. Then I glanced through the shore excursion tickets, just to do something. Uh oh. According to my count, we were missing one ticket for one excursion, and both tickets for another. So I shoved them back into the envelope and trotted down to the shore excursion desk to check into it.

The shore excursion desk was busy. I expected that, so I got into line, as requested. Others apparently didn’t realize there was a line, and got help before me, but eventually I got up there, and took all the tickets out of the envelope to explain the problem. Turned out 2 of the tickets had been stapled together and I hadn’t noticed. So that missing ticket was solved. Then as I sorted through the rest of the tickets, I realized I had pairs of tickets for every port we would hit. All was well with shore excursions. Obviously, my brain wasn’t functioning well. More laying on our bed, not sleeping but resting as best we could, and still no luggage.

Eventually, we went back to The Taste for supper. John had Atlantic salmon, and I had baked zita. I was so tired, I only wanted comfort foot. We admired the 3-deck tall chandelier in the middle of the restaurant and went up to the buffet on deck 15 to have a 2^nd dessert.

Then it was back to our cabin. Our luggage had shown up. We quickly unpacked–mostly–and then gave in to our fatigue. After checking our tickets for our shore excursion the next day, we set an alarm to wake us up. With an inside cabin, there would no chance of sunlight seeping in to wake up. And especially at 6:30 am, so we set an alarm or 2 and thankfully sank into some much-needed sleep.

Never Enough Time

I’ve retired from my day job. I should have plenty of time to do whatever I want, right?

So, how come I don’t?

I think back to when I was working, feeding the family and trying to hold the house together. I managed it. My house didn’t look like any you see in a magazine, because there were always things that hadn’t been put away, and dust accumulated far faster than I could wipe it away. But there was food, usually hot for supper, and I tried to keep the dirty dishes from piling up too deep in the kitchen sink.

In the evenings, I almost always multi-tasked by writing while watching tv. Which is not easy to do; you either miss what’s going on in the tv show because you’re concentrating on the story you’re writing, or you stop writing to follow the tv show. Knitting while watching tv is much easier, as long as the pattern isn’t too difficult. Sometimes, I did that.

On weekends, I ran errands and cleaned house. Seemed like I never had enough time to get everything done.

I don’t work 40 hours a week at a job anymore. I don’t have to spend 45 minutes driving to work every morning and 30 minutes driving home (don’t ask me, it must have been the traffic flow), or ride a bus for an hour each way every day. I should have plenty of time!

Hmm. Yeah. Guess what. I don’t.

The thing is, I dusted off a few hobbies I used to do long ago, added a couple hobbies I never had done before, and... the days are not long enough!

It doesn’t help that the errands have multiplied as well. Because I have diabetes, the doctor wants to see me every 6 months to see how I’m doing. To see how I’m doing, he has to have some lab work done. In Omaha, the lab was in the doctor’s office, so both could be done at the same time. Here in Florida, the medical labs are separate from the doctor’s office, so that’s 2 trips every half year. I have to see a cardiologist, who is not in the same building. I have to see an eye doctor twice a year. And because I’ve had kidney stones (thanks to the mineral-laden water one drinks in Florida), I’ve been seeing a urologist every 3-4 months.

Because I suffer from depression, I visit with a counselor once a week, and see a medications monitor once a month.

Not enough errands for you yet? I go to pick up prescriptions 3-4 times a month. Yeah, I’d get them all ‘synchronized’, except it seems like every couple of months, one of them gets changed. My husband has his prescriptions ‘synchronized’, but every single month, at least one of his ‘hasn’t come in yet.’ Why don’t they know they need to order it a day or 2 earlier so he doesn’t have to make a 2nd (or 3rd) trip?

And because I have diabetes, I’m supposed to exercise 30 minutes a day, 6 days a week.

My tiny business needs tending.

The bills need to be paid, which requires moving money around between credit unions.

The HOA insists we keep the lawn and landscaping in good shape.

The dog wants some attention.

The house still needs to be picked up and chores done from time to time. Thankfully, my husband does quite a bit of this.

I have one day a week assigned for each of my ‘major’ hobbies. (Sunday is my ‘clean office’ day, which is a never-ending battle in and of itself.) Most weeks, I find very little time to devote to hobbies. I try not to beat myself up over that, but... it does get to me.

Of course, it might help if I could get my body straightened out enough that I don’t sleep 12 hours a day. Or take 2-3 hours to ‘wake up’ after I do get up.

Well, now I’m just dreaming!

Let Me Check My Schedule

Do you have a schedule? I think most people have a schedule they more or less follow. I had one for the greater part of my working life. It got tweaked if I changed jobs or got a promotion, but it mostly looked something like:

Get up at a certain time in order to arrive at work on time

Have a lunch break

Go home and prepare/eat supper

Spend the evening on family activities, housework, hobbies and/or writing

Go to bed in order to get up in the morning.

Weekends - or whatever days off I had - did not follow this schedule, and often felt scattered, unfocused or even wasted. That did not mean I was ready to give up my time off, of course.

Now that I’m ‘retired’ from my day job, I am looking for the perfect schedule to follow. In the meantime, I have a rough schedule for when I’m at home: get up, breakfast & pills, write, lunch, housework, business, prepare & eat supper/take pills, tv & hobbies, take my last pill, extra time on the computer, go to bed.

Okay, it’s not that different from when I was working, but this schedule includes those pills, which are far more than a multi-vitamin, these days. It works most days, unless I can’t wake up, every joint aches and my brain doesn’t work. Weekends take more effort to remember those pills, because we usually have errands to run, extra chores, or go out for a movie.

Then we have vacations, when I might be away from home as much as a month, and mini-vacations where we go to a convention. Somehow, it becomes a major undertaking to remember those pills, see that I eat somewhat regularly and get some ‘me’ time to keep the stress level down. The less I can follow a schedule, the worse things get. I start sleeping more. I have trouble waking. I forget my pills or to watch my blood sugar.

And then I have a hard time recovering once I get home. It might take me several days to get myself organized and ‘on schedule’ again. Con-i-tis.

People are creatures of habit. I certainly am. Doesn’t mean I want to give up conventions or vacations.

What happens when you ‘fall off’ your schedule?