RantWoman Sleeps--or Not

 Almost eight hours of sleep and I could sleep more. No morning commitments but wound up working stuff via twitter and email anyway. I made cranberry sauce to go with roasted yams and turkey but did not get to turkey and stuffing casserole OR pumpkin cheesecake bars. But I did get plants watered. Gotta love the winter light patterns. I did my morning stretches but only 5 reps instead of 10 like I prefer.  Definitely not super energetic and I hoped to get out more in the sun than I did. No I did not get all the email I need answered and now it's time to think supper before my POAG meeting. This time there is a link for public to observe and a path to comment! Oh, the COVID comment: one friend is recovering but has a newjob ijn a new state so life is better. Grad school colleague is very sick  And I think I already mentioned the family friend who died. Bleah! Oh, and the Times has changed how they report the daily counts and I am lazy I would much prefer to have the daily numbers eve

 Seven + hours of sleep, Going to bed at 12:30 it took a LONG time to fall asleep. Even though I fell asleep earlier during the smart blind people zoom. 4 hours and then up to feed the cat and then back to bed. And then awake in time to wash hair before worship. Anyway I at the last of the mashed potatoes for breakfast. I ate the last of turkey round 1 with the last of green bean casserole enhanced with a lot of fresh mushrooms. I also ate one of my own roasted yams with NO ADDED SUGAR More and more pink and white blossoms .  And the last quarter of the darling small pumpkin chiffon pie. Now onto the turkey drumsticks and maybe I will make pumpkin cheesecake bars...

 Somewhere close to eight hours of sleep counting going back to bed after breakfast and dozing in the chair. Stuffing and turkey containers delivered piping hot on Thursday PLUS I ate up some of the sister feast leftovers AND got my turkey drumsticks cooked. Yams also. Now about finishing off the green bean casserole and doing some cranberries and probably some more stuffing the way I like it. MUCH gratitude. And gratitude for many conversations..

Almost EIGHT hours of sleep counting going back to bed for two hours in the morning and another about hour in my chair with the cat purring all over me. Yesterday was cool: Zoom open house was FUN. I will try it again but maybe a couple times getting invitation out earlier and different invitee lists.  The cat, Oblivious to the holiday Family Zoom was also FUN. Plus my sister and nephew plotted to do turkey dinner and make deliveries before the zoom call. Everything was either piping hot or appropriately chilled and in different bags. Definitely first world problems to whine, but green bean casserole (mleah) the right amount of sugar in yams (none) and the right amount of celery in dressing (almost impossible to have too much). There was orange Jello with grated carrots and fruit and also pumpkin chiffon pie done right, not the lame way my mother tried a couple yetoars ago with vanilla pudding mix and I think coolwhip and nowhere near enough pumpkin. Plus I figured out how to find olde

 FIVE hours of sleep.  I More and more Christmas Cactus blossoms especially the darker pink ones went to bed before I finished the crossword. I was able to solve a lot more of it in the morning. But that meant I did not make it back to bed before needing to dress for worship. Maybe it's silly to make sure to wear the birthday present clothes if one really will need to do some food prep and cleanup.  Oh well. Feast free open house. Give nephew pomegranate for upcoming birthday. GIve him yams for household because his dad really likes. Mom gets to have dinner in dining room with neighbors. Yeah! Company without family overstress.

 Almost SEVEN hours of sleep, 5 in one spell and not quite two after breakfast.  The Thanksgiving Cactuses Half the morning was shot and it still took some pushing to get up and moving. But I got socks and masks washed, pots and pans washed and MAYBE the rest of dishes after I get done sending out a belated invitation to a Zoom open house. Such high standards of productivity. VERY bummed though: One of my sister' and her husbands Guatemalan friends died of COVID on Sunday and his common law wife needs prayers navigating US culture. Now back to my inviting.

 SEVEN hours of sleep. 5 hours in one spell and two more hours after getting up to feed the cat and eat a banana. Clean sheets and dryer fluffed, bedbug proofed fuzzy blankets are SO soothing. Weird dream of the day: I was trying to buy some kind of food in a vending machine. I kept putting quarters in and not getting food but instead getting lots of coins back, quarters but also lots and lots of dimes. Cat is sneezing this morning. I wish I knew what that's about. I goofed. I forgot to respond to the calendar invite for my 10 am call. Maybe we will reschedule. I think I am going to just proclaim a Thanksgiving open house.... I have two events this evening that i need to do some reading for. Being a grownup is just so grand. Probably that is enough for now.

 4.5 hours of sleep. My fault for showering before bed because i did not want just to fall asleep with grubby body on clean sheets. The Queen of Spades (her internet name) But I had a 10:30 am phone call so I could neither go back to bed nor ... mental skip evidence that I am way underslept. Made appointment for 10 am call to continue this morning's call.

 SEVEN hours of sleep! Sunny for a  good part of the day before the rains came--again. More and more blossoms 3 zoom things and three long phone conversations.  Various forms of adulting in the email inbox. Joy. I meant to get the compost and recycling taken out before dark and stormy. Tomorrow will come. I really need a different shopping cart to do laundry. I have one it's just full of paper most of which belongs in the recycling.

Seven plus two hours = almost NINE hours. And I could have slept longer But I had to shower and get ready for blind chapter elections. Many digital inclusion moments. Good people ran for the needed offices. None of them were me! More and more Christmas Cactus blossoms Enough sleep to have weird dreams: something involving a retreat at some kind of school and arts and crafts happening in comfortable space that were not social distancing so it was going to be a nice congenial superspreader evemt and then I was making an omelette that would not congeal.   Today I finally just made corn and andouille sausage stew from the lima beans I have been soaking for days. I meant to have white beans for some chicken soup but the bag turned out to be limas.... I aspired to get other things done too but I have wound up just hanging out with smart blind people in Zoom and now I ahve a technological task to mess around with.... Tomorrow I MUST assemble some paperwork.

 About SIX hours of sleep Blame the crossword which I did finally solve and nerves. And I got a shower before my 10:30 Zoom call and the morning noises. The morning noises: --Deaf blind (technically very low vision so we communicate by squinting at each other's handwriting) guy two doors down doing his periodic incomprehensible frustration yelling. For some reason he was convinced his brother died. The first time he knocked I did not get mask, pen, pad until after he left. The second time he came my door was ajar and he waited while ...  No, he doesn't know whether his brother is sick. I did not ask who told him or why he thought...       I asked permission to contact his brother and his case manager at DBSC. I was in middle of Zoom call but able to email the case manager that neighbor was worried about his brother. By the time I got off the Zoom call and called the brother, brother had sent neighbor a fax, their usual path of communication. I called brother and he sounded stro

 I think it was almost SIX hours of sleep, all in one spell with one round of I need a drink of water and I will turn the radio on before I fell asleep. Christmas cactuses even more blossoms than the other day I hate ambiguous symptoms. Do I call my primary care doctor and see about either a COVID test or just a new patient visit since I got switched to her panel probably because my other Dr moved on in some positive career direction. Or do I call the medical oncologist and get her opinion? Stay tuned. Have I mentioned in like the last two minutes how much joy my Christmas cactuses bring me? I do not care that they will not last much past Thanksgiving. They are glorious while blooming and somehow soothing in a cyclical annual way.

 Almost SEVEN hours of sleep.  FIVE hours first spell. Fed cat. Ate Banana. Went back to bed and grabbed two more hours before I needed to shower, fill water bottles with ice water and get as dressed as possible on way to computer lab. Dressed meant reasonable professional clothing, shoes and compression socks, new larger sized ones but not as comfortable as the men's size ones. Also my beloved black denim jacket is getting all raggedy at the cuffs, but again hopefully not as noticeable on video as in person... Okay so I did not get hair combed. Luckily I have big dorky headphones so only a really fussy observer can tell my hair was not yet braided to my taste. Random other notes: Taco time for supper last night. Cane snow-plowing through leaves. Construction out one door... but white bean chili is back! And rumble rumble. Roof repairs seem to be happening but it is warmer at computer lab and a bigger screen with fully functional if not perfectly upgraded software makes a big diffe

 six + hours of sleep.  View from the breezeway which has to do if I am not going any further than to a bigger screen Interestingly cat did not wake me up but she was glad to have breakfast when I woke up at 5.  I went back to bed and woke up again about 8. I could have slept longer but a Zoom meeting awaited at 9:15. Everyone is tired of pandemic and talked about how they have adapted services for pandemic circumstances.  One transportation provider call center is now all working remotely after someone tested positive ON FRIDAY. Excuse me, but what precautions were you doing before that? I think I HAVE To get out and buy cat litter but first I should prepare for book group.

 Almost EIGHT hours of sleep. More Christmas Cactus blossoms Nothing like cold and dark and pukey to encourage one to unplug and SLEEP.  I went to bed about 11: 30, woke up a couple times and slept until about 9:30. I still had trouble being fully ready for conference call at 11 but conference call was subject to technological hiccups anyway: volunteer recognition processes faltered partly due to pandemic, but we did what we need to do for this year. Last of the chocolate tapioca pudding and a banana for breakfast at like 5. Oatmeal and hotdogs for lunch. No, I do not want to know whether anyone considers this appalling. I worked in morning stretches and 5 whole laps on the breezeway because i am too much of a wimp to have any interest in further walking in the rain.

 SIX hours of uninterrupted sleep. No coffee. No late night munching. No sounds not radio not talking book. Christmas cactuses with pink and white blossoms Cat alarm clock waited all the way until 7 to demand breakfast and even tolerated visit to restroom first. 3 days in a row on edge of diarrhea. Guess I need to read some more of my articles about stuff in my body. I keep checking about COVID issues and it seems probably not. Not a lot of appetite but I also am not doing much. Smell and taste about average but I have a stuffy nose all the time anyway. Also no red eyes. For example, solve the I am freezing problem by figuring out how to bang on computer lab thermostat to get two hours of heat ahead of and also after the programmed schedule. 65 degrees is a welcome luxury when winter cycle keeps room at 60 and there is little danger that weather will get room up to the unsafe for computers level of  75. Right now almost all the computers are unplugged anyway and roof work construction

 Somewhere close to EIGHT hours of sleep, basically all morning after a bite of breakfast. Stomahc still upset like yesterday Cat cuddles Laziness ALL day. Wash hair. Go to computer lab to Zoom with smart blind people. Topics: alcohol and sex toys.

 Seven hours of sleep. Eggnog latte at 4 pm was not a good idea. I went to bed late and woke up with upset stomach. Good thing I had nothing on the agenda in the morning. Well making chicken soup can wait. Birthday Present RantMom's birthday Zoom call was lovely. I will snail mail her a personal panettone. I wonder whether the fam can stand an hour / week on zoom during the holidays. Looks like seeing each other in person for awhile is, um... The title was all the purchases that came home with me when I went out yesterday. Happy Friday the 13th world

6+ hours of sleep. Helps to go to bed early.  Probably also helps to cut back from two tea bags worth of tea to one per day.  More would have been nice. Instead I got to work a good sister fight into the schedule. Happy Birthday RantMom.  WILL WE use our Zoom time to have the next iteration of the morning fight?  Picture with face and eyes visible LOOK FAMILY, thank you for fretting about me. (Shhh. I am relieved when you are not available to accompany me to appointments.) If I do not call the second I am done with an appointment, please cope.I can barely handle my own anxieties. NO WAY do i have extra energy to cope with yours. If I tell you I am not ready to talk, I AM NOT READY TO TALK. If I tell you I find texting hard to deal with and do MUCH better with a full-sized keyboard, PLEASE respect that, no matter how easy it is for you to peck out book length texts. Lots I really do not know. Lots I will look up on the internet IN DUE TIME. In the meantime, prayers always matter. Plus,

 Somewhere around SEVEN hours of sleep. But I woke up with WAY more pain than I like. Not like after PET scan results I don't have other things to write the medical oncologist about too. How many Christmas cactus buds can you find? Probably the excursion out to Trader Joes for cat food helped about exercise. And the cat now has several weeks of canned food to be happy about and I will still need dry food and litter but neither immediately. Good thing because cat is back to her crabby self. It's cold and the human is too much of a fresh air freak, and I just can't be warm cat furniture 24/7. But without cat cuddles and regular showers touch I would be even less sane in pandemic than I am now.  And I have a few packages of definitely zip-spicy Indian soups to make me happy too. I feel like such a slug. Instead of the bus routing that adds about 5 blocks of walking one direction, I went both ways on the routing that has at most a couple street crossings and a transfer at the s

 4.5 hours of sleep.  APAC meeting that can't be an official meeting is somehow a joy. Also other meeting where I finally just blurted out some stuff on my mind. And then connectivity intervened.... I went home before the 1 am computer shutdown.  I started 3 emails and decided they should season overnight. And the cat definitely likes me to be warm cat furniture and probably thinks I am too much of a fresh air freak. Happy Tuesday. Pictures of buds coming soon.

Almost SEVEN hours of sleep.  Good news / bad news. This is on top of a 3-hour nap in the afternoon.  Bad news I missed both sunshine and the blind prayer warriors. Some of them probably not dellighted or evn relieved by... Talk about prayer across boundaries. Clean hair whine: the first couple days after i wash my hair it does not stay braided very well. So at some point I had to re-braid. Other news bulletin. About to be christmas cactus season. Buds buds bus

 Did I actually get almost 8 hours of sleep? Almost. Unbelievable. Smart blind people saturday night zoom hangout was fun. MUCH election-related relief; quite a range frets in next little while of what all may come next. I went to bed figuring I would have more brain cells in daylight. I was correct. I think I just have to give up on Coke with my Taco time order. It kept me awake and I was cold but I still fell asleep without getting up to add another fuzzy blanket.

 SIX hours of sleep including two hours after breakfast. The Queen of Spades Time to make some more porridge, hopefully tomorrow. Hair washing happened before the Quaker Voice Zoom call but that just leaves we hair in a not overheated roomn.

Almost SEVEN hours of sleep. counting going back to bed after breakfast. And morning news of states trending blue makes me cross my fingers and ... And I still made it to showered and presentable before a conference call that is both gratifying and honest and generating more work and advocacy and finesse of various sorts. And thank you to a very conscientious county employee who answered my question after i had to let one of the call organizers go on for a long time in ways that repeated things I could have read better but did not answer my question. Rock and Roll! Plus I got two pieces of advocacy email done while other people were talking on the Zoom call. Too much multitasking is definitely not a good idea but one of the emails had a non deadline. So what if I did not get the crossword puzzle done last night! And the talking book reader is still AWOL and I would so much rather deal with that and not try to read books on my phone if only to avoid the late night screen light. But than

 Somewhere close to SIX hours of sleep. I would have gone back to bed a second time but morning appointments beckoned. Cat, chair shadows My medicare supplement comes with an annual house call to discuss various concerns. Today's practitioner is a lovely guy from Kenya. We had a great "Yessss!" moment when I said "...hoping the idiot in the White house will retire soon...." Then he talked about his evangelical relatives in Kenya and I had my standard white person rants about abortion, taking care of the babies who are already born and oh by the way comprehensive sex ed... Then a video appointment. Now a bunch of to-do's beckon in email. Oh and I need actually to get rid of all the paper I cleaned off the table so visitor could use the table. Party!.

 A solid EIGHT hours of sleep.  It would have been better to start earlier, especially since TV was so unsatisfying. Ducking the sister fight that could have happened from my sister's gripes via text was a good idea, and going back to bed helped about both headache and grumpies. I also gathered up trash and if i am lucky will get it taken out before tomorrow's unspeakably early visit... Party on!

 Somewhere towards EIGHT hours of sleep. We celebrate official communication in largish print There is the part about waking up twice, oatmeal before 4 am, feed the cat, go back to bed until time to collect oneself before medical appointment. Medical appointment was basically good news to be written up elsewhere. It seems to be a good day for praiying and what can we indo better.  And in other news: double vision seems to be way worse than average. WTF? I mean it CAN be fun to see two dryers, two water bottles... and I don't get to drive anyway, but still.... And i need to go back to some back exercises because back is doing fine in the morning, but  that does not last. Wheeee.

SEVEN hours of sleep. 4+ hours after falling into bed exhausted from laundry and 3+ more hours  after a light breakfast and going back to bed at 4 am. Probably the post-time change body clock will not last but I am VERY glad to have had enough energy to get most of the laundry done. And we will not discuss the new preferred debit card in lieu of quarters regimen. I think I am going to request a separate debit card I can load and not risk weird machinations on my main account. Them I will decide ho much of a tirade to pen on behalf of all my neighbors who are completely unbanked. Or maybe. Maybe I will tell anyone who complains to contact people getting paid to solve the problem.        Two more tissue paper flower images. Happy #DayOfTheDead aagsas 

 Over SIX hours of sleep. 4.5 then breakfast Then 2+ more after breakfast and before worship. Tissue Paper Flowers Time change just meant more time to fuss with Sunday NYT Crossword Puzzle. I seem to have a persistent headache over right eye and other places. Going back to sleep was EASY. Sleep. No energy. Sleep some more. Question is it COVID or is the the other stuff I got a PET scan about. I do not even feel like wandering the internet with a search engine for either possibility.  RantWmom keekps wondering whether some kidney and heart stuff reflects her dance with COVID awhile ago. Uh, Mom you are turning 83 in a couple weeks. Could it just be...? Worship was meeting for remembering. Lots of people had people to remember. Some people lit candles. I made tissue paper flowers. candles are visually difficult for me. Plus thank you COVID going to look at the ofrendas at El Centro is probably not an option.  Special love and irritation for Service Python Friend who gets his own blog ent