On night shift and life

Night shift is kind of hard to describe. Unless you've worked in an industry that does night shifts of some flavour, you don't really know what it's like. So let me explain:

On Monday, I took the day pretty easy. I had Sally in childcare that afternoon and had an hour-long nap. When she got home, I had another hour-long nap with her. Then dinner late (7pm instead of the usual 6pm), changed and dressed with a coffee by 8:30pm for a 9pm start.

I have to take another meal to eat overnight. I tend to get a break around midnight, and express at that point as well, then another break around 3am. I eat an extra meal at midnight (what do you call that? It's not supper to me, but it's between dinner and breakfast so I don't know?) with a coffee as well. Then another snack at 3am, with a tea or something sweet. By this stage I've been awake going on 24 hours with only 2 hours of naps in there, and I'm using anything I can to stay focused and alert.

It's a strange time, those hours past about 11pm til about 6am. I don't usually feel tired per se, but am obviously fatigued. I have to focus on drinking water and not focusing on the clock too much. Time goes strangely without reminders of what time it is.

So 6am ish comes around and I'm sent home as there's not much else going on. I get home and eat breakfast. Then feed Sally and TheHusband takes her to a friend's house who then drops her to childcare for me to pick her up in the afternoon.

Have I mentioned how much I love my friends?

Then I wash my face and brush my teeth and go to bed by about 6:30am. Today I slept til 1pm with only a brief up/loo/drink moment. So only 4.5 hours of sleep. But as today is my "day off", which I use very loosely as it's really a sleep day after a night shift, not a day that I can do much in, I don't want to be anything other than tired because otherwise I won't sleep tonight and will be messed up for the next few days.

So that gives a small thumb sketch of how a night shift goes. If it's more than one in a row obviously, I would be napping and preparing mentally for another night. Night shifts are fine in short bursts and the HUGE fabulous point of this is that this is the LAST ONE that I have to do until October.

And no, I don't know what I'm doing next year and whether I'll have to do more of these. So many options, so many variables, so much but so little time as well.

Do you carry stamps in your wallet?

Ages ago, I was watching Dr Phil while writing an assignment and there was an article on it about stamps in your wallet. I found a summary elsewhere of it:

While describing conscientiousness he used an example of people who carry stamps with them in their wallet.  Dr. Phil then asked his audience how many people had stamps with them in their purse, approximately 10 people raised their hands and then reached into their purse to pull out their trusty sheet of stamps.  Dr. Phil was shocked that anybody would carry stamps with them, actually stating that he didn't understand why anybody would do such a thing. 

The Professor went on to explain that people who score very high in conscientiousness are the type of people that carry around stamps with them and almost always buy extra of things long before they run out of anything!  GUILTY!  I am totally guilty of both!  I proudly carry stamps around with me AND buy multiples of things long before they run out.  I can't for the life of me understand why people wouldn't carry a sheet of stamps in their wallet, its such a small item to have with you, besides what the heck do you do when you spontaneously need to mail something and don't have a stamp with you?!!!  I also can't understand why people actually allow themselves to run out of stuff without having a replacement. 

Isn't it so annoying to run out of something and have to wait to finish whatever you were doing until after you run to the store...heaven forbid it should be toilet paper!  Of course this could explain why I will have 4 extra shampoos, 15 bars of soap and 25 cans of rotel acquired before I leave Germany!  Admittedly, the lack of closets and pantry is definitely helping curb my desire to have too many extras of anything, because if its one thing that bothers me more than running out of something, its not having a place for that something to live!

So, do you have stamps in your wallet? TheHusband teases me because I do. I have stamps on hand and stamps in my wallet. They are old enough now that I've had to buy 5c stamps to keep using them, and then 10c stamps as well, as the price of postage went up.

I'm surprised that it says anything about me. I do a lot of those things and I didn't realise it was a personality test.