New Schedules Make Me Crazy

I'm currently unemployed for a variety of reasons. This May my husband and I got in a car accident on the freeway. I was driving, the traffic in front of me stopped too quickly and the road was wet. My car slid and rear-ended the SUV in front of me. Of course the airbags didn't work, so I hit the steering wheel. Luckily we were both okay, but within the next week we:

• had a combined ER visit count of 6 (4 for me, although to be fair a couple were because I was allergic to my painkillers)
• had 4 CAT scans between us
• found out Adam has polycystic kidneys
• learned my car was totaled

So now we have one car. Adam's 1998 Acura Integra. The clutch is pretty wonky though, so it's near impossible for me to drive. We live off base anyway, so he needs the car to get to work. Therefore, I have no way to get to a job if I had one.

In addition, I don't handle stressful jobs very well. I only ever had one job in my life that I did well at. It was a low level job, but I did okay with over 50 hours a week. Here in Washington, though, I haven't been able to find anything other than fast food and I don't do well with entitled assholes telling me I should lose my job because their soda pop wasn't filled to the tippy-top (meaning, overflowing.)

So I am unemployed. I stay at home and take care of the dog, housework, sometimes dinner (though Adam does enjoy cooking so we take turns or do it together.) I do what I can, making sure his uniforms are clean every day and the dishes are done so we can eat.

Like I said in the last entry, he's a Master at Arms in the Navy, at a Marine Corps command. For 2 out of every 3 months, his schedule is pretty tough (though at least he doesn't get deployed, thankjeebus.) He works about 17 hours a day. Until yesterday he left at 3am and was home by 8pm. They changed him to nights as of yesterday, though, so now he's gone from 3pm to 8am.. To keep our sleep and meal schedules the same, that means I'm up all night and sleep during the day.

This is a difficult change for most people to make with 12 hours notice. It's even more frustrating for me because:

• being an un-medicated manic depressive, schedule changes like this can quickly cause an episode if I'm not careful
• we live on a military installation, but not on a base. It's not gated. The majority of people here are on the carrier at the other base in the area and the carrier just left. Since they televise this, over and over, all the creepers know that most of the spouses (mostly women, but not all) are home alone in an un-gated community for about a year. Being home alone all night isn't the safest.
• Last night, the first night I'm home alone, I go to take the garbage out at 9pm (now pretty much my 9am) there's a man standing in front of my house holding a huge stick. Just standing there in the dark. When I opened the door to take the trash out, I see him. I also see him slowly turn and just stare at me. I quickly closed and locked the door.

We're not off to a good start. For the first night, I cleaned every inch of the house. Now that the house is clean, I don't quite know what to do. And my paranoia is already through the roof. Maybe I should watch less Investigation Discovery.

File under "Things I Shouldn't Watch in the Middle of the Night, But I Do."