"I have to sell this"

I slept pretty well last night and woke up exhausted. 

Ron and I had to go to the warehouse and purchase supplies.  At one point he made a comment because I was a little mentally foggy.  As I shopped, I figured out what had upset me about it and how I would approach it. 

When I did, I told him: "Ron, remember a couple months ago when you felt like my symptoms were not doing very well?  You asked me to see if I could increase my doses?"  He agreed. 

"Remember when I told you I would have to make sacrifices for that, and I'd get 'dumber'?  I already feel bad about that.  When you make comments I just find it hurtful.  You don't get it both ways - you get symptom control, but only if I'm foggier." 

Ron agreed and apologized. 

For whatever reason, he seems to take my illness as an attack on him - when I'm sick, God is attacking him in particular, and both of us in gneral.  Huh?  I'm just repeating. 

Anyway, moving on.  I got some of the inventory.  They didn't have any jalapeno chips, again.  The customers will not be happy.  I have another source, though. 

I got a case of BBQ chips; one of Original Ruffles; a "big hot mix" - large serving size hot chips, an assortment; and a plain variety mix.  Two people have asked for plain fritos now.  The variety pack has 10 bags and I need to fill some coils.  I got it. 

I also got some Cracker Jack, mainly as a coil filler - it's a slow seller but it's a good food cost, provides variety, and does have a few fans. 

Pastry: I bought powdered sugar donuts, chocolate donuts, conchas (fantastic food cost and the construction workers like them - also a good coil filler), and chocolate cupcakes.  I got a ton of honeybuns the other day.  We should be OK on that. 

Here's a small gripe.  The chips and pastry are shipped flat, so why do the cashiers (some of them) insist on putting them sideways in the cart?  When they do that with the pastry the pastries slip and are damaged.  I've had to do a little restructuring, smoothing out the pastry in the wrapper, before I stock. 

Today I realized it's my inventory.  So I requested her to please lay everything flat in the shopping cart.  She got a small attitude, and I'm sure she thinks I'm a bitch, but like I said "I wouldn't care if I was going to eat it, but I have to sell this." 

We came home.  I made a place for everything by the door.  It's close at hand but Ron won't squash it.  It must be so strange to be married to a sighted man. 

You're probably think it's strange being married to a blind man. 

A minute ago, Ron was watching some conspiracy theory commercial advertising a website.  I told him I wasn't interested in checking it out. 

"If the government is spying on us," I told him "What can we do about it?"  Nothing.  He pouted a little but shut up. 

I can run paranoid.  I try to avoid all that stuff. 

Just like I'm prone to anxiety, so I stopped watching things that made me anxious.  I don't need it. 

I could worry about dozens of work-related things.  Is the coffee machine still working?  Are the other machines OK?  Did the food machine go down during the thunderstorm? 

I could live my life consumed by paranoia and anxiety, but I don't have to accept that life.  My maternal grandmother was, by all accounts, a very paranoid, anxious, and bitter woman who didn't know the meaning of "forgiveness". 

I'm sure you won't believe me: this woman was so awful, that at one point my own mother (birthmother), tied her up, in the basement, to a support beam, and gave her a coffee can to use as a toilet.  Dad was out of town. 

Apparently "grandma" had come to visit me as a baby and they clashed.  As I type this I conclude: perhaps my mother felt the woman had threatened me in some way. 

My older sister (in her late teens) released grandma and drove her to the bus station.  That's the kind of life I'd have without medication, if I allow paranoia and anxiety to consume me. 

My sister wanted me to reconnect.  I wrote the woman a letter.  She was very upset I had married a black man, and disowned me.  Fine. 

I don't want that life. 

I have another relative, diagnosed bipolar in her elder years, always a very anxious woman.  I don't want that life.  She was a nice lady but I have to wonder what her life would have been, if she'd gotten diagnosed, taken her medication, gotten saved, and rejected anxious thoughts. 

Trust me, I understand anxiety attacks.  I get them sometimes if I have too much soda around a Bible Handout.  I have huge anxiety issues around traffic, a post-traumatic thing resulting from Ron's accident. 

I had to stare at him every day.  It was ghastly.  Ron says it so blase "I didn't have a forehead". 

He didn't have a forehead.  All the skin was scraped completely off his forehead.  He had roadrash everywhere from his nose to his feet.  His head was split open on the windshield and stapled back together.  His right tibia was broken into 3 pieces, his ribs crushed, a lung collapsed, a kidney lacerated and bleeding.  He was covered in bruises, moaning in pain constantly, connected to every machine in the world.... and all I could do was watch. 

For weeks. 

That scarred me. 

Sometimes, I'm standing on that median and everything seems to swirl around me, traffic everywhere, and I feel so dizzy I worry I'll fall over.  Othertimes I freeze and have to "unstick" myself to get moving again.  Oddly, I never worry about Ron out there with me. 

I understand anxiety; so whenever possible, I do not receive it. 

The way I see it, the emotion arrives, presents itself.  Medication (just your basic mood stabilizers, antidepressant, and antipsychotic) allows me to either accept (small mania with a desire to organize) or reject (anxiety with a desire to freak out). 

Thank God for medication. 

Maybe I don't give myself, or my faith, enough credit there.  I don't know.  It's all a holistic package.  Me, my faith, my medication. 

In that order. 

I was pretty exhausted when we got home, as tired as if I'd worked a 12-hour day.  I took a nap. 

We woke up and went out to lunch.  The waitress really liked my hair.  A storm front came through right at pickup time so we got pretty drenched. 

"Thank God it's summertime!" I told our driver.  "Winter would really suck!"

He agreed.  When we got home, I gave him a Drumstick Sundae Cone.  They are very popular with the drivers.  I'm glad I got them. 

The driver always sits outside for a good 5 minutes, gobbling away. 

I love to spoil people. 

I took my meds, and another nap, because it's my day off.  I'm going to have to mow out back, though.  All that rain is really making the grass grow.