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Some necessary background:
* I tend to leave the front door open (with the security door locked) overnight in summer, because it's a quieter and cheaper way of getting cool air to circulate through the place than running the air-conditioner all night.
* Our place backs onto a rather busy roadway, which has heavy trucks running up and down it starting at a very early hour of the morning and continuing until rather late at night.
* If we leave the back door of our place open, the traffic noise from the road out back is overwhelming.
* Noise is a significant stressor for me, because due to some peculiarities of my brain, I have trouble with "tuning out" background noise.
* In hot, humid weather, it takes me longer to get to sleep, and I find it harder to sleep soundly, than in hot, dry weather.
* The past week or so has been hot and humid here in Perth.
* I react poorly to sleep deprivation over the long term. The principal symptom is that my temper becomes a lot shorter, and my reaction to negative stressors becomes more pronounced.
* My mother smoked, and I grew to strongly dislike the smell of stale cigarette smoke, or indeed stale smoke of any kind.
* I'm still in the process of recovering from a nasty summer flu that came through a few weeks back, and one of the side effects of this is when I wake up in the morning, my throat is scratchy and sore.
Last night it rained. Also, at some stage last night, after it rained, something within smoke range of us caught fire. The house consequently smells of stale smoke, and I'm finding myself waiting optimistically for the washing machine to finish its cycle in the hopes that while I'm out hanging out the washing in the back yard, enough clean air will circulate through the house to push out the smoke smell.
Waking up this morning felt rather like climbing out of a coffin in terms of effort, and I did wind up zombie-ing through the first few stages of my morning routine. I have one of my standard symptoms of extreme tiredness, which is that my eyes are tending to cross if I'm not paying attention (as a kid I used to have a squint) and the visual problems I have are more acute (for example, the astigmatism was such this morning that I had trouble distinguishing between the '-' and '=' keys on my keyboard). On top of this, I'm about five times more sensitive to noise at the moment than I have been previously.
The traffic noise from the road out back seems about ten times worse than it was on Friday. The toilet has started dripping again (after about a month or two where it didn't) and I've had to start turning down the water pressure and closing the door on the lav so I don't get driven out of my mind by the dripping. Which means the lav is going to smell of smoke for longer.
So I'm taking steps to deal with things - I've accepted it's going to be a grumpy day, and I'm not expecting much of myself (I'm still going to try and meet all my daily expectations in Habit RPG, but I'm not going to attempt anything particularly social or challenging). I've set the oil burner (a little teapot-shaped one - it seems to be a bit more subtle than most) going with my favourite blend of lavender and rosemary oils, and I'm going to see whether I can air out the house while I'm hanging out the laundry. Fortunately, it being a Monday, I'm going to find it easier to complete my obligations than not, because Mondays typically have a couple of extra tasks involved in them just by the nature of the routine. I've also put on some music, because music seems to be able to distract me from noise overload if I apply it early enough.
Lunch today is going to be comfort food, methinks. Oh, and no reading political news or political articles.
Other than that, it's a case of brace and endure.
* I tend to leave the front door open (with the security door locked) overnight in summer, because it's a quieter and cheaper way of getting cool air to circulate through the place than running the air-conditioner all night.
* Our place backs onto a rather busy roadway, which has heavy trucks running up and down it starting at a very early hour of the morning and continuing until rather late at night.
* If we leave the back door of our place open, the traffic noise from the road out back is overwhelming.
* Noise is a significant stressor for me, because due to some peculiarities of my brain, I have trouble with "tuning out" background noise.
* In hot, humid weather, it takes me longer to get to sleep, and I find it harder to sleep soundly, than in hot, dry weather.
* The past week or so has been hot and humid here in Perth.
* I react poorly to sleep deprivation over the long term. The principal symptom is that my temper becomes a lot shorter, and my reaction to negative stressors becomes more pronounced.
* My mother smoked, and I grew to strongly dislike the smell of stale cigarette smoke, or indeed stale smoke of any kind.
* I'm still in the process of recovering from a nasty summer flu that came through a few weeks back, and one of the side effects of this is when I wake up in the morning, my throat is scratchy and sore.
Last night it rained. Also, at some stage last night, after it rained, something within smoke range of us caught fire. The house consequently smells of stale smoke, and I'm finding myself waiting optimistically for the washing machine to finish its cycle in the hopes that while I'm out hanging out the washing in the back yard, enough clean air will circulate through the house to push out the smoke smell.
Waking up this morning felt rather like climbing out of a coffin in terms of effort, and I did wind up zombie-ing through the first few stages of my morning routine. I have one of my standard symptoms of extreme tiredness, which is that my eyes are tending to cross if I'm not paying attention (as a kid I used to have a squint) and the visual problems I have are more acute (for example, the astigmatism was such this morning that I had trouble distinguishing between the '-' and '=' keys on my keyboard). On top of this, I'm about five times more sensitive to noise at the moment than I have been previously.
The traffic noise from the road out back seems about ten times worse than it was on Friday. The toilet has started dripping again (after about a month or two where it didn't) and I've had to start turning down the water pressure and closing the door on the lav so I don't get driven out of my mind by the dripping. Which means the lav is going to smell of smoke for longer.
So I'm taking steps to deal with things - I've accepted it's going to be a grumpy day, and I'm not expecting much of myself (I'm still going to try and meet all my daily expectations in Habit RPG, but I'm not going to attempt anything particularly social or challenging). I've set the oil burner (a little teapot-shaped one - it seems to be a bit more subtle than most) going with my favourite blend of lavender and rosemary oils, and I'm going to see whether I can air out the house while I'm hanging out the laundry. Fortunately, it being a Monday, I'm going to find it easier to complete my obligations than not, because Mondays typically have a couple of extra tasks involved in them just by the nature of the routine. I've also put on some music, because music seems to be able to distract me from noise overload if I apply it early enough.
Lunch today is going to be comfort food, methinks. Oh, and no reading political news or political articles.
Other than that, it's a case of brace and endure.
