Switching Tracks

Sunset Tracks
Taken at Frankfurt Central Station
by Arne Hückelheim (Own work)
 CC-BY-SA-3.0  or GFDL
via Wikimedia Commons
This picture even has the right ambiance to reflect how this issue makes me feel.

In yesterday's ROW80 post which I just got posted a few minutes ago (as I write this line) I referred to my struggles with a mind that is always switching tracks.  As an example of what I'm up against nearly every day I'll give a partial play-by-play of the track switching for today, Thursday the 14th:

Having had only 4 hours of sleep before the 6am vid chat I went back to bed at 7am and slept ttill 10:30.  Was foggy headed for several hours after.  When I finally got into the kitchen to fix my breakfast tray I found my nephew occupying the area in front of the sink using the mirror to put in his contacts.  Could not do what I needed to so I went back to my desk to wait until the kitchen was clear.

Started working on wrapping up Wednesday's ROW80 post which I'd had to walk away from at 1am. After a few minutes work I was interrupted by Merlin wanting more food in his bowl tho there was still food in it.  He can't abide the horror of the empty spot in the middle.  This happens several times every day but I won't repeat it again in this rundown.

I was returning to work on ROW80 when my own stomach forcefully reminded me that it needed food and tea.  Which reminded me I was two hours late taking meds.  By the time I got back in the kitchen it was 11:30 and I decided I might as well just get lunch for me and Mom out of the way. I usually don't start it before 1pm.  Between having to hunt through a crowded fridge for items to inspire me and then selecting for the menu choice, making the soup and sandwiches and putting together the trays, putting away the food, working around my sister putting away a load of groceries she'd just brought home, cleaning up the mess, feeding Merlin his gushy tuna and mackerel and a fifteen minute search for the 8 to 10 vitamins I spilled out of the cup I'd just sorted them into, it was well after 1 before I served Mom's tray anyway.

My sister was reading Mom's email to her as she ate so I took my tray in to my desk and opened the ebook for Friday's blog tour review on the Blaze--am loving it as an ereader--I read steadily for half an hour or so as I ate and would have kept going or possibly returned to the ROW80 post if my sister had not come in to set up my Blaze and Aspire to pair with her spare set of Bluetooth ear buds.  That took nearly an hour.

Then, since the story had already been interrupted I thot I should get the ROW80 post up before returning to it now that my hands were free.  I had added a few sentences and was just getting focused on it when a nasty loud tone began sounding in my ear every five seconds.  Rushed to kitchen to let my sister hear and she then described it to her son and neither had every heard it before.  I checked both the Blaze and the Aspire for notifications but nothing.  So once it stopped about five minutes later I got back to work on this post.  For about ten more minutes.

That was just enough time for my focus to be engaged again when Mom called from the hall asking me to spray the essential oil solution my sister mixed for her shingles on her back.  As I was doing that in the bathroom my eyes caught the image in the mirror of my knit dress from yesterday still hanging on the hook with my robe and realized I was still in my PJs and if I were to get dressed at all it better be soon so I began to hunt out an outfit.

Which segued into an hour long project--sorting, folding, hanging and putting away clothes.  Some had come from the laundry, some had been worn only a few hours right after a shower so were fine to hang back up, some were coats that had been hanging on the rolling backpack before I took it to the library with me yesterday as related in yesterday's ROW80 post.  Still hadn't unloaded the books so didn't want to rehang the five coats on the extended handle again yet. Besides it hadn't been working as it kept falling over and becoming a trip hazard or the handle would collapse under the weight.  I put them back in the duffle I'd stored them in for the summer but in such a way I could easily get one out.  This also created a cushy bed for Merlin after I wrapped the duffle in his fleece blanket.  About that time my eyes fell on the Aspire's black screen and startled me into realizing I'd been away for over an hour.  So tho there were still more clothes to put away and still no outfit,  I abandoned the project of dressing to return to work on the ROW80 post.

For the next task for that I needed to do a Google search for an image reflecting birthday celebrations, and on the Google screen, open since Wednesday morning, I found that the Google Doodle itself was a birthday image.  Wondering who's birthday it was or had been I hovered for the title only to find it speaking directly to me.  So of course I had to take screenshots.  One with and one without the hover title naming me.  Inserted one in yesterday's post tho it didn't need any more images but it was the only day displaying it made any sense.

Once the image was uploaded I returned to composing the post and was just getting going good when a series of notification tones from the Blaze pulled me away and checking I found several messages from aps which had just tried to update only to find they were unable to install in the default location.  This had started happening Wednesday afternoon and was how I learned my on board memory was almost tapped out.  I was tempted to start trolling the ap list again looking for possible candidates for uninstalling to relieve a little of the pressure until I could figure out which aps and files I wanted to store on the SD card.  Very tempted but I resisted.

Back to work on the ROW80 post for five to fifteen minutes before my nephew came in to tell me dinner was ready.  Spent twenty minutes in the kitchen choosing my ingredients for my salad as my sister prepared it on my plate and choosing my dressing and putting it on.  Brought plate to desk and started working on ROW80 post until the Gmail tab blinking notified me that Ed was messaging.

Turned out his first message had come in twenty minutes earlier probably while I was in the kitchen but as another message came through I noticed I was hearing the notification tone from the Blaze but not hearing it from the Aspire through the Bluetooth ear buds but it didn't click with me until after we started the vid chat and I had no audio.  I switched to the the headphones and audio was back.  So somehow the Bluetooth was no longer connected to the Aspire.

To add insult to injury we were unable to get my image to show up for him and I spent the whole chat frantically looking for where I could check on the status of the web cam. Was it a computer issue or only a Google Talk issue?  So for most of the 'facetime' as we call it he had no face for me and I was covering his with My Computer screens.  Very frustrating.  And anxious making as now am worried the 6am vid chat will have the same issue.

After we said goodbye I kept trying to figure it out for another twenty minutes and was about to switch back to the ROW80 post when Mom called from the hall again needing another spray on her shingles. My sister arrived as we were finishing and I told her about the Bluetooth and Web Cam issues and she spent the next half hour trying to figure it out.  Not what she had on her agenda either.

While she sat at my desk working at it I had gone to hunt out my pills for the next 20 hours (dinner, breakfast, lunch) and reheat my dinner and then stood beside my desk eating as she tried everything she could think of.  She said we should let Levi figure it out.  But I said to just let it go for tonight as I still needed to get two posts up before I went to bed.

Yeah.  Right.  Like that's going to happen.  I knew as I said it that I was likely going to have to time stamp Thursday's post and head to bed and hope I could get it up within an hour of the morning vid chat and still get the review up by noon.

Can you hear the evil cackle?

This is what every one of my days have been like for weeks.  And I didn't even include everything as there was too much minutia, repetition and activities needing too much explanation.

As it turns out, as I did the final line edit on the ROW80 post, I found the last half really belonged to Thursday's post so I cut it and pasted in a fresh post.  It just needs an image and a good line edit which I expect I will leave for morning.

There will be  no going back to bed after the morning chat this time so I better hustle.  Already under 5 hours left.  At least I'm still in my PJs.

PS:  Friday 7:30am.  I ended up with only a 3 hour nap this morning.  But on the up side I'm about to click publish and it is, after all, still under an hour since our morning vid chat ended.  Which after discovering my image was still not showing up for Ed we switched to Skype which solved the Web Cam issue which means it was a Google Talk issue and I'd wasted a couple hours trying to fix it and 30-40 minutes of my sister's time and ruined our evening vid chat to boot.  *sigh*  Why did we not think of trying Skype last night?