Location or timing...

Pretty much all I have done since Sunday is sleep.  I mean, other than the FOUR hours I spent battling the wretchedness of having a chill.  [Dysautonomia stinks.]

Early morning I awoke so cold I was shivering.  My skin gets so very icy that if any of it touches another part of me, it makes the chill worse.  If the slightest bit of air touches my skin, the chill grows even worse.  And even though it is my skin that is icy, it feels as if the very core of me is frozen.

Frankly, I feel that Amos ought to put out more body heat than he does.  I wrapped myself around him, chilling him in the process, and gained little relief.  I put on several layers of clothes and socks and gloves to no avail.  Finally, I got out the electric blanket from the deacon's bench and cocooned myself inside on setting 10.

Yesterday, I slept until around 1:00-ish.  Took Amos outside for his business.  And then fell back asleep in the GREEN chair.  I woke three times, but essentially slept until 11:00 last night.  I was up for a short while and then back asleep until the chill set in.  Yes, I know that I have been grossly overdoing it.  But utter exhaustion has helped with the onslaught of nightmares and night terrors.

Oddly enough, when I fall asleep in the GREEN chair during the day/evening, I do not dream at all.  Is it location or timing???

The chair is not comfortable enough to sleep all night, else I would camp out there in the hopes of not having nightmares and night terrors.  I have thought about opening the couch and trying to sleep on the pull-out bed.  But to fetch the bedding, open it, and set it up is more work than I am interested in doing without knowing there would be a return on that investment of labor.

I napped again this afternoon, but have spent the evening working on a mass mailing.  It is the largest one I have done and so will take a few days.  Sometimes I like the monotony of folding, stuffing, sealing, labeling, and stickering because I can do so without thinking or feeling.  It is as if time stops or as if the whole world falls away and all that exists are the pieces of the mailing.  But my hands hurt after about an hour and three hours is the most I can do at a time now.  So, I do not like the reminder of my growing weakness.

I am an adherent of the Henry Ford model when it comes to mass mailings.  Instead of doing each piece one-by-one, I will fold everything, then stuff, then seal, then do one label, then the other label, and then the sticker.  Economy of motion and efficiency of labor has always been this lazy person's motto.  Whatever makes the job easier and quicker is my course of action.

I find it funny, then, when folk praise me for getting things done quickly or for being highly productive.  It is discomforting, truly, for me because the outcome really does stem from being incredibly lazy, from this deep dislike of wasting a single moment of labor if I do not have to do so.

In a way, that is why I have never really enjoyed team labor or team projects.  Inevitably, I end up doing the lion's share of work (especially on graduate school research projects with written outcomes) and the process is always strung out far longer than need be because of everyone wanting to have some sort of input so as to feel as if they helped, despite the fact that the actual labor of teamwork is rarely—if ever—equally borne by all members.

Two hundred pieces are now done.
Nearly four hundred to go.
Time for a nap before heading up to bed!