I Only Wish It Were This Easy

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I had to laugh aloud when I saw this one. I occasionally say this about myself but this isn't quiet what I mean. Tho I do remember a time as a pre-teen when I thought putting a book under my pillow helped me do better on the test the next day. Or, in the case of a novel, even finish the story in my dreams.

I'm still recovering from the read-a-thon; or more specifically from the 43hrs I was awake. Still haven't had a good catch-up sleep. Slept a little over six hour Sunday and a little over six again this morning. I probably could have slept more on Sunday but chose to get up and spend the afternoon with my husband on his only day off this week.

Ed had gotten me a pre-paid Visa card to combine with an Amazon.com gift certificate in order to qualify for the free shipping. And the plan was for him to teach me how to use the card and gift certificate and make the orders. He could have done it for me as he has done similar things on other occasions. It would have taken him all of fifteen minutes to registar the pre-paid card, register a new account on Amazon make the selections off my list and apply the gift certificate and pre-paid card at the checkout. But the hope is that the ninety minutes or more he took to walk me through each step may save him dozens of those fiftenn minutes in the future.

The reason it takes me so long to learn a new task on the computer or Net is the combination of me visual impairment with my anxiety disorder. The RP aka Tunnel Vision limits me to seeing only two or three words and/or icons at once. It takes time for me to scan a new web site screen to learn where the relevant text and input forms and etc are. I tend to loose track of the cursor. My tendency to become anxious in new situations makes it hard to concentrate and stay focused on the task. My obsessive need to check and recheck my entries into the forms would try the patience of Buddha himself. And we won't even talk about my mini-panic attacks when I click submit and it comes back with an error message.

So now I have an Amazon.com account. I spent several hours goofing around on Amazon after completing the order. I learned how to create a wishlist. I only managed to put in a few items before I made myself quit so I could get my Sunday post up and go to bed. But what fun!

This morning I got up the first time I woke up because I had DVDs due at the library today and meant to try to watch two before Ed got home from work. I was pleasantly surprized and amazed to find three of the four DVD renewing for me. Only Love In the Time of Cholera did not and I knew for sure that it would not because I knew there was a queue behind me of at least 15 last week. So I started watching it at 11, paused it at noon to listen to Marianne Williamson on Oprah and Friends XM, went back to the movie at 1PM and it finished at a bit after 2. Ed got home as the last of the titles were scrolling off the screen. I had hoped to go to the library myself but I knew Ed would prefer to just get it done so he could kick back for the rest of the day. So I didn't make him wait for me to shower and etc. an inescapable necessity given that I'd spent most of the noon hour on the mini-tramp.

Since I didn't have to go out, I put off the shower since I hoped to get back on the mini-tramp again this evening. My time on it at noon wasn't an aerobic workout just a gentle limbering and balance training. After dinner I put in another movie and got on the tramp as it started. This time it was Akeelah and the Bee. I surprised myself by staying on the tramp for 72 minutes. Mostly it was still the gentle swaying and flexing etc but everytime the soundtrack went into music with a faster beat I began to move with it and sustain the faster pace for as long as the soundtrack did.

This was huge improvement for a week ago yesterday--the day Ed bought and assembled it for me. The first two days I could only manage three to five minutes at a time. I made up for the short intervals by getting on frequently those two days. The Tuesday through Thursday I had worked up to fifteen to twenty minutes at a time and did two sessions per day. On Friday afternoon I managed my first over thirty minute session but then on Friday evening I stepped on the rim as I was mounting and the tramp tilted and threw me off. Though I got back on for short sessions several times that evening, I had bruised my confidence.

The tramp was a major factor in helping me thrive thoughout the 24 hours of the Read-a-thon Saturday in spite of having managed to set myself up for failure by not sleeping the night before. I got on it so many times during those 24 hours I lost count. I was flagging seriously around 8PM Saturday and did a 45 minute workout with over fifteen minutes being aerobic. I used the time to contemplate the story I'd just read and prepare to write my comentary on it. I don't know how much credit to give the tramp and how much the energy drink I was sipping away at during and after that stint on it but I didn't flag again before 5AM. In fact I didn't get sleepy until after 6AM.

One of the books I ordered on Amazon yesterday was The Story of Edgar Sawtelle. I had actually gotten in queue for it at the library the day before Oprah announced it as the next Book Club selection because I'd stumbled on a blog that was speculating about it and it was one of several favored as highly likely to be IT. I read a couple of reviews about it and decided I wanted it whether it was Oprah's selection or not. So I went to order it and found myself 45th in line for about fifteen copies. By the next evening there were about forty more behind me. So that week I began to plan to spend an Amazon gift certificate I'd gotten for reviewing a writer's community site here on that book. When checking it out at Amazon that week though I discovered that if I added another five dollars to the amount of the gift certificate I could have an extra book or two instead of paying for shipping. So I waited to place my order until Ed could swing the pre-paid card.

Now here is a bit of irony. One of the books Ed brought back from the library today was...... drumrollllllll.....

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle.

Now I have to decide whether to go ahead and start it while I'm waiting for my copy to arrive. Or let it go back so the next in line can have their turn. The latter seems the most gracious choice. Considering that there is less than two week before NaNo starts and I still have so much prep still to do if I want the first week of NaNo to be all about writing the story(s), then my choice is obvious. And I also hung onto a book novel that was due today that I'm in the middle of--the one I set aside Saturday morning in order to devote the read-a-thon to short stories as planned. So you could say I am renting that book for twenty cents a day and it could take me three to five days to finish it. Another good reason to let The Story of Edgar Sawtelle go.

Ed also brought back four more DVDs we'd been in queue for at the library. One of them is the six hour Stephen King miniseries, The Storm of the Century. One is The Golden Compass and another is The Aviator.

Choices. Choice. Choices.