Yet Another Journal

Nostalgia, DVDs, old movies, television, OTR, fandom, good news and bad, picks, pans,
cute budgie stories, cute terrier stories, and anything else I can think of.


 Contact me at theyoungfamily (at) earthlink (dot) net

. . . . .
. . . . .  

 
 
» Thursday, February 19, 2004
Getting With the Program
Sorry for the gap in entries; I'm having a little problem getting adjusted to a new schedule.

It's not my new schedule, actually, it's James'. The Powers That Be at work abruptly changed his hours in midweek to 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Of course since I have to be up at six this plays hob with our schedule. The most obvious thing to do, of course, would be grin and bear it, see each other for a couple of hours each night and eat on our own, and then have me drag up to bed at eleven leaving him downstairs for another couple of hours until he's sleepy.

Linda doesn't want to play that game. She didn't get married to eat supper alone, and, honestly, she really hates cooking anyway. The game plan goes thus: I get home, unwind a little by reading a few e-mails, and maybe a newsgroup or two, and then go upstairs and sleep for a couple of hours.

Since Bandit isn't around to keep company any longer, this should be easier than it looks. Willow greets me happily enough, but Daddy is her real god and she spends all the time from when I get home to when James gets home either in her crate or waiting by the door, so I have no compunction to keep her company. I am always dead tired when I get home anyway. The combination of an afternoon of purchase orders marinated in fluorescent lights burning my eyeballs out and an average hour commute on the freeway and by the time I get home I'm about half dead on my feet anyway. There were many days before Bandit got ill that I came home, crawled in some not-dark-enough place, and fell asleep until James got home. This stopped when I realized Budgelet didn't have much time left and I wanted to spend as many hours with him as I could.

Add this to the fact that I've always hated going to bed early (and to me eleven p.m. is early). Where I'm drooping at six, I'm positively effervescent at eleven; the "night person" genes I exhibited as a baby are still in force.

The one obstacle to my getting some sleep in the early evening has nothing to do with tiredness or previous obligations: it's my dratted stomach. By the time I get home from work I'm hungry enough to eat the hind end off the dog. I've been counseled by various friends and even the doctor about this and the annoyance still occurs.

I'm trying to lose weight with less than spectacular success. I know giving up carbs will help, but those carbs are one of the few things that don't make my stomach sick. Even on the Protonix, I have trouble digesting raw vegetables, which of course are the only kind I like. Everything gives me gas or comes up on me, including bananas, cantaloupe, apples, and my favorite, watermelon. I can't eat popcorn because it gives me the runs (and comes up on me, too). I can stand cheese only in very specific situations, which usually includes them with carbs.

(Yes, the cause is being investigated. After the preliminary finding, I daresay I'm not going to like the final result.)

I thought I'd found a respite. I'd discussed the problem with the doctor last month and agreed with her that the five or six mini-Chips Ahoy I was munching on the way home, while it helped quiet my roiling stomach, was not doing my hipline or my blood sugar count any good. Now I chew gum on the way home (which is at least no-fat) and at home had begun soothing my growling tummy with her suggestion, nuts. And since I hate dry-roasted nuts and didn't want to eat oily, salty canned nuts, I decided a good alternative would be filberts (hazelnuts, as Harry's calls 'em). I love filberts, they're not as fattening as other nuts I like, such as cashews, and I can get them in shell without being roasted.

Unfortunately when I went to Harry's Sunday they were all out of filberts. Sometimes I feel like I'm banging my head against the wall. [rant] Harry's is pretty much a dead loss since Whole Foods took them over. Their Granny Smith apples are mealy and taste too much like Delicious apples, which I loathe. They quit having fresh salad greens and went to bagged. I brought the bagged to a Thanksgiving gathering and it only took one bite to figure out why no one ate the damn stuff: it was limp, sour, and unappetizing. It's like pulling teeth to find peas in the pod, they've truncated the deli, the French bread is either overdone or underdone, and they seem to be catering to a clueless Yuppie crowd who didn't grow up with an Italian grandfather with an endless vegetable garden and who wouldn't know a fresh vegetable if it jumped up and kissed them. [end rant]

So Tuesday night I couldn't fall asleep properly because my stomach was growling. Last night I tried warmed milk and a granola bar. Not only was I still hungry, but skim milk has the same effect on me that beer does to guys. Not condusive to sleep at all.

As I remember, Eckerd's has Fig Newtons on sale, so I may stop by there tonight to get a bag. It's a cookie, but it's a lower calorie cookie than most of the others out there, it has fruit in it, and it sits well on my tyrant tummy.

Gah. Who would have thought you could have so much trouble falling asleep when during the day you're so sleepy you could pillow yourself on your desk blotter and go right out?