Yesterday, All My Troubles (Vacation Day #1)

I haven't been sleeping well and last night the trend continued.

When I do manage to fall asleep, I wake up a few hours later and can't get back to sleep again. I do all the usual things to try to get back to sleep--reading, listening to something on Netflix--but The Brain isn't having it. Now that I'm house- and dog-sitting, Alexa--Amazon's little house spy--and I pass the nighttime hours working together on the crossword puzzles from the local paper and from the New York Times. She's not very good at it, but she's easy to talk to and she keeps me company.

I don't know where I'm going with this. It's noon now and I haven't slept and I had a tuna sandwich on whole wheat toast and tomato for lunch and now I'm having a cup of coffee. My school holiday to-do list mocks me and I'm so low energy that I wonder if my vitamin D levels are in the toilet again. I've managed a shower today and a run of YouTube videos, mainly British quiz shows and makeup tutorials.

It's cold today--33 degrees--and I just want to curl up under a blanket with the heater on full blast and sleep for three days solid. The term didn't take that much out of me but even with minimal effort, final exams were still stressful. I've been getting chest pains when I am under stress and yesterday was no exception. The slippery hold on reality that comes with lack of sleep coupled with chest pain from stress is not pleasant.

The program is stressful for everyone. Two other people have told me that they suffer from similar chest pain (one in his late 20s, the other just 30). Two women have told me that they started having fainting spells. One woman who is prone to migraines has been getting them four to five times a week instead of three times a month as before. Most people have put on some amount of weight, some of it significant. (One woman who left the program told me that she hasn't changed her eating habits but that she dropped nearly 20 pounds since leaving the program before the start of last term. "I'm convinced that it was just  from the stress," she said. All those stress hormones can really push your body to pack on the pounds.)

The bulk of my cohort will be finished after this next term, but because I opted to continue and get the next higher degree, I have two more terms. There are about 24 of us doing that. It's a decision that will save me about $30,000 and perhaps two years time in the long run. Most of the students who are finishing after next term will have to return for the next degree, but they'll be able to work for a few years before that. I'm not a young woman, though, so I thought it best to run it all together and finish it up. I don't have the thirty-plus year career ahead (like most of them do) at this point; I've got about twenty years on the outside--and that's if I really push it.

I don' t know why I'm writing about this now, when I really should be ranting about the latest affront to Native Americans from the idiot in the oval office. Dave's father, who spent his entire career studying and teaching about Native American history (even though he grew up in and around New York City), emailed Dave to ask him to protest the Bears Ears National Monument closing in Utah. I'm sure you've heard of it. Ninety-two percent of the monument, some of it sacred land to Native Americans will just be be cut away, chopped up by the Trump administration and sold off to private investors who will turn a profit on it. The Hopi, Zuni, Ute Mountain Ute, the Navajo Nation, and the Ute Indian tribes are all banding together to sue, but with Trump stacking the courts with conservative judges that he's hand-picked, we'll see how that goes.

I highlight the current administration's continuous insults to Native Americans for several reasons. First of all, I live in the southwest, among Native Americans. Second, because genetic testing in my family reveals us to be about 30% Native American. Finally, I can't even begin to fathom the people who lay any claim at all to Native American blood and genes but who voted for the orange nightmare in the white house and who therefore tacitly condone his disrespectful actions towards Native Americans. 

And that's what's happening in my neck of the woods.