A call woke me up, at 7:15. It was my uncle. He was doing to drive to an exam, but his car wouldn't start. He helped me when my car wouldn't start a couple weeks ago, so this is quid pro quo. I had to help him, because of that, because he's my uncle, and because he needed help. But that ruined any chance of getting 4 1/2 hours of sleep, which I still consider the absolute minimum for me to operate with a modicum of normalcy and without passing out. I let out a very angry "SHIT!!!!" as I get dressed.
I figure I'd pick him up (he lives a mile away), go to this clinic (another mile) go back home and go back to sleep for the hour he says he'll need before I pick him up, stop by Wal-Mart to buy a new battery, and bring him back home. However, as I was coming home, I just so happen to see my aunt (she's my uncle's sister) walk towards home dragging her cart of dirty laundry behind her. Every Monday morning (at least these days) she comes over and does her laundry. While waiting for it to wash, she comes up to the dining room and turns on the TV -- loudly. So my heart sank when I saw her.
Fortunately, she did not wake me up because, about twenty minutes after I dropped my uncle off at the clinic and crawled into bed, he calls me again. The machine doesn't work, he'll have to come in tomorrow instead. I don't know if getting called back early is a good thing or a bad thing.
So after I pick him up and go to Wal-Mart and back to his place (and bring the battery up to the hood of his car -- his ticker's kind of weak) is over, I get back home at a little past 8:30. OK, they say that 90 minutes is the maximum amount of time you should take a nap for. I need a nap, I need shuteye, so maybe this will do.
Turns out Grandmother is awake when I get home. And if Grandmother's up, my aunt talks to her -- very loudly. She's already talking as if she has three beers in her when I ask her to quiet it down. I crawl into bed, and even though she is talking softer I could still hear her exhort. I want to send a message and I need it real damn quiet yesterday morning, so I get up out of bed, pop open the door and say, "Aunt! Please!" She's says "OK!" -- and she (and Grandmother) are pretty quiet until aunt leaves with her washed laundry.
I get one hour of sleep. It'll have to do. And I'm still kind of late leaving home for the U. I don't know why, but I no longer half-run, half-jog to the lab when I'm late. Maybe I'm tired, or maybe I just don't care to run/jog. If I don't, you figure I should get there earlier so I can walk to work, huh?
Anyway, I'm two, three minutes late to the lab. I don't see my supervisor. That's when one of his colleagues say he's not here. Family emergency. Ooh. Totally understand; he's right to blow me off. Nevertheless, I'm going to give him time this whole week. Which means I don't have any income coming in this week -- paying the speeding ticket my have to wait -- but I do have a lot of time now. I hope there won't be any miscommunication; to me, family emergencies to me mean I'll give him time and wait till he talks to me. I'm writing this four minutes before my scheduled session today, and I'm assuming he's cleared out his whole week.
(Observation: I had spent the last three days thinking about how my schedule this week is going to go. What happened this morning killed all of those plans. So much for planning, huh?)
I had two hours to kill yesterday. If you're not making money, you're spending money, because if you're not spending time working, you need to entertain yourself, and that takes money. I decide to eat at Chipotle because I haven't in months. I even splurge and get the chips and salsa. Bad idea to not specify I did not want the hot salsa. I spent about 30 minutes eating my fajita burrito and 90 minutes trying to deal with the salsa. I don't get why people want to each such spicy food. It's so overwhelming, at least to me, that you can't taste the food. It's all spice, no taste. Maybe my palette is weak, but eating too-hot food makes no sense to me.
I have to productive when my plans change, so I'm able to fill out some timesheets while I'm eating at Chipotle for two hours. But negotiating the salsa takes so long that I'm actually late for my afternoon "appointment": Helping my friend move stuff to his storage unit. So I run across campus, go into a building, take a shit (God bless Chipotle) then run to my car and call and tell my friend I'm late, so sorry. I love my friend because he doesn't mind.
I get there about 2, 30-45 minutes after I promised him I would. Fortunately, he's ready; all we have to do is get haul the stuff down to the car and take them to the storage unit. We were even able to squeeze in a quick trip to the library so he could donate some books.
I had to leave my friend to get back home in time for another appointment, this time one without quotation marks: A bi-monthly meeting with Grandmother's nurse. I told you guys in my last blog post about getting angry that Grandmother keeps forgetting to take her insulin shots and that I was going to tell the nurse that. I did so, and it took about a half-hour of her time, even though I got home at, I think, 3:26 and she was already there. Felt good venting, but I'm still sure Grandmother's going to forget to take her meds, even after we decided to pour all the bottles for each of the medications she needs to take into one bottle so as not to confuse her.
After the nurse left I still had more shit to do. You see, even though I was busy and tired, I still wanted to exercise tonight. Plus, I have to catch up on my writing. And, I needed to recharge my cellphone, and I didn't want to recharge it at home; I want my parents not to pay the electricity for it.
Which means the rest of my afternoon is set up like this: I would go to Target to buy some Gatorade. I am on this G Series kick, where I drink the "Prime" drink while going to the gym, drink the "Perform" one while exercising, then drink the "Recover" drink afterward. Five bucks at Target, total. (Oh, and I buy milk in anticipation of purchasing Sweet Martha's Cookies at the State Fair -- hmmm, cookies and milk. Oh, and I might as well buy bandages for Grandmother's blood sugar tests.) Then I go to Walgreen's to pick up medicine for Father -- and I might as well pick up alcohol wipes for Grandmother's blood sugar tests too, except they didn't have any. Finally, I go the coffeeshop to finally look at the Internet and recharge my phone. The luxury of my parents not coming home at a decent hour these days is that I can stay there as long as I like and not have to worry about them calling me about when I'm coming home. So I sit and surf while my phone recharges.
One thing I've kept in mind: I still have creamer left from when I was working as a test scorer.
They're sitting in the refrigerator at home, not used in weeks. Well, I can't bring it with me anywhere, but when am I going to use it? I figured I would buy coffee and bring it home. Today would have been a good time for it, but I wanted to recharge my phone away from home. So I compromise: I'll drink one cup (in my tall reusable mug) there, then get a refill, bring it home, then use my creamer and drink it at home, presumably while continuing to write. I might piss a storm and my heart my beat out of my chest, but hey, the creamer's getting old.
Not ten minutes after I get home and start stirring the creamer into the coffee, Father calls. They're going to be very late, again, and they want me to buy chicken at the local grocery store. There's a sale going on: You can get two 8-piece boxes for five bucks apiece. At this point it's half past 6. I want to start exercising at 8. It's going to be tight.
Little did I know that everybody was buying these chickens. There was a waiting list. I waited about a half-hour. Hate waiting at a grocery store. But I at least had this surprising run-in with a friend from high school I haven't seen since New Year's Eve. His company moved his place of work up to closer to where I live, and he was getting groceries. Good to see him, even though I had very little to say because I was waiting for chicken.
It was 7:30 when I got home with dinner. I wanted to leave, but I figure it would be too weird if I didn't eat something. Besides, the chicken's good. So I have one thing with a little bit of rice. Ten minutes later they come home and ask me to look over some things. Before I know it it's 8.
I get dressed for working out at 8:30. Not ideal. But the reason I planned on working out tonight because I had the last of a bunch of ten tickets I purchased in bulk at this community center (not the one I usually go to) about 14 months ago, and I had my heart set on using it before the summer was over. Maybe I should've saved it for a time when I could put two hours of work in, but I was in a daze since 7:15 in the morning, so what the fuck. I did create a sweat on the elliptical; that'll have to do.
One other reason I wanted to go to this place: There's a bar nearby, and I wanted a beer after working out. It's not as racist as I thought it was a few months ago when I braved going in. In fact, the bartender told me not to be a stranger, so I figured I'd oblige him (her?) by coming in before the summer's gone. He/She wasn't there, but I had a beer anyway. So, if you can recall, this is what I drank since 5 last evening: Two large cups of coffee, a glass of water (with the chicken dinner), the three different types of Gatorade, and a beer. No wonder I had to go to the bathroom twice during my time at the gym. And no wonder why my stomach's still so big right now.
As you could tell, I was so fucking tired I fell asleep at 1. Wanted to take a shower, but was too tired.
That's it.
Alright, let's do it!
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