My photo dump yesterday was precipitated by wanting an easily-accessible place to house the photos of my apartment that I wanted to send to people that I was sending an update on my life to. And, since I haven't posted here lately, I thought I'd edit that down to an LJ-friendly version, so everyone can see why I've fallen off the face of the planet recently.
Mostly, my lack of availability is related to having to adjust to a "typical" 8-hour day/5-day a week work schedule. It was something I did for years before, and I had no idea how foreign it would have become to me!! This has been further complicated by the fact that it hasn't *really* been typical, since I've been working midnights. I think this week is the first week since I've started this job (at the end of February) that I haven't had a serious problem staying awake all night at least one night a week. Actually, I got a really good schedule, as schedules go... I work Thursday-Monday, and have Tuesday/Wednesday off. Mostly, this is because I volunteered to work every weekend, so I wouldn't have to think about what weekends I worked, and what ones I didn't, since I'm required to work 2 per month. Apparently, getting 2 consistent days off in a row is kinda unheard of, so at least there's that. I think working midnights is wreaking havoc on my system in general, though.
Here's what's been happening in mine....
Mostly, my lack of availability is related to having to adjust to a "typical" 8-hour day/5-day a week work schedule. It was something I did for years before, and I had no idea how foreign it would have become to me!! This has been further complicated by the fact that it hasn't *really* been typical, since I've been working midnights. I think this week is the first week since I've started this job (at the end of February) that I haven't had a serious problem staying awake all night at least one night a week. Actually, I got a really good schedule, as schedules go... I work Thursday-Monday, and have Tuesday/Wednesday off. Mostly, this is because I volunteered to work every weekend, so I wouldn't have to think about what weekends I worked, and what ones I didn't, since I'm required to work 2 per month. Apparently, getting 2 consistent days off in a row is kinda unheard of, so at least there's that. I think working midnights is wreaking havoc on my system in general, though.
My "ideal" work day is:
Get off work at 7am... go home, wake
BlckwngdOrcl up, make/eat breakfast, watch CNN during this, stay up long enough to let food digest a little, and get to bed around 10am-ish... wake up around 6pm, do all the usual shower/etc. things... cook dinner and hang out with
BlckwngdOrcl for a little while, and have some time to do things, before leaving for work around 10:30pm.
This doesn't sound too bad... it's just that things hardly ever actually work this way. What actually happens....
Thursday night I go to work around 10:30pm... I've reset my schedule to day shift on my days off, so I can try to get things done during business hours, and hang out with
BlckwngdOrcl... so, by the time I get off work in the morning, I've been up right around 24 hours. But, since it's now Friday morning, and therefore payday, I make my weekly run down to Arthur to pick up milk/eggs/cheese/cream. The bank is usually open (9am) by the time I get back, so I go there and get whatever money/money orders/etc. I need to pay bills, go to the store, etc.. I might stop at the roastery to pick up some coffee, if we're out. I might stop at the co-op to get some groceries, but by then I'm really wanting to get home, and even in a small town, at that point, driving the extra less-than-5-miles to do that just seems like too much. So, somewhere in there, I've given
BlckwngdOrcl a call to be awake so he can carry up the now-full gallon jars of milk (usually 4), along with everything else. I'm still pretty wired at this point, and we're both up, so I go ahead and make breakfast. Breakfast pretty much is always bacon and eggs, and I've just about gotten the cooking down to a science so it's pretty low key. I've discovered that it's possible to unload and reload the dishwasher in the time it takes the oven to preheat - who knew? It certainly FEELS like it takes longer than 8 minutes! So,
BlckwngdOrcl sets up for breakfast (we don't really have a usable table, so we eat on TV trays at the couch, hence the CNN) while I cook it... somewhere in there we feed the cats, etc.. So by the time I ACTUALLY get to bed, it's closer to noon... so I end up waking up around 8pm, which is just enough time to shower and do dinner before I have to leave for work.
So, I go into work on Friday night, and get off Saturday morning. I get home and drag
BlckwngdOrcl's ass out of bed. :) While he's showering/etc., I clean up the kitchen, feed the cats, etc.. Then comes the highlight of the week - something I like to call "Goat-Inspired Breakfast"! :) There's a local goat farm maybe a mile or two from us that has breakfasts every Saturday during this season... from what I can tell, pretty much from the time the goats start "kidding" until the local farmers' market starts running. They have a different menu every week, and a little mini-farmers' market. All the food is grown locally, and includes the small list of meats I'll eat. It's a limited menu, so
BlckwngdOrcl and I have delighted in ordering "one of everything" and sharing, so we can try all the neat stuff they have - and it's affordable. Usually, this means we each get part of a main dish, and split some pastry-like things. They had these scones a couple of weeks back that I was leery to try, since scones, in my head, are all sweet, and these were "Prairie Fruits Farm Mollisol Pecorino scones with red pepper jelly and chives"... but they were AMAZING. I could have made an entire breakfast out of those, and very much wished I had some butter to go with them... And, of course, then we get to go out and wander the farm, pet the goats and the chickens... so, again, I'm hopefully in bed by noon, and up by 8pm, dinner, work....
Sunday morning, no errands... just home for breakfast, and in bed early, although the past two days have affected my schedule such that I generally toss and turn for a while, and I usually end up on something similar to the 12n-8p sleeping schedule. Alternatively, this will end up being the day that, knowing I'll toss and turn anyway, I'll prep something to slow-cook all day, so that dinner is ready when I wake up. As an aside,
BlckwngdOrcl declares that I've become "quite the little cook", and I have to say that I usually agree with him. Thank God for the internet! I pretty much just Google how to cook any given thing, compare the recipes, decide what sounds good, and do that. Even with some substitutions here and there, it's gone pretty well. Back to work at the usual time.
Monday night lather rinse repeat, although I seem to feel less miserable when I wake up.
So, there's my week. Keep in mind I also work for a staffing company, and I've told them I can work Tuesdays if they have work for me. (I cut even that down drastically in March, because I was just so. fucking. exhausted. all the time.) So, I pretty much have to come home and do the usual - breakfast/sleep, in case I end up working Tuesday night... which is something I'm never 100% sure about until 10pm that night... they have until then to either give me a shift if they haven't already, or to take away a shift they've told me that need someone for. So I can't really plan to do much on Tuesdays. Luckily, between cutting my hours and just their needs, they haven't asked me to work the past couple of months. I've been EXTREMELY grateful. Basically, this means, I don't really have as much of a day off on Tuesdays as I'd like to, 'cause I have to act *as if* I work until it's too late to do anything else.
I've found that, even when I've slept during the day on Tuesday, if it's possible to sleep, I end up sleeping through the night, anyway. My body really seems to crave sleeping at night... which is only natural, of course, but somewhat inconvenient for me. Last night, for instance, when I was thinking I'd be on the computer all night, catching up on stuff, but I was falling asleep around midnight, so I just went to bed. I got up at 5am after that. (This usually carries over, which is why I'm typically up well over 24 hours by the time I get home from work on Friday mornings.) So... Wednesday during the day, I can usually get things done... laundry, etc.. In theory. In practice, I do a lot of sleeping. This has gotten a lot better the past few weeks, as I slowly start to get used to this lifestyle, but it's still not perfect.
Ditto Thursdays.
Of course, this would all be well and good if these were the only things I did... but I've picked up another client that I see every other Sunday and every Monday for 3 hours in the morning when I get off my other shift. Except on some Mondays, when I also drive to Savoy (maybe 5-10 miles from here) and give a lady in assisted living her medications (she has a g-tube, and the home health aides can't do that part). So, on those days, everything gets shifted by a few hours.
And, of course, then there's the modeling I'm still doing for the art departments. There were a couple of weeks where I was doing that at least twice a week, so that further messed up my sleep schedule. I still love it, though.
After much (somewhat inadvertent) research, I've decided to go to Danville Area Community College to get my RN. They have a unique program that doesn't involve a third semester to get the bridge information between LPN and RN, they have a great reputation in the area, and have just about a 100% pass rate on the Boards. Unfortunately, like every other program, my biology-related classes are too out of date, and I have to re-take them before I can start classes. I'll do that closer to home, at Parkland. So, I won't be able to start the actual nursing classes until the spring, but it seems like that's the best bet. I'm both dreading and looking forward to it, but it's something I really need to do. I get tuition reimbursement via work (I think it kicks in in September), so my parents will help me cover the costs, and then I can pay them back afterwards. The hike in pay isn't as great here as it would be in Atlanta, nor are the increased options (there just aren't as many places here to work), but I still think it'll be invaluable in the long run. I've had a meeting with the head of the department, and my main concern, about being out of district, has been alleviated, so it's full speed ahead from here!
BlckwngdOrcl and/or I have been sick a lot. He had a several-day migraine that kept him in bed... his allergies are making him crazy, and he's had a sore throat. I've had similar... I've gotten those excruciating headaches like I get, and was finally able to tame those with a combination of MucinexD (they finally have an affordable generic) and ibuprofen, but it took a while. While I was at my parents, I started coughing up even worse things than usual... instead of just icky yellow, they got that creamy gray-green color, so the morning I had planned on leaving, I went to a walk-in med clinic instead. I got antibiotics and such, and that helped, and had to take a day (er, night) off work so I wouldn't get my client sick, and I've been better, but not perfect, since then. I've had a sore throat for the past 3 weeks, my tonsils are still swollen, and I'm still coughing and/or blowing horrible-looking things. I'm eligible for insurance as of 04/01/2010, and I've filled out the paperwork, but I'm still waiting on the insurance cards and such. I'm high-tailing it to a doctor and a specialist as soon as I have 'em in my hot little hands. I've decided to push for surgery, as soon as I can work out how that affects my job. We'll see if they cooperate. But that's another thing that's been greatly affecting my life here... sometimes sleeping is almost impossible due to all the shit that goes on with that, and I can't keep going at this breakneck pace that's only going to get worse when I start classes without some sort of intervention.
Also on the agenda today is to fill out a FAFSA form for
BlckwngdOrcl to go back to school. We've come to the conclusion that what he wants to do is computer engineering... and it turns out that U of I has the 3rd best undergraduate program in the country! I look at the classes he has to take, and cringe - they're extremely math-heavy... but he likes that sort of thing. Not sure if he'll finish it in 4 years, or how many classes he'll have to take to "catch up" since he's been out of school so long, and who knows what he remembers, but having a plan is good. We're hoping he can start at least something in the fall. With him working midnights, too, it ought to be perfect.
Anyway... THIS is why I haven't had time to do much besides read... I *have* been reading... just no comments.
Hopefully that will change soon.
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