Managing and managing and managing...

The house smelled like an Indian food restaurant when I came down the stairs this morning.  So, it is not merely for the incredible flavor that I shall be sticking with that particular brand of yellow curry paste next time I need to purchase it.  I cannot wait to have the next serving of the Coconut Chicken Curry!  Mmmmm!!

Two things that niggle at me ... worry me ... both have to do with ways I manage my life, my illness, living alone.  The first is that I really do worry a bit about just how much food and supplies I have in the house, since I tend to buy multiples of things that are on sale.  Buy two, get one free?  Three if not six pop into my cart.  So, the shelves in the basement that originally I utilized primarily for when there was a renter in the basement living space are now completely full of food and household goods.  I find it a bit shocking when I walk downstairs sometimes and wonder if others might think me addled for having so much goods on hand when it is just me (and Amos) in the house.

However, the other day I prepared dinner for my neighbor, who was hankering for corn dogs.  Having discovered the State Fair brand (on sale, of course) to be rather tasty and a breeze to crisp up in the oven, I happily obliged her.  When I realized I was nearly out of ketchup, I did not panic.  You see, this July, Target had a buy two, get one free sale on condiments.  I have plenty of ketchup and my beloved yellow mustard on hand.

And, today, I went to wash the dishes and discovered that my dishwashing soap dispenser was empty.  Again ... no panic.  I trotted downstairs to the top shelf (where all cleaning and paper goods are housed) and fetched another bottle of my most favorite lavender scented, no-dye soap.  Eons ago, I found the soap in two-packs that were on sale for the price of one.  I promptly bought all three two-packs on the store shelf, getting six bottles of soap for the price of three.  That is a lot of soap, but I have not had to worry about fetching it in ... well, eons.  I am half-way through my soap hoard.

Despite how ... disturbing ... it is for me at times to take a gander at my stash, I really do like the ease of simply fetching what I need.  And, again like today, when I fetch the last of something (La Costena refried black beans) I put it on the shopping list in my most FAVORITE app (Awesome Note, which I use for organizing all sorts of information that I want to remember).

The other managing thing that I do that bothers me ... makes me worry that folk might think I am losing it ... is that I have a process, procedure, and/or place for everything in my household and for all of my chores.  For example, my spices and herbs are all organized in a way that makes sense to me.  When Becky was here, she, understandably, put a few jars back in the wrong place.  That left me hunting all around for them and pulling bottle after bottle down and putting them back up.  It is hard for me to remember what I just did, so I would pull the same bottle down several times.  I ended up emptying the shelves and putting them all back, one at a time, where I am used to each one being.

And, well, there was the whole incident with folding the blanket the wrong direction ... not in the same orientation as the bench so as to ensure it remaining on the bench when I am tugging at one of the other blankets.

My medications are all in specific places, because there are so many bottles that I end up doing the same thing as I did with the spices and the herbs.  But it is more than just bottles ... everything in the house has a specific place.  Woe to anyone who tries to help me put things away and not put them in their place!  Primarily, this is because I will not be able to find them again!  But, to be honest, partially it is because of the visual rest that I crave, that I need with this annoyingly nerve-damaged-and-thus-anxious-body-and-mind I have.

Today, I decided to finally tend to the handle on the refrigerator freezer door.  It has been jiggling for quite a while.  I believe this is because I lean on the handle to hold myself up a bit whenever I am using it.  Clearly, I use the freezer door (fetching ice packs) far more than the refrigerator door since it is looser.  I lean on everything.  SIGH.  I am trying to train myself to not lean on the microwave handle, since it is attached to the cabinets above the stove.  And I am trying to train myself to stop leaning on the kitchen faucet handle since it is probably not designed to hold up weak and weary ill folk named Myrtle.

Anyway, with the handle ... I had put off tending to it, but doing so was easy peasy.  You see, I have this flip-top, pasteboard box (sized for 4x6 index cards) that is filled with snack-sized Ziploc bags.  Each bag contains the assembly instructions and the tools that came with every thing in the house that I had to put together myself.  I simply went down to the utility closet in the basement, opened the antique wooden cabinet that was left with the house, pulled out the box, carried it to the laundry area counter where I could see better, searched through the bags for the one marked "refrigerator," took it upstairs, used the allen wrench to tighten both handles, went back down to the basement, returned the bag to the box, and returned the box to its specific place on a specific shelf in the cabinet in the closet.

You could say that it is good to be so ... regimented ... since I could tell someone helping me exactly where to go for the box of assembly tools.  However, I would probably worry that the person helping me would not return the box to its exact place on the shelf.  Why is placement so important?? Because I can stare at something in the wrong place and not see it because it does not make sense to me that it is not in the proper place.  This is especially problematic with my medications that are almost all in identical bottles.  SIGH.

This, by the way, is why I was so very annoyed about the twine I lost.  I mean, it should have been in the basket on the second shelf in the utility closet right next to the center post.  It could have been in the bottom drawer in the kitchen (where the new twine is now to keep it clean since I also use it to tie up herbs for drying) or it could have been in the top left-hand drawer in the dining room built-in since that is my utility drawer with pens and scissors and rubber bands and twisty-ties and the small measuring tape and the small screwdriver set and Amos' medicine and the games I like to play the most (so no trip to the basement if someone is willing to play).  Or it simply could have been (forgotten) on the counter in the garage where I was last after using it.  However, the twine is nowhere.  Months and months and months of searching to no avail left me having to purchase a new spool of it.  SIGH.

Even Amos has his "place" now, thanks to Becky making him the resting pads.  He is much easier in his canine self whenever I am in on of the four main locations in which I putter about the house.  This  is because each one of them has a resting pad for him to rest upon as I am working.  Before having his own "place," Amos would fret, moving here and there and whining for me.  Now, he curls up and waits rather patiently.  Becky is making one more ... so that Amos has his own place when I am lying on the bathroom floor.  We both cannot wait for that one to arrive!

I was talking with someone this week about how my entire life is managing my physical ailments and managing my cognitive failings and managing my household chores and managing my PTSD puppy dog and managing my own PTSD and managing food preparation and managing medications and managing medical appointments.  All I do is manage.  I discover breakdowns in my abilities and try to mitigate them with a new process, procedure, sign, alarm, automated email, etc.  It is exhausting to do and exhausting to consider the scope of just how much managing it takes for me to be ... still independent.

During an appointment this week, the alarm for watering the plants on the front porch, the alarm for feeding Amos his dinner, the alarm for getting up and moving every two hours, and two alarms for medications went off.  The person I was seeing for the appointment was a bit ... distracted and then worried.  She asked how I was going to remember all the things I had missed while I was with her until I got home and could do them.  I said I probably wouldn't.  I would forget.  [I did.]  Then I said the upside was that I am learning to not punish myself for forgetting.  SIGH.

I worry.
I live in fear, actually.
I fret that someone is going to notice just how much managing I need and cry foul.

My latest managing??  My Fitbit dongle stopped working so I no longer get the automated email notification.  So, I set up an alarm to charge it every Friday night.  However, most of my alarms need to be doubled or tripled because I will often forget what I am supposed do to after swiping off the alarm.  I forgot.  Again.  So, I just, as I am typing this, added a repeat for tomorrow so that if I do not get it done on Friday, the charge can be done on Saturday before the battery is completely dead.

When I was talking about the managing, I muttered that it bothers me that I do not get any credit for the prodigious amount of managing that I am doing.  I think that is why I like the Fitbit.  I get credit for every step that I try to take in a day!!

If only it was not one more thing that needs to be managed.
SIGH.