Where's the Nap Attacks When You Need Them?

Excuse me but this is going to be a ramble and rant post as sleep deprivation has lowered my inhibitions as effectively as a double shot of Kaluha and Cream. I have just pulled my first wake-around-the-clock stunt since I got here almost two weeks ago. I guess it was bound to happen but it caught me by surprise. I didn't feel it coming. I'd been feeling pleased with myself for sticking fairly close to a wake up between 10 and 11 AM and asleep between 2 and 3AM schedule. Now I'm not only ticked at myself for blowing that schedule all to hello and back but I'm having the morning after regrets, wondering how it is I think I'm capable of managing a web-based business, a bookstore or a writing career let alone all three whether in some combination or consecutively when it takes me 2 to 6 hours to complete an online transaction involving money.

Last night I started a task that I expected would take me no longer than four hours tops and hopefully more like 2.5. I began at 10 PM. The task was to activate the pre-paid, reloadable card my husband sent me and then go spend some of it on Joann.com to take advantage of a 30% off sale on crochet thread, floss, and ribbon coupled with free shipping.. Scrapbooking supplies too but that's not my current craft, though it looks to be the kind I could love.

OK Joy get back on track. You don't need any more hobbies.

I was excited at the thought of getting to plug several more holes in my thread rainbow. I'd been waiting since February for another $5 flat rate shipping offer to land in my inbox. That was when I acquired 8 hard-to-find colors. I had been drooling over them for months but could not justify ordering them when the shipping costs would add anywhere from a third to a half again to the cost of each ball of thread. In February I got 8 balls at their regular price of 2.49 to 2.79 apiece for a total of a little less than $20 plus the $5 shipping fee that added only 62 cents to the cost of each ball. Before their standard shipping was $5 for the first $10 of product ordered then it jumped to $7 something when your order went over $10 and $10 when it went over $20 and so on and on. I rounded some of those numbers up or down because I can't remember them exactly just the approximate range.

This time I ordered 17 items (15 assorted crochet thread balls) and that $5 flat rate would have added only 29 cents to each item. But the day after I received the email announcing the $5 flat rate and after I had discovered the 30% off sale but before the prepaid card was delivered, another email from Joann.com announced FREE shipping and an extension of the sale that was supposed to end Wednesday through to Saturday. After finding that email I spent several hours fretting over whether the card would arrive in time. If the offers had not been extended then the card would have had to arrive that day and I would have had to activate it and compile my order by midnight. Which was in the realm of the improbably knowing my propensity to make 30 minute tasks into 300 minute tasks. But knowing the card was supposed to have gone in the mail Monday afternoon I had little hope that it would reach me by Wednesday afternoon anyway. Yet the card did arrive late Wednesday afternoon after all as Ed had sent it UPS but by then I'd seen the announcement of the extended deadline so I didn't rush to tend to it that night. I'm glad I wasn't up against that midnight deadline as I probably couldn't have made it. I found the card just before needing to start dinner prep and was not free to tend to it until after 8PM but I also need to tend to that day's post.

So on Thursday I made sure to get my post up in the afternoon and then had my night session after Mom went to bed to tend to the card and the order. See I had never taken care of either of these tasks completely by myself before. I always had my husband there to walk me through it, to direct my eyes to the right place on the screen, to explain the jargon, to dictate the strings of numbers and so forth. Because of my visual impairment these tasks are tedious and slow and most commercial websites do not consider the issues I have and how their page design might detract or enhance my experience in dealing with their company or product. If they did they wouldn't be using 6pt font in gray on cream or cream on chocolate Talk about the fine print. If they gave a care at all about my issues they wouldn't have their form pages time out in two minutes for security reasons so that I end up having to start over at the beginning over and over and over. I finally make it past page one and complete page two only to have it reject my submission and go back to page 1 because my session had timed out while I read the instructions and filled in the form. This happened multiple times on each page and there must have been at least 7 to 10 of them.

And each time I ended up back on page one I was socked in the eye with the 20 pt font shouting 'Congratulations and Thank you for choosing 'dippity doo da' card. You are just minutes away from enjoying the blippity blah blah bleh.'

So. See? They have noting against 20pt font. They're perfectly willing to use it when it doesn't even matter to the ease or integrity of doing business with them.

What slows me down the most is the need to keep changing the focus of my eyes between the screen, keyboard and whatever object has the info I need to copy. Finding the right spot on the screen to input the info is difficult and keeping track of it once I know the vicinity to aim my eyes is a challenge. Especially when I or someone else inadvertently cause the screen to scroll. Like a helpful kitty nudging my elbow as I'm navigating the page with the mouse. Because I use the page enlarge function of the browser I need to scroll sideways nearly as often as up and down.
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Well. I had to break off at 5:30 to prep and have dinner with Mom. I came back and sat down again about 7 only to notice the sound of the sprinkler going in the back yard still. I had set it at 2 and meant to turn it off at 4. When I got out back it looked at first like either I was seeing double or someone had set up a second sprinkler. But I finally figured out the second geyser of water was shooting straight up out of a slit in the hose and reaching the level of the windows on the upper floor. I had to walk through the spray to reach the spigot.

That was just one of the many things that happened to me today as a result of inattention. The inattention being the result of sleep deprivation which was due to my not laying down at all because I didn't get my order form successfully submitted at Joann.com until after Mom was awake and up after 7:30. Remember I started activating the prepaid card before 10 PM

Now Mom is asleep again already and I'm still up and can't lay down until I get a shower. Today was litter box duty up and down stairs...Don't ask. Suffice to say it was one of those things I alluded to above and I should have got a shower before starting dinner but Mom's stomach seems to be on a schedule so I just washed my hands up to my elbows and a few inches further and by 'washed' I mean something akin to what a surgeon does before entering the OR. Everything but hold my hands in the air and let the water drip off my elbows onto the floor.

When I started this post I had thought I'd talk about some of the things I ordered and maybe even filch a pic or two off Joann.com. I'm so excited about it. It's fifteen new colors, including four variegated and three different weights and texture of thread and there are two tools to aid in the bookmark making project as well. But that will have to wait. Maybe even until the day it arrives here in a week or so when I can take the pictures my own self. I am going to hit that shower now and after that I'm down for the count.