TheNightTerror on 18/10/2007 at 00:49

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Thank you to everyone, it's nice that I could post about this without getting eaten alive. :) I really needed to get it off my chest.

My sleep is nowhere near improved, it's gotten far, far worse, everything my new sleep clinic doctor has asked me to do has just made me worse. I can't sleep more than 1-2 hours at a time anymore without waking up, so I'm getting next to no refreshing sleep. I'm very worried about going to the funeral because of that. If anyone's noticed that I'm never around anymore, it's because I'm so exhausted and dead to the world that I can't keep up with the forums anymore.

Right now, I don't have the will or the energy for all nighters anymore, and the current plan is for me to go about 60 hours without sleep on about 6 hours of sleep to get me down to Vancouver for the funeral, so you can imagine how worried I am about that.

If I can talk mom into spending the money for plane and bus tickets I might be able to squeeze it down to about 36 on 8-10 hours of sleep, which would be a lot closer to what I used to be able to handle. Even if I can just take the bus home after the funeral, that's going to be only 40-45 hours without sleep.

And just as the icing on the cake, now I'm worried about my bloody aquarium again. I lost about 10 fish to an incurable and always fatal disease over the last month, but I had thought the fish that were still alive weren't infected. When I got up today I had to euthanise two fish who were showing symptoms of it, and now I'm down to the guppies I raised from the day they were born, if one of them falls ill I'll know that species is vulnerable to the disease, and I may have to euthanise them all. Happy days!

Thief13x on 28/10/2007 at 01:43

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sorry to hear:( my grandmother was my last grandparent to pass away last spring, it's sad:(

TheNightTerror on 28/10/2007 at 23:24

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I might as well post about all that happened yesterday, not just the god damn break in. I can't believe that happened right before the funeral, talk about an extra chunk of stress my mom really didn't need.

Around 2 am Saturday morning, when I was starting to play Thief, (ironic much?) I was hearing a lot more sounds than normal, people walking around right outside the window, voices, a faint alarm that almost sounded like a fire alarm in another room. I just started ignoring it and went about my business.

When my mom's high school best friend came to get her for breakfast, she said the trunk was open, and they shut it, not thinking anything of it. When my mom was going to get into her car to get the ashes and go to an appointment with the bank, she went to put her key in the door lock, only to find a smooth, round hole where the lock used to be. She looked in the rest of the car, and it had been ransacked, the hood was ajar as well.

Thankfully, the bastards didn't take the car. They could have quite easily taken the car at that point and sold it in the morning, our registration and insurance was in the glove box, but they left it alone, but stole most of my mom's '60's rock, (they took all the good stuff, anyway) though they didn't check the CD player and wound up with the broken case and no CD.

I wouldn't be one bit surprised if they were just a couple kids looking to score some cash for weed, I knew it wasn't a good idea to be in Vancouver right after welfare Wednesday when there was a full moon on top of it. The real kicker was while they were going through the car, they found an old parking card that you hang from a rear view mirror from another inn, which had 'do not leave valuables in your car' on the back. They left it on the driver's side seat with that side up. All I can say is we didn't leave valuables in there, my laptop certainly wasn't in there, and neither were all the photos of grandma we brought for the funeral.

Anyway, we wound up running a bit late but made it to the church in decent time. I barely got a lukewarm greeting from my brother, and his wife and her son barely acknowledged my presence. Mom went to get some last minute stuff for the funeral sorted out, then my brother buggered off and I wound up by myself in the parking lot with a bunch of strangers, and wound up having to go search for her.

In the process I saw the urn with my grandmother's ashes in it, and the fact that all that's left of her could fill a jar not much bigger than the picture of her we had wound up getting me crying before anything even started. The creepy priest fellow kept following me around and touching me, I wound up getting myself together just so he'd keep his hands off me.

Considering it was a hyper religious funeral and I'm an athiest the funeral certainly went okay, the eulogy mom wrote turned out quite well, people seemed to be rather amused that they took a night course in auto mechanics together in the '60's (there's an old photo from a newspaper of them poking around under the hood of a car, but we couldn't find it) and the tale of mom's first speeding ticket. Even though mom took the car without telling, grandma went to bat for her because she believed mom when she said she saw the cop and absolutely wasn't speeding when he ticketed her, she was going 30 and was ticketed for 39. She had the car looked at and they discovered, sure enough, the speedometer would read 30 when it was going 39, so she fought the speeding ticket in court and wound up getting the ticket dismissed. I love that story, mom was falling apart and bawling in court while grandma was fighting with the judge. That must have been quite the sight.

It certainly seemed rather weird, I was easily far more upset after the funeral than both of grandma's kids combined. I didn't know anyone there except people who were too busy to talk to or not interested in acknowledging me, and wound up off in a corner by myself for a while, trying to remember what all CDs had been in the glove box that might be missing to keep my mind off grandma so I could stop crying. My sister in law and her kid never even did speak to me, and I barely got a glimpse of my brother during the reception.

It ended up turning out that my mom's high school best friend was getting a bit worried about me, and sat me down at her table with a cup of coffee. She ended up being my lifesaver for the rest of the day, she managed to keep me talking enough that I stopped crying and got me cheered up. My mom didn't have time to get the cops to look at our car before the funeral, so she was going to do it afterwards, and there was no way in hell she could take me to the bus in time.

The high school pal wound up taking over and took me to a bookstore so I could get something to read on the bus, (giving me $30 cash for it as I was paying debit for it, so I got some extra cash) then got me to the station just in time and gave me even more money in case I wanted some food further down the line. They packaged up some food for me at the funeral reception, but . . . well, fruit packed with ham sandwiches and egg sandwiches. Need I say anymore?

I was nervous about taking all my stuff on the bus to begin with, and after the car was robbed I was *very* edgy. I wound up taking a plastic bag with my book and food in it, a bag with my overnight stuff in it, *and* my laptop, all on the bus with me. Since the bus was quite packed early on and I didn't want to put my luggage anywhere but in a seat next to me, I started spinning a tale about a friend Aideen who was getting on further along in the trip, and I was worried about her not having a spot when she got there. (Aideen is the full name of my kitten Addie.)

You'd think that long of a bus ride would be even more painful without a friend along, but I got very hyper once the sun set and was finding lots of ways to entertain myself in the meantime. Between reading and acting like I was conducting a symphony that consisted of the synchronized snoring of the passengers on the bus (that was way more fun than it should've been) the bus ride ended up flying along. Wasn't impressed about waiting half an hour with a guy lurking around, watching me and eyeing up my laptop case, for a cab ride. I ended up pulling out my Swiss Army knife to clean my nails and next thing I knew he was nearly a block away. Interesting how that works. I was home around 3 am to find the house had been ransacked as well. By four cats. Never been so happy to see them before . . .

Martin Karne on 5/11/2007 at 09:23

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Sorry man, it happens sooner or later to everyone.
:(

TheNightTerror on 7/11/2007 at 01:01

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Thanks for the sympathies everyone.

I highly doubt anything will be fixing my sleep problems, let alone that, unfortunately. Orange juice would just make me sick and probably make me gain back the weight I've lost, anyway. And if you have any tips on how to be very physically active when you're so exhausted that cats are too heavy to lift off your lap, let me know . . .