A Non-Productive Week

This week has been a total waste thanks to my SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), despite keeping up on my Vitamin D supplements. The weather has been dark and overcast, alternating between rain and snow with all other types of precipitation in between. I've been sleeping between twelve and seventeen hours a day.

When I am awake, I've got a load of household chores staked up thanks to the cataract surgeries. I'm slowly wrapping holiday packages and sending them out to friends and family. And putting things back in order now that GK and Grandpuppy are back home in Texas again.

Once this weekend's storm is over, I need to start setting my alarm and going to the local Starbucks in the mornings to write. It may mean sleeping the rest of the afternoon away, but it would let me be a little more productive.

I hope.

In the meantime, play it safe this weekend, folks. Stay home and stay warm while Winter Storm Gerri roars through the country. Few things are important enough to put your life and the lives of the first responders in danger.

Instead, make your favorite hot beverage, cuddle with your loved ones and/or furbabies, and watch something awesome. In our case, it will be the NFL payoff games.

Assuming I can stay awake.

Too Much Peopling

I took DH to his eye doctor appointment early this morning. We picked up breakfast on the way home. The pups and I shared two McMuffins "with 'Murican bacon!"1

I thought I'd get a ton of stuff done today since I was up at a reasonable time. Instead, the pups and I fell asleep. The pups until they had to pee. Me until eight p.m.

Yep, I slept the day away. *groan*

I think most of it was collective exhaustion. I've been running around to numerous doctors' appointments for the last month. Dropping off cars for maintenance and repairs and picking them up. Throw in family get-togethers once everyone was over their Christmas colds while the kids are still home for the holidays. And now that my eyes have healed enough, I've been FINALLY wrapping and delivering or shipping presents.

And it doesn't help that I've been trying to cut back on caffeine.

But I think my introverted self is developing a lower tolerance for being around people. These are people I like for crying out loud, not people I can't tolerate. I mean we had brunch with friends who may go out to Vegas with us for renewing our vows.

But tonight, it's just DH, GK, and me, and the guys were hungry by the time I woke up. So, we splurged tonight and got some pizza before we kicked back and watched a couple of episodes of Jeopardy. The guys are now playing PC games while I go through my snail mail and email.

And then, I'll definitely get some writing done. LOL

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1 The kids working at our local McDonald's get a kick out of me ordering an Egg McMuffin and telling them to substitute the Canadian bacon this way. I'm not a fan of smoked pork chop on my breakfast sandwich.

Blessed Sleep

After getting up early through the weekend to talk to the artist in Bulgaria who's working on the special Justice project and early medical appointments the last two days, I crashed hard last night. Bella and Blaze even cooperated. No bark-laden roughhousing occurred until after I got up.

Twelve and a half hours of solid sleep did me good. Now, if I can stick to my current schedule...

It should be possible with Genius Kid used to being on day shift at his new shop.

I got the notice from the USPS that the first boxes have arrived to their backers. Yay! Next step is to format and print out labels for the remaining boxes. Unfortunately, I may have to do that late at night. Otherwise, I have two furry helpers climbing on kitchen chairs and volunteering their assistance.

Nope, the kitchen table wasn't the safe space I thought it would be. I really need to get my desk cleaned off before the next Kickstarter so I have some decent work space, and I can close the door.

PSL Season Is Here!

I didn't post last Friday or yesterday because I've been sleeping. Our household is trying to adjust to a new normal. DH was at his father's apartment quite a bit before FIL passed in May. Now, DH finds himself with plenty of time on his hands and wants to spend it with me.

Which is totally fine. But I've got to write. Which means I often have to wait until he goes to bed before I have enough peace and quiet so I can work. And then I have to be up at normal people time for doctor's appointments or to talk with the landscaper or take Princess Bella in to have her hair and nails done.

So when I have a chance to sleep, I'm not waking up until six or seven in the evening. Which means DH and Princess Bella are both so excited to see me.

And we start all over again.

Thank the gods it's PSL season! I'm going to need it for the rest of this week!

Sleep Adjustment

My sleep is all over the place lately, but last night, I was tired enough to go to bed at the same time as DH. We'll see if I can continue the trend through this weekend. I need to be back on a day person's schedule for the next three months because it's that time again.

Yep. It's cancer check-up time.

Ugh.

Year Four of this shit. One more year to go. Provided something doesn't show up on my scans.

People think I'm being political when it comes to wearing a mask. Nope. I haven't gone through all this cancer crap to die from the common cold's ugly cousin. I've lost friendships because I don't want to die.

*Sigh*

Let's see if I can get some words in before I accidentally take a nap.

Coronavirus Pandemic Day 47 - Stress and Sleep Disruption

I've had problems with my sleep patterns since I hit puberty. With the onset of menopause symptoms, I haven't had insomnia for the last few years.

Until now.

Everyone's feeling the stress of the pandemic and the stay-at-home orders. It doesn't help when people's loved one's are dying, and we can't be with them. The known death toll in the U.S. jumped from 40K a week ago to 56K when I woke up this afternoon.

As I said is a previous post, I'm sure I'm picking up on my neighbors' anxiety. I tried CBD and melatonin to try to get back in a regular sleep cycle to no effect. So over the weekend, I tried what I call a hard reset. I'd stay up an extra four hours starting Thursday night. Back when I worked in corporate America, I'd have to take a vacation day to do this.

It was working until yesterday. I should have gone to bed about six p.m. after waking up at midnight. But I'd gotten caught up in The Martian. Then DH wanted to get a shower. So I watched a recorded episode of Scorpion. I finally went to bed about ten p.m.

And woke up at two p.m. this afternoon.

Well, shit.

I'm not trying this again for a while. It's hard on my blood sugars. I need to go back with the flow and not worry about my sleep pattern so much. Or try not to worry.

It would just be nice to have something feel normal in this crazy ass world.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

I just woke up at 1 p.m. EDT, and the only reason I'm awake is because DH came in to get me up.

My sleep cycles were finally getting back into a "normal" pattern after Groundhog Day, then came the damn cold virus. I didn't worry about my sleep patterns because sleep and lots of fluids are what's needed in that situation.

But now, I reasonably healthy again. DH and I are back to walking every evening. And my sleep is still screwed up.

I haven't had to do a reset in five years, but it looks like it's time to consider it. What's a reset? I go to bed a little later each day until I'm back to going to bed at my normal time. I just have to make sure I have no daytime appointments over the couple of weeks I need to do it right.

I could do a hard reset over a weekend, but I'm getting too old to stay awake 36 hours straight. Often the stress leads to getting sick. That's unacceptable when I'm trying to finish my next two releases.

On the plus side, being self-employed makes a longer reset so much easier than when I was employed by a third party. I lost a bit vacation time by sleeping through it to rest my internal clock.

More Lessons Learned and a New Distributor

Today's late post is brought to you by the luxury called SLEEP.

After this week's rampage of personal/family issues and trying to get Alter Ego's latest book uploaded, I slept nearly twelve hours, woken briefly by the thunderstorm that rolled through this morning. So, FIRST LESSON, make sure you get enough rest!

(You'd think that would be obvious, right?)

I've been trying out a new distributor Draft2Digital. One of the things I love about D2D is that I can upload my own EPUB file (something Smashwords' Mark Coker had been promising for over a year and only recently delivered). They charge a hair more for distribution, but it's worth the price for direct deposit to my checking account and to avoid dealing with the misogynistic owner of PayPal. (To me anyway. You need to be looking at your own financial goals.) SECOND LESSON learned, keep your options open when looking at e-book distributors.

The only issue I've had so far with D2D is that they use EPUBCheck 3.0 and my WORD files could not convert cleanly. This meant learning HTML coding.

AAGH! NO!

Not that I was afraid, but it'd been seventeen years since I had to learn a new programming language.

Okay, I was afraid my skills had rusted out completely.

The lovely Jaye Manus helped me out by suggesting NotePad++ for my HTML editor (it's freeware!). It took a few tries and missteps, but I FINALLY produced a file that could pass EPUB Check! THIRD LESSON learned, nothing is ever as bad as I fear it's going to be.

So in conclusion:

1) Sleep = Good
2) D2D = Excellent
3) NotePad++ = Good
4) HTML coding = hairpulling, but doable

5) Hiring Jaye to do my conversions next time = PRICELESS!