Writing, Working Out, and Late Nights

It’s another late night. Apparently I’m a glutton for punishment because I know how I’m going to feel in the morning. I also know that since I’m staying in town, I could be sleeping right now.

The day itself had its moments but nothing major. Got some work done. Had some cramps. Felt really exhausted all day, but that’s hormones and all that fun stuff.

After work, Jon and I stuck to our plan of going to the gym, but it was painful today. Still, we did 30 minutes and I felt accomplished.

I took Jon to gaming and I went to Hastings to meet up with a friend from work. I thought a caramel macchiato would perk me up. It did, but not by much.

I hung at the house for a bit, but came back out instead of logging some sleep. On top of that, in my infinite wisdom, I went back to the gym to kill time. It wasn’t as painful this time. Then again, the second workout had all the intensity of a stroll through the grocery store.

I had originally planned to try the Zombies Run app at the gym to see how it worked on both the treadmill and my regular machine. Unfortunately, I forgot my armband, so that wasn’t going to work…the app can’t track my movement if it isn’t actually on me.

Instead, I started watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I haven’t seen it in years, and I’m not sure I gave it enough attention when I did watch it. I do remember thinking it was sad. I was right on that. I’m not even halfway through and I’ve already cried a little bit.

I logged another 40 minutes, grabbed some dinner, and am now waiting for Jon to get done. Once we’re back to the house, he gets trash duty. I’m showering and getting to sleep on hopes of being fairly functional tomorrow.

A.

Ready to Crash

I’m not feeling up to a long post tonight, so it’s probably good that nothing exciting happened.

I hit Walgreens on my lunch to pick up a few things and tried an iced Starbucks coffee because it was on sale. I bought the low calorie kind. It was okay. Sucralose doesn’t hurt me like aspartame does, but I’m not a fan of the artificial sweetener taste, so next time it’ll be a regular one. If there is a next time.

I finished “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest” at the gym and started “Jackie Brown.”

I forgot to go to Goodwill.

We’re going to try frozen meal lunches for the rest of this week. Sandwiches aren’t cutting it.

I had plans to do all sorts of things, including watching Coursera videos and handling some things I’ve been procrastinating, but I’m tired, and all I want to do is shower and curl up with my eReader and read a good book. So that’s what I’m going to do.  But, so you don’t feel like this was an entire waste of a blog, here’s a classic video for you to watch.

A.

Overestimation and a Cut in Entertainment

I completely overestimated my endurance on Sunday.

As previously talked about, Saturday was really active as far as walking went.  I’ve been slowly building endurance, but I’m definitely not up to marathon walking. This is something I conveniently forgot when I decided that Sunday would be another “walk in the zoo” day.  I suppose it might not have been bad if we’d gotten out of the house earlier to do this. As it was, we stayed in the comfy house until after noon, enjoying the air conditioning and The Best Couch I’ve Ever Sat On. If those two reasons weren’t good enough, I had to finish “Sharknado” and then there were other movies to watch. Completely legit!

We then decided to have lunch before going to the zoo.  Delicious Mexican food. You know what makes walking less fun? A belly full of lunch. By the time we got to the zoo, it was midday, so while the heat wasn’t “that bad” at first, we were only shortly past the gates before we realized we may have made a mistake.

What frustrated me was that the day before, I’d walked around a whole zoo with just one rest break, and then 24 hours later I was so exhausted I couldn’t seem to remove my butt from a bench. It felt like a backslide to me. After conferring with my partner in crime and evaluating the situation, I realized that this wasn’t necessarily the case.

1. We did a TON of walking the day before, more than I’ve done yet, and so it was a given that I was going to be tired without a rest day.

2. None of the breaks had to do with back pain or knee pain or even foot pain. It was pain that was making me sit like it was 3ish months ago. This time, tt was just exhaustion and heat, plain and simple.

3. The heat, man. It seriously saps my energy.

We decided that near-future zoo walks will take place in the morning, before a huge meal is consumed, and not after a day where we’ve already logged several miles.  I say “near-future” because I don’t think that will be the case forever. I’m steadily increasing my walking endurance and my energy levels, and I think that in a few more months I will be able to walk long distances on consecutive days. But I don’t have super powers. I’m coming off of two years of limited mobility…this isn’t going to resolve itself in just a few weeks.

The day wasn’t a total waste. Some walking is better than no activity, even if it several breaks did happen. We got yelled at by a prairie dog and judged by a peacock. Jon made friends with a young Colobus monkey. As miserable as we were, we still had some fun.

Monday returned with a vengeance but its vengeance started on Sunday when we returned to the apartment to find that the post office sent Jon’s eBay items back to us instead of to their recipients.  In typical Amanda-anxiety fashion, I instantly assumed that they’d tell us it was our fault, that they’d charge us again for shipping and handling, that they’d stand over us in a black robe and judge us for doing something wrong (even though we did everything right). Turns out, all was well. They claimed it was their mistake and re-sent the packages today at no extra charge. Thanks, USPS!

Sadly, today we cancelled our GameFly membership. It’s nothing personal. We’ve enjoyed GameFly a lot, but we’re trying to cut some costs to get through the next semester, and this seemed one of the most obvious. Jon does a lot of PC gaming and we have some games at home that I can finish. For now, while we have a working XBox 360, we can take finished games and trade them in for new-to-us used games when the time comes.

I was feeling good about our very grown-up choice…until I went to actually cancel, and GameFly turned on the digital puppy dog eyes:

Are you sure you want to quit?

You won’t get all your perks!

Want to reconsider for a free month?

You have three days left for this month…don’t you want to use them?

You’re really going to cancel? Why? (to this I picked moving and traveling, because that’s partially true. I felt bad saying “Too expensive” because we don’t actually believe it’s too expensive in general, we just need to conserve money right now). 

We have a lot of shipping centers…please stay with us!

You’re going to leave? Well, okay. Make sure to *sniff* return your games in 7 days. 

Really?

Okay, then…

Good-bye…

…but click this link if you ever want to reactivate!

So I feel like I didn’t break up permanently with GameFly, but by the end of that ordeal, I kind of wanted to cry.

Adulthood is painful, my friends. Very painful.

A.

 

Sleep and the Lack Of

Today I’m suffering from a severe lack of sleep.

I go through bouts of insomnia, but the past few weeks had been okay. I’d gotten into a routine, I was falling asleep early and waking up feeling pretty refreshed. Then boom, last night, I couldn’t go to sleep. I was tired and my eyes were heavy, but once I shut off my book and tried to fall asleep, I couldn’t.

Once I did finally fall asleep, it wasn’t restful, and it was one of those sleeps where you don’t feel like you’re sleeping. You still feel conscious of where you are and what’s going on around you. At some point I did fall into a deeper sleep only to wake up in what felt like a few minutes later to realize I’d somehow turned my alarm off and was going to be late for work if I didn’t light a fire under my butt.

Today has been a weird blur of things. I know myself well enough to know that when I’m like this (because this isn’t the first time and I’m sure it won’t be the last), I need to stay far away from detailed tasks where I have the potential of making major mistakes. I’ve been keeping busy with the “fluff” and the tedious tasks that I can just do over and over again and not really have to think about.

When I’m this tired, I also go quickly between slap happy and monster rage.

My current plan is to go home, shower early, and just sort of doze off under my snuggy (yes, I have one; yes, it’s one of my favorite things ever). I want to take in some quality reading and knitting time, but some nights I find it therapeutic to just do nothing but stare at the TV for awhile, and since the most few nights have been dedicated to organizing and cleaning, I feel like I’m entitled for a night off.

I’m a little bit worried, though, that once I’m in relax mode, my brain will kick back into high gear again and I’ll be wide awake. And then what? Warm milk? A boring textbook? Melatonin? No matter, I’m going to stay positive about this. Even if I don’t fall asleep right away, being this tired means a deeper and better sleep when I do finally drift off. Which means that I’ll be better able to finish all my work tomorrow and then some.

It’ll also mean I won’t send crazy butt icons to friends through IM, nor will I lose my mind when buying yarn online. Again.

And while I realize caffeine late in the day isn’t going to help, I feel like this is a good opportunity to buy a Starbucks after work, just to perk me up enough to get home okay.