Tag: insomnia

Dolly Parton Stole My Car

The other night, I went to bed early. I woke up at 3 am ish and had difficulty getting back to sleep. I managed to doze off again around 5 am, so I had just a mini sleep until the alarm went off.

I had a dream that Dolly Parton came into the auto repair store where I was working. She had a gaggle of bodyguards with her. Her car wasn’t running, so I had to find a mechanic to help her. There were none to be found! I was running all over to find one, then I came back to find that they had taken my car!

Of course, I don’t know where Dolly came from in my noggin. I don’t know why I was working in an auto repair place, either. I also don’t know how they fit all those huge bodyguards into my little teeny car.

A history of math night

A little while ago, I wrote about an audiobook called A Short Account of the History of Mathematics. It was recorded to help people sleep and it works.

Lately, my insomnia has been awful. I will sleep for a couple of hours and then I’ll be awake for a couple of hours, wide awake. I have been referring to these nights as history of math nights. After I get fed up with being awake, I’ll turn the audiobook on and I’ll generally be asleep within 15 minutes.

I have to give kudos to whoever thought of recording this. It works wonders when I need it. There’s another one that works for me, too, The Perfect Swing. It just doesn’t have the same ring to it as history of math night.

Sleeping difficulties

I have always been an awful sleeper. I need time to relax before sleep. Then, once I’m asleep, I only sleep for two or three hours and then I wake up because my bladder says so. Occasionally, I’m able to get back to sleep right away, but usually I’m awake for an hour or two before I doze off.

4 full sized pillows, back rest wedge , two decorative pillows, and a form fitting neck pillow now cover my bed, in an effort to make me more comfortable at night. Plus, I have my book seat which makes sure that my book or Kindle is comfy and at my fingertips in case I have insomnia, which is likely.

This usually works reasonably well, until I start fighting with the pillows. It seems that they manage to offend me in my sleep and I find them all over the room in the morning. One time, I woke up mid argument with them. Who says I don’t usually remember my dreams?

I do not take sleep meds because my bladder is usually what’s waking me up at night. I really don’t want to sleep through that. I’ll just continue arguing with my pillows and waking up to pee during the night. I’ll keep the Kindle handy.

Sleep intermission

My body does not appreciate sleeping through the night. Usually it’s my bladder that wakes me up.

I have a friend who is a few hours ahead of who sometimes chats with me while I can’t get back to sleep. The other night, while I was awake, he asked me if I was chatting during intermission. I think I like that better than insomnia. Sleep intermission is what I’ll be calling it from now on.

4 am editing

I don’t always sleep well.  I wake up at all hours of the night.  The worst time to wake up is 4 am.  It doesn’t leave a lot of time to fall back asleep and get up on time for work.

Sometimes, I attempt to edit blog posts that I have started and haven’t published.  I can’t sleep, so I may as well be productive, right?

The problem with early morning editing is that I am not usually awake enough to be coherent.  I usually have to edit again once I’m fully awake.  I have had a few slip through and I have friends kind enough to point the errors out, or they ignore the errors.  If they are pointed out, I do attempt to fix the errors.  That’s what friends are for, right?

 

Doing a favor for a friend

A friend asked me to do a favor for her at 4 am today. I said no problem. Alarms all set, I went to sleep. I woke up at 1 am, and realized that it was possible she meant 4 am Eastern time. Yup! Thankfully, I realized it in plenty of time to get it done. Now I get to sleep in, feeling accomplished.

In theory, that is. I got the order done, but the card I tried to use didn’t want to work, so I had to fully wake up to figure out why and what to do. Then I tried to email her the confirmation that I’d accomplished my middle of the night task, but my address book on my email account decided that it wasn’t going to work. I had to hand type her email address in. Thankfully, I knew it, but suddenly blanked on if it was yahoo or gmail. I guessed right.

Of course, by then I had to get up and use the bathroom, because what else does one do in the middle of the night?

I got back in bed and had to find extra blankets since our heatwave finally broke and my toes were cold.

I didn’t eat much dinner because I wasn’t hungry at dinner time. I don’t want to get up and eat at this time of night because I don’t want to let my stomach think that it’s an option. I’ll drink water, so I’ll have to get up and use the bathroom again in an hour or so.

I don’t know where my purse is with my kindle on it, and I don’t want to fall asleep with my reading light on, so I decided to write here instead of read. It didn’t make me tired, though. I think I’m going to have to bite the bullet and find the purse.

Now that I’ve found the purse by getting up and turning on the light, I should be fully awake.

And I just remembered that my daughter reminded me right before bedtime that I told her I’d drive her and a friend somewhere with no parking in the morning. At least her version of morning starts closer to noon than most people’s version of morning.

It’s 2 am now. I am going to stop writing and read for a little while. Hopefully I’m tired enough that a little while won’t take me to morning. Goodnight!

Insomnia?

(sleeping in two shifts)

The above linked article talks about sleeping in shifts.  People used to sleep when it got dark, and sleep for a few hours.  Then they’d get up and do something.  Pray, meditate, have sex, etc.  Then, the second phase of sleep would begin and last until morning.

It was not until recently that people tried to sleep through the night.  Plus, they were able to stay up later, because of modern lighting.

I have been thinking about this article and I wonder if what we currently call insomnia is just our bodies going into natural sleep patterns.  Now, in the gap between first and second sleep, we have the option to do more things, because we can see what is going on.  TV, reading, etc.  Are we supposed to be waking fully and doing these things, naturally?  The article was very interesting to me.  It is worth reading.

6:28

Usually, my alarm is set for 6:30 am on a weekday. I am usually awake before then, but it is a reminder to stop reading or whatever and get ready for work.

Inky, my nap buddy, feline alarm clock, etc, doesn’t have a watch. We thought about it, but, since she can’t tell time, there really isn’t much point in getting her one.

Occasionally, both cats team up and wake me to tell me that they are starving at 4:30 am. We have almost solved this problem by giving them dinner as the last person goes to bed.

Inky now has a new trick. At 6:28 am, she jumps from the bedroom door onto my bladder. I don’t even look at the clock, because I know exactly what time it is. Today, I was supposed to be able to sleep in until 9:30. Nope. 6:28 was it. Thanks, Inky.

An urgent nap at 4 am

It was 4 am. I was sound asleep. Suddenly, there is pressure behind my knees, which woke me. The next thing I know, I have a 14 pound ball of fur attempting to snuggle up under my chin and climb under the blanket. I wiggled her in until I was comfortable and we both went to sleep. I thought. Ten minutes later, she decided to climb out and nap on my back, putting pressure on my bladder.

I stayed like that for a while, then I couldn’t wait to take the pressure off the bladder. I moved the napper and wandered off to the bathroom, got water, and went back to bed. The napper decided that the nap wasn’t as urgent anymore and got water of her own.

Now we’re both awake. I am going to read a bit, but I’m assuming that as soon as I fall asleep again, her nap will become urgent again.