Not Sleeping Well

Not sure what it is. My anxiety should be getting better with the elections pretty much decided, but instead it's worse. I'm worried about money and Christmas again. We had no gifts last year. Can you imagine being nine and waking up to nothing under the tree? Its heartbreaking. Technically he had one gift--a tiny board game. The girls and grandson got homemade gifts (a shawl for the oldest, a stuffed animal for the grandson and middle daughter and a blanket for the youngest daughter). The oldest son also got a game. The games were bought with the money my dad sent me for my birthday. He told me not to spend it on the kids. I absolutely spent it on the kids

This year, I don't have the time, energy, or yarn to make gifts for everyone. I'm trying to do ornaments like I did last year, but it's exhausting. So far I have one for the grandson (a truck), a penguin for the oldest son and a cat for the youngest son. The ones for the older kids are proving tricky because I'm trying to modify the pattern to allow for a pocket somewhere to fit a folded $20 bill. That's the extent of their gifts. And it's coming from the 20yo. She agreed to give me $100 to pass out for Christmas. And if my dad gives me $50 like he usually does, that's another $10 per kid.

But still that means no gifts under the tree for the second year in a row. It's so depressing. The 20yo said no one will care and it's more important that we spend time together or whatever, but it's bull. I remember being a kid and Christmas was always magical. So many gifts and new things. Of course, my dad went into huge amounts of debt every Christmas. We used to use the credit card, spent $100 on each kid and pay it off later. I was actually going to do that this year, but then the cat died so the credit card already has over $600 on it.

We also didn't have much money for food this month. We spent $170 on food for three weeks for now eight people because the oldest son (who is 19, 6'3" and 230lbs) moved back in. We could have gotten by if we "tightened our belts" and didn't have second helpings and I only ate once a day, but with him home... it's not going to be enough. He eats like he's three people. He's offered to pay us a little rent, but he doesn't have a job at the moment and his savings is dwindling. The 20yo also doesn't pay rent because she has a baby even though she spends more money on art supplies than on stuff for the baby. Yesterday, the middle daughter turned 18, but she also doesn't have a job because she's supposed to be in school. She wants to go get her idea so she can try to find a job and probably drop out of school. She's not going to graduate on time anyway because she fooled around too much the last couple years so doesn't have the grades/credits to complete the 12th grade. Sigh.

I've gotten no writing done for NaNo, partly because of this anxiety hovering over me and partly because I can't sleep. The sleep might also be because I stopped that med that was making me super sleepy at night. Or insomnia has just come back. Or... who knows. It sucks because I'm already so fatigued all of the time. Now add in not sleeping because of whatever reason.

Oh, and then there's the stupid keyboard issues. I wanted to write about not sleeping yesterday but could not get my keys working. I wrote 600 words in my 4thewords journal which took an hour (with all of the interruptions) and they still weren't working so I gave up trying to write anything yesterday. The only reason they're working now is I turned Sims on. It seems heating up the insides with the game is enough to get them working again. Or something. But it's only temporary and still takes 10-20 minutes to get them working once the game is on which causes a distraction for me.

And, of course, if I stop typing for more than a few seconds the keys stop working, and I have to start all over to get them working again.

I'm just too tired for this right now.

I think I'm going to try to get the stuff I wrote a few days ago typed up and maybe that will spark more writing. Either that or I'm just giving up for the day and taking a nap less than three hours after getting up. Ugh.