Where There Is Tired ...

Yesterday, I washed the towels, went to a doctor's appointment, stopped and bought a gallon of milk, dried, folded, and put away the towels, changed the sheets, took the ornaments off the Christmas tree, thought about taking the recycling to the school, fed the cats twice, fixed supper, and ran the dishwasher.

If I add all of those things up, not including the hour and a half or so I spent going to the doctor and buying the milk, I probably have another two hours of actual doing involved. Even if you give me fifteen minutes for thinking about the recycling, too, it just wasn't a very busy day, was it?

So why was I so tired?

I'm talking about age again, because as nice and as fun as much of it is, the down sides sometimes take the chirp right out of the perkiest and most positive among us. The whole weariness issue is one of them.

These are things that make me tired. Let me know if they ring any bells with you.

1. Driving. Make no mistake--I love to drive, especially accompanied by someone to talk to or a good audiobook--but by the time I've gotten to Kokomo or Fort Wayne, I just want to get out of the car and sit down and not do anything. I don't quite get why I rush from sitting down in the car to sitting down where the world is stationary, but I do.

2. Deciding where to go to eat. By the time the decision is finally made, after back-and-forths of "where do you want to go?" and "anywhere's fine" and "well, not there," I would be okay with cheese and crackers and some microwave popcorn.

3. Medical appointments. Somehow there are so many of them. Most of them are farther away than you really want to go (I'll write later about the perils of living in the cornfields, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the dang-its involved with rural living.) Most of them are part of a chain reaction to something in you wearing out, which lead immediately to something else wearing out. A friend at a class reunion said going to doctors' appointments was his and his wife's primary entertainment. I laughed and agreed, but it's not funny. Not one little bit.

4. Organizing a day, even a fun one. (Thank Nan Reinhardt for this one, because I couldn't think of more. Good grief, am I already tired? It's 6:56 AM!) Errands are one thing--I like seeing how many I can do on a single trip. But appointments, or places I have to be by such-and-such a time, or being home for when a repair technician will arrive between 9 AM and suppertime ... those things wear me out.

5. And then , yes, there's suppertime. When is suppertime? Does it matter? Does it even matter if we eat supper? Duane would be good with eating supper at 9:00, except that I've likely fallen asleep by that point and am not about to cook it then. I would be happy to have it at 4:00, but then I want it again at 7:30. Or not at all, because if it's dark, it's too late for me to cook. Plus there's the ongoing battle of ...

6. ... What's for supper? ...

7. ... to which the obvious answer is "I don't know and I don't care," followed by "whatever you fix" and "what do you want? I'll call and order it."

I intended to make a nice, neat list of 10 things that made me tired. I didn't make it. I would say that making lists makes me tired, too, but at 7:06 AM, I just don't think that would fly. Since I've mentioned the time twice, I will admit that I started this last night, so while there may have only been 20 actual minutes spent in the writing, I'm claiming 12 hours.

Yeah, that works. Have a great week. Be nice to somebody.