At Night

I am not sleeping at night, almost at all. It's my usual insomnia layered on top of what I think is perimenopausal insomnia. Recently when I can't sleep I've been listening to movies (Summerland was amazing, my favorite so far) or comedy specials (Leanne Morgan, Tig Notaro, Cristela Alonzo) on Netflix while I draw or sketch or journal. Once or twice I've sewn some scrappy nine patch blocks. Tthe cat usually comes to visit sometime between midnight and four a.m. and he gets treats and pets and then naps on the bed. A couple of times a night, I'll see if the dogs need to go out (this after one of them had a pretty disgusting accident in the house).

We have two dogs in the house these days and they're mostly getting along except at mealtimes when they have to be separated because both are very aggressive about food and the last time they were together for a longer visit, one attacked the other. Now we separate them when we feed them and pick up the bowls when they are done so that there is nothing for them to fight over. We'll go back to being a one-dog house in another week.

Today we went out to pick up a grocery order from Whole Foods and since traffic was pretty bad, we decided to wait it out by making a stop at Trader Joe's. We bought a lot of snacks and cookies (a rarity for us as we almost never buy processed foods aside from Quorn and a type of vegetarian sausage that we add to sopa seca, or minimally processed things like tofu, yogurt, cheese, or soy milk). We were two of maybe four people who I saw wearing masks in or around the store. (Most people don't bother anymore because they think Covid is gone despite it's still killing thousands of people a day in the U.S.)

We've been eating takeout far too often recently--burgers, pizza, subs, all junky type stuff--so despite the temptation to stop for another takeout dinner, we decided to cook tonight. (Well, that and we just picked up groceries from two different stores.) When we got home from shopping, Dave fed the dogs while I started dinner. I had planned on making dal tadka and maybe masala potatoes but that seemed like a monumental task suddenly so instead Dave had a cheese sandwich and salad and I had a larger salad with some diced up chicken left over from yesterday. We watched an episode of Taskmaster while we ate dinner. (A new episode from an old season is released on youtube every Thursday.)

After dinner, I did dishes and cleaned up the kitchen and Dave took the dogs out and called his mother. Then he went back to work for a bit and I came in to write this. Tonight while I'm up I think I'll clean my bathroom. I also need to restock my cat treat bag for later.