Odds and ends

I felt my first earthquake today! I didn't even know it was an earthquake until it was over and I was reading about an earthquake that occurred at that time. There was a 5.0 quake at about 1:42pm this afternoon with an epicenter just north of Ottawa and effects were felt all over Southern Ontario and parts of the US. Here at home it felt like someone was walking heavily over the roof and there was a rumbling sound sort of like thunder. Over in Ottawa the effects were much stronger and buildings were evacuated.

Earthquakes in Eastern Canada are fairly rare; hopefully there won't be more of them.

Around the time the earthquake happened I was trying to figure out what happened to a package I expected to receive weeks ago. I ordered a vintage pattern on May 27 and it hasn't arrived yet, which I thought was strange. The seller has a tracking number and I checked it and the package has apparently been sitting in the Kitchener sorting facility since June 3. I called Canada Post and instead of delivering items immediately, they wait until the package delivery standard time arrives.

So if a package is supposed to be delivered in 21 days, they'll wait until almost 21 days has passed before attempting to delivery it. Similarly, if a package is supposed to take four to six weeks to arrive, Canada Post will wait to deliver it until at least four weeks have passed. It doesn't matter when the package arrives at the sorting plant.

How ridiculous is this? Canada Post, you suck.

Also, I'm not allowed to try and trace the package. The seller has to contact the US Postal Service who will then track the package. The fact that they apparently tried to find out if Royal Mail (in the UK) had scanned the package does not fill me with confidence, however. Canada and the UK are not at all the same country.

I'm concerned that something's happened because I know that my postal delivery worker doesn't leave the attempted delivery thingy on my door until the day after the delivery attempt, if I'm not home. I paid a ridiculous amount of shipping for it to take this long to arrive. Sigh.

Finally, I wanted to talk about yesterday's post, because I didn't explain myself very well. Getting excited isn't always good for me, especially if I'm disappointed afterwards. But excitement isn't bad in and of itself; it's only bad when it prevents me from sleeping. When I'm physically tired I'm not able to handle emotional ups and downs. Emotional extremes do leave me feeling tired and if I'm already physically tired, the extra emotional tiredness is too much for me.

So when I say that I'm thinking about tranquilizers for part of this process, I mean that I need to take something so that I sleep when I'm excited so that I don't stay up all or half the night being excited (which is what happened this last time). I've tried to do meditation then but my excited thoughts are out of control and just keep interrupting.

I have no intention of taking tranquilizers all the time or even every night because I don't like them. However, my goal is to make sure that I get the rest I need when exciting house-related stuff happens and if that means I take an ativan or klonopin before bed, then that's what I do. I've never taken sleeping pills - which might be the thing most people would take in this situation - and I don't want to start taking them when important house stuff is going on.

I do need to see my family doctor and when I see him, I'll ask him what else I can do or take to help me sleep and to better handle emotional ups and downs that can't be avoided. Maybe I should take sleeping pills in this case - but I'm not going to try them until he gives me the ok.