Deep thoughts when I ought to be dreaming.

 What is it about 3 am. I'm awake. I remember when I was younger, I could really do some sleeping. All I had to do was lay my head on my pillow and I was out until the alarm rang and I used the snooze button usually one too many times.. 

What surprises me the most is that I function quite well on about four hours of sleep. I can't do that every night. But one or two nights a week and I am fine. However, if I sit down in a chair around 5 PM, I fall into a deep sleep until about 10 PM.. 3 am rolls around before I can fall sleep. I would get up and get busy but I don't want to stir the house up. 

If I fall asleep before say midnight, I sleep all night. My big problem is I have to unwind to go to sleep. With caregiving, you are on a unpredictable schedule. My big goal every day is to cook a good meal and to keep the dishes clean. I try to do one thing to get the clutter down in our home. Sometimes I am awake because I am mentally checking off what I will do the next day. Ridiculous, I know. I always made a list of what I needed to do to be prepared for the next day. The problem now is I stay awake making that list knowing dang well I am not going to do a fourth of what I plan. 

We are five packrats. Every week, I throw something away. It is a slow process because I guess I am a hoarder deep down inside. I look at things and see possibilities. Possibilities that just aren't going to happen. With Covid, people are not as keen on used items. Where I dump my recyclables, they have dumpsters for people to dump household furniture and large items. I try not to look too hard. I see good stuff in there. People throw plastic containers full of stuff. Good stuff. Good containers. I don't dare get it out. I've got trouble of my own. 

It is time I unload. We have some things that are of value. Some things have no value but have worth. I've got a building with all of one my sister's possessions when she moved in with us. I have a building of my mom's stuff. Like new Christmas decorations or at least they were when I packed them. Twenty years in storage can age things in a bad way. 

photo of nursing chair from the early 1800s

I retrieved a nursing chair out of a pile of garbage in front of a home in my childhood neighborhood. My parents had lived in the neighborhood about 50 years. Someone had cleared an attic. I took the chair to the antique roadshow. When the Keno brothers joked about what sort of rodent had chewed part of the deer hide seat, I knew it was worthless. The chair dated from the early 1800s. There is no market. I still have the chair. I can picture the woman who probably used it. The back legs were shortened so that they could lean back. I think of the woman who saved the chair. They probably had memories of their mother or grandmother. 

I would have returned the chair to the people who had lived in the house. I don't think they were the folks who put the chair in the attic. They were known to rent and lived in different houses in the neighborhood. Plus, they discarded the chair. Something like that needs to be displayed proudly So the kids will know what it is. 

One thing that I have heard from older people is how hard they had to work every day to get by. I remember ironing clothes. The perma press clothes we have now shake out to be perfectly presentable. When a load of laundry is done, I pop it in the dryer. I remember my mom hung clothes out on a line to dry. My dad teased me about getting me a solar clothes dryer (a clothes line). I now wish I had moved the clothesline posts to my new home when I moved my mom. 

My mother remembers when her Aunt Ludy bought a wringer washer which made their washdays so much easier. They no longer boiled some clothes and used a scrub board to wash some items. But the wringer washer did not have a spin cycle, You had to run the clothes through the two rollers to wring your clothes out. Hopefully no one dumps a wringer washer. I definitely don't need one. And yes, I would try to drag it home. 

The lottery got up to over a billion dollars. I bought tickets. We all speculated what we would do with such a handsome sum of money. One sister wanted me to hire her a personal assistant. The other was going to buy my house and the land behind me. Mom and I wanted to build another house with a large bedroom, bathroom and walk in closet for each of us. My brother probably would like us to buy an antique car. With that money, I could fund a lot of animal rescues, help a lot of people out of poverty. After I thought of all that, I was not that disappointed in not winning. That is a lot work deciding who to parcel money out to. Throwing your bread on the water is serious work.. More than I can handle I suppose. 

It is fun to dream. I could have opened up the Lady Diana doll museum. I'll write that fantasy in time. It should help with any insomnia you may be experiencing. ;=)

And if I could go to sleep earlier, I really could do some dreaming. lol  My mom is awake now. We resemble zombies staring at a Perry Mason show. I'm studying the old Perry Mason Show. The dead body shows up around 19 minutes after the hour. I don't know how many minutes that is without commercials. In the middle of the night, These are some of the deep thoughts I contemplate. I hope all is well with you.