dis/continuity

[kaberett]

I have been missing my grandmother a lot, the last week or so, as I've been working through a bag of plums from the allotment. We've had cobbler and crumble (and indeed at the moment I've got a bag of apples from my mother's garden stewing on the hob, to go into jars tomorrow), but apparently I associate "baked plum desserts" with Mama, and consequently I've been wisting after plums halved, stones left in for flavour, across the bottom of a rectangular Pyrex dish, with some lemon juice and spices, and a single layer of pastry over the top.

I've just also been too tired and worn thin to make the pastry.

I find myself trapped in something of an exhaustion spiral. I'm resenting how much I need to sleep, and how little it means I get done, so I'm arranging my days around not napping, which gives me more time but less energy such that I'm not really actually getting much more done (well, except for the things that want to sit and wait for a while once they've started), so then I stay up "late" to Just Do One More Thing because I can't face 8 o'clock bedtimes and the insomnia would probably interfere anyway, and then I'm too tired to do much, so...

... I did at least take a nap this afternoon, for an hour or so, and I am at least spotting what's going on; in a spirit of accountability, I note here that I am not going to go into work tomorrow: I'm going to stay at home, and sleep, and maybe go rummage around in some plants, and read a novel, and try to rest.

The link, such as it is, is that my mother has been remarking with some degree of envy or intimidation about the number of Fo-ish -- Mama-ish -- things I do: the bread the gardening the marmalade the cakes. On the one hand, I'm bleakly aware that I'm not doing half so much of it as I'd like, or indeed as Mama did, and it's still more, really, than I can manage; on the other, I am trying to remind myself that Mama also routinely took siestas in her latter years.

Round and round we go. I'm being somewhat difficult to live with at the moment. Here's hoping that the sleep helps.

Comments

[recessional]

It is perhaps time to gently suggest to your inner resentment that it needs to go sit alone until it calms down, and schedule some specific catnaps on the basis that it sounds like enforcing some catnaps might actually get you more VIABLE awake-time than what's happening now. <3

[azurelunatic]

Sleep is good.

[lunabee34]

*hugs*

[jesse_the_k]

Sending you deeeeeeeep sleeep.

[fyreharper]

<3

[sporky_rat]

I wish for you the most restorative sleep and napping you can get while still getting your data.

[me_and]

I've just also been too tired and worn thin to make the pastry.

I know it's not the same, but would you like me to pick up some pastry rolls?

[sfred]

*sympathy*
<3

[vass]

<3

[ludy]

Wishing you restful sleep and enough energy for good things

[aldabra]

I think people-in-retrospect do a *lot* more than people-day-to-day, and also that there's an objective/subjective thing going on. I think you do *loads*, and I've had people tell me how I do *loads* when what I was actually doing was staying in bed all day playing Civ. There's something very odd about perspective on this which I haven't got a handle on yet.

There's also something political. Did Mama have a three hour round trip to work *at the same time* that she was doing the gardening and baking? Did she have to go through lots of electronic menus and stay on hold for twenty minutes to find out whether something was wrong with her electricity bill? There are different demands on focus.