Adventures in Jet Lag

I did my best to stay up last night, managing to stay up until about 9:30. Even so, I woke up just after midnight, again at 1:30, again around 3:15, and one final time at the 4:02 call to prayer. This last time, I woke up so hungry that I knew I would not be able to fall asleep again.

I decided to get up and make a snack. I made my herbal tea, without caffeine, hoping that I would be able to go back to sleep. But neither the snack nor the tea made me sleepy and before long I heard Craig was up as well.

He was planning to go to work for a few hours this morning. Finding himself awake with no chance of going back to sleep, he decided to go in earlier than he had planned. I made him coffee and attempted to find him something to eat for breakfast. (He spent the week after I left eating the rest of his food, so more of my shelf stable goods were in our storage bins.)

I switched to my English breakfast tea and settled in on my window seat with my computer. I spent the morning writing blog posts and responding to emails related to my ancestry research. I've had such good luck with that here and making discoveries can be such a joy. I think there's something about knowing that everyone I am writing to is probably asleep that makes me more patient while waiting for a response. And we are planning a combined ancestry search and cruise trip with my parents next year, so I have a couple areas to focus my research.

Around 8:30, Craig texted complaining that he wasn't sure if he was hungry or wanted a nap. I told him that I felt the same but had decided I was hungry because that was something I could fix. I made myself some chicken alphabet soup. By the time it was ready, I wasn't even sure that I was hungry, but I ate it just in case.

I took a bath and got dressed. I felt like I was very busy this morning, but in retrospect, I don't think that I actually did that much.

At 11:00, Craig texted to say that he was on his way home. We debated whether I would change - I was wearing jeans and a tshirt - and I decided that I would just moments before the housekeeping staff came and changed my mind. They were remarkably quick, however, so I did end up changing before I went downstairs to meet Craig at the car.

I'm still not used to this new rental car. I hesitated some before going outside because I couldn't see Craig well enough to be sure that it was him and I didn't recognize the car. But also, have I mentioned the heat? It was hot when we left, but it's only hotter now. I really don't appreciate these temperatures.

Craig drove over to the mall. We had already discussed how his work schedule had destroyed our plan to go to Lulu earlier today. Traffic seemed lighter, but we refused to discuss it for fear of jinxing it. Instead, we discussed how hungry we were and how it felt like we had already been awake for an entire day and we should be going to dinner.

We hadn't discussed meals or made a real grocery list, so we decided to start that as we walked through the mall. Craig was adding things to the list and I had no idea where the Starbucks was, so I'll leave you to imagine how we looked walking through the mall.

I finally told Craig that I didn't know where the Starbucks was and I needed him to look up from his phone and help me find it. He looked up and exclaimed, "It's right here. Or this is where I thought it was."

It was not visible from where we stood. He pointed to a pastry shop, claiming it had been there before. I mentioned that this was the entrance I had used when walking over from the apartment and that particular pastry shop had always been there. I remembered there being a coffee shop around the corner, but I wasn't sure it was Starbucks. We walked around the corner to check - it was the Starbucks. Jet-lag has left the two of us wandering around like two people sharing half a brain.

We took Craig's coffee to the counter and asked them to grind it for a metal cone filter.  They started on that and then asked where we had gotten it because the packaging was unfamiliar. We had brought it from Los Angeles because the type Craig prefers isn't sold here. We decided to order coffee as well, hoping that the caffeine would help.

With the coffee in hand and something of a grocery list, we made our way back to Lulu. There were shopping carts available, which we took as a good sign (when it gets busy, they run out of carts and sometimes even baskets). We made our way through the grocery store as if we didn't have a list (we did) and had never been in this store before (we've been here many times) - two people, half a brain. We finally made our way to the checkout. The lines had gotten fairly long, but not as long as we've seen them in the past. Leaving, we had to push our way through crowds coming in and I noticed that they had run out of shopping carts. We had made it just in time!

We came home and debated whether we should have lunch or take a nap. We decided on lunch. We made up a plate of charcuterie and cheese:

Craig had even found grilling cheese! We decided against having wine with our meal because of the potential that it would put us both to sleep. Craig kept debating taking a nap. I am anti-nap because I haven't had good luck with naps and jet-lag here. No matter how many alarms I set, if I take a nap, my body decides it is night time and refuses to wake up.

I settled in to write this post while Craig was working on his computer. It's almost 3:00 and he's laying on the sofa doing his best impression of a person who is asleep. I refuse, so I'm going to try playing a game for awhile. Wish me luck!