written on Saturday, Apr. 26, 2003 at 7:37 a.m.
When I was a kid, I had all sorts of order imposed on my life. I always had a set bed-time. It was a little later on weekends and vacations, but still pretty close to the same time every night. And of course school happened at the same time everyday. I got up at 6 am and got home at 3:30 pm.
Then there were the meals. Always a home cooked breakfast every morning, always lunch at school and always home cooked dinner every evening. Balanced, if not "healthy" meals, served at regular intervals.
A clean house, too. My parents spoiled me by not really giving me any chores. Once in a while I'd be forced to do something, like dust the living room or clean the bathroom, but for the most part my parents believed I had cleaning incompetence and didn't really make me do much. I didn't really even have to keep my bedroom clean. For part of my life, my bedroom was too small to really get messy. If anything was in the floor, you couldn't get out of the room. When I moved to a bigger room, once a month or so mom would get fed up with the mess and either A.) clean it herself or B.) make me do it. Despite that, though, she kept the rest of the house clean, laundry was always done, dishes were washed. The house was orderly.
[On another tangent, I always believed when I became an adult, I'd become clean. I haven't. Maybe it's going through childbirth that causes it? Hmmmm.]
My life now has a total LACK of order, and I think it's making me slowly implode. Since I work swing shifts, I could go in to work as early as 7:30 am and get off as late as 10 pm. There's no rhyme or reason to it. I have to wake up at 6 am everyday to take Boy to work, irregardless of when I get off. My solution is usually to come home and nap on days I don't go to work early, nap even longer on days off, and go to work on 2-3 hours of sleep when I have a day shift. I'm walking around in a constant state of exhausted sleep deprivation, and suffer miserable bouts of insomnia some nights.
Food? Ha! I always have some kind of breakfast and pack some kind of lunch on work days. Depending on what time I get off, I might have a regular dinner or I might just nibble on crap til bedtime. Sometimes on days off, we sleep late, have perhaps one actual meal, and nibble on crap all day. This, of course, makes it difficult to lose weight. And from times I HAVE eaten better, I know it's a source of a lot of my lethargy.
And the clean factor? Yeesh. Boy and I are both clutter-bugs. We can turn a spotlessly clean room into a pile of books, movies, junk mail and pop cans in record time. We put off doing laundry and simply handwash a few things when absolutely necessary. Dishes usually get washed at fairly regular intervals, although it's not unheard of to wait until there's no clean plates/cups/forks/whatever. I don't know that this impacts my daily life all that much, but it can be a mental suck to sit around and know I SHOULD be cleaning/doing laundry/etc.
I thought about all this last night as I was trying to fall asleep. I watched the hours tick by... 5 hours of sleep, 4 hours of sleep, 3 1/2 hours of sleep, 3 hours of sleep... and knew today was going to be a long, miserable day because I'll be so tired.
I think the root of it all is the swing shifts at work. I am a difficult sleeper, and not being on something that at least resembles a regular schedule throws me all out of whack. Where Boy can nap a few hours, sleep a few hours and feel fine, I can't. If I nap, I can't fall asleep at night. And if I DON'T nap, on nights I close I can't get enough sleep.
This constant state of sleep defecit affects everything else. I'm too tired to do anything besides work, which of course makes it difficult to clean and cook real meals.
Unfortunately, identifying the problem does not a solution make. My bosses have made it clear that no one can restrict themselves to day shifts only. {Although one kid that got hired two months after me has somehow magically managed to do this.} They have no sympathy for me, since they, too work swing shifts. What they don't understand is that even if I don't come to work until 3 pm, I still have to get up at 6 am to take Boy to work. They KNOW this, but I don't think they consider how difficult it is in practice.
I'm desperate for some kind of routine. Order. I don't need my life to be completely set by the clock, but this is ridiculous.
If any of you retail workers have successfully dealt with this, please let me know how. I beg of you.
Love,
