sleepless

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Discoveries

Tonight I needed some butter, so I went downstairs to the basement refrigerator and opened the butter… box? cupboard? drawer? It is a little shelf with a door that slides up. Butter cabinet. In any event, there was NO butter in the place where the butter should go. Instead, I found three (3) blocks of extra sharp cheddar cheese.

(Careful readers will remember that I found myself inexplicably! without! cheese! a few weeks ago. Now we know that was a LIE.)

Who put the cheese in the butter tray(?)? That is the question of the day, and a question we shall never answer because a) if I ask my husband he will definitely NOT remember putting cheese in the butter place even if he did, somehow, decide to move all our cheese to a place where no one would ever look for cheese and b) it is actually pretty unlikely that he would do anything with cheese or rearranging refrigerator contents but c) I have NO MEMORY of relocating the cheese to the butter storage space, nor do I think I would EVER consider the butter pantry a good place for anything Not Butter.

Anyway. The cheese expired in August. I gamely opened and have eaten several slices of the block that expired August 28, which was just days ago, so seems within the realm of eatability. Time will tell. The other two blocks went into the garbage. Goodbye cheese. (For reference, the cheese I bought most recently expires in December, so we have had the butter cubicle cheese for A While.)

Aggressive brightsiding: At least I didn’t, like, FORGET to buy cheese???

Another discovery, equal in importance (near zero) if also in inanity (high):

I have been having Severe Right Foot Pain for about a week. At first, I wrote it off to walking on my tiptoes on the treadmill one day. Probably ill-advised, but it seemed like it was “exercising muscles that often get ignored” and also it had absolutely no effect on my calves, the actual muscle I was trying to “tone.” Also, the pain was just on the right foot; the left foot was unaffected. I tried stretches. Doing a sort of lunge stretch, where the right leg is stretched behind the body and the pressure is on the toes/ball of the right foot, was excruciating. I tried massaging my own foot. Difficult. I tried Advil. I tried Tylenol. I tried whining to my husband. The pain persisted.

I decided to Tough It Out and went for a long walk… but halfway through, I was in so much pain – limping, extravagantly, but with my head held high for any onlookers – that I was strongly considering calling my husband to come pick me up. (Are you shocked that I didn’t even allude to the pain in my post about the walk??? Hence is the carefully curated picture of my life I present to you on this here blog.) I did NOT call him; I don’t think he would have gotten out of his pajamas nor piled our child into the car with all the associated whining for much less than an actual broken bone/gunshot wound, plus pride etc.

The next day, I did a lot of couch sitting, with minimal improvement. 

I started googling, and bravely facing several deeply upsetting and highly (im)probable diagnoses.

At the same time, I was having Severe Right Wrist Pain. It’s not like I’ve been writing a lot, and I have actually been trying to cut back on Being On My Phone. So I couldn’t think of any source of the pain (except google-provided neurological diseases, of course). And the pain was so uncomfortable! One day I was trying to eat soup and I could barely hold the spoon! 

Clearly a degenerative nerve syndrome even google couldn’t diagnose.

Then. Last night. 

I woke up at 4:15 (as is my wont; my brain has an un-reset-able internal alarm set for the three- to four-a.m. range, at which point it does crucial worrying about inevitable future deaths of elderly family members and unresolvable political differences with fellow countrypeople and personal embarrassing moments from my past that really, really should have been wiped from the mainframe by now because they do nothing but harm). I was on my left side (this is relevant I promise). I noticed that a) my hand was lodged under my pillow (hence, under my head), at a 90 degree angle from my wrist and b) my right foot was tucked underneath my left calf, in a position that bent my toes forward at an unnatural angle. Hmmmmmm.

I un-wound my limbs from these positions. I lay in bed “trying to sleep” until six o’clock, at which point my alarm went off, I hit snooze, and promptly fell asleep for the nine minutes the snooze lasted and was incensed when the alarm went off again. (My brain is a dick.) 

Even with a less-than-two-hour break, my wrist and foot feel MAGICALLY BETTER.

(Perhaps this is a red herring; we shall see tomorrow. Although… I am not sure I can sleep without performing these contortions. I lay down on the bed yesterday afternoon while Carla was in her post-school bath and my foot naturally leapt to the weird position, so it must be something I do All The Time. And seriously, what is the DEAL? Am I just… clenching every possible body part and staying that way until morning? And how can I POSSIBLY prevent it if I’m SLEEPING? Sure, if I am wakeful all night, I can monitor the situation. And surely, my brain is ready to leap to wakefulness at any moment just to prevent an instant’s pain! Except when I needed it to do so, last week or whenever this took place! Plus, I don’t know if I want to replace Excruciating Foot/Wrist Pain with even less sleep than I am currently getting of a night????)

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Techniques for Falling to Sleep and/or Getting Back to Sleep in the Middle of the Night

My husband and I have started watching The Outsider together. It is not a good program to watch before bed, let me tell you that. The music alone makes me jumpy, but then there’s the very creepy plot and the VERY creepy figure of a biped in a grey sweatshirt with a ruined/inhuman face peeking out from under the darkness of the hood that just STICKS WITH ME. Usually, following an episode with a Schitt’s Creek chaser helps dispel the creepiness, but sometimes it follows me to bed.

Despite this completely voluntary scaring-myself-out-of-my-wits, I have been enjoying a rare period of Good Sleep. It is not untroubled; I am having lots of Weird Dreams. Recently, I had what felt like a very long and drawn out version of that dream where you have exams approaching but you haven’t gone to class all semester and passing this class is necessary for you to graduate. I have not been in college for MANY YEARS, why does my brain persist in torturing me in this manner???? Anyway, by Good Sleep, I mean that I am able to fall asleep fairly easily and then stay asleep all night long. This is highly unusual for me, because I am a very light sleeper and also a champion worrier, and, as we all know, worries swell rapidly in the middle of the night when you have uninterrupted hours to DWELL on them.

But because I am unaccustomed to sleeping well, and because I am posting about this and surely jinxing it, I am sure another period of Fitful Sleep is just around the corner. (In fact, last night, I woke up at two o’clock and had a bit of trouble going back to sleep. Not enough that it was terribly bothersome, but enough that I wondered if the Good Sleep Period is on its way out.) (Cue ominous music.)

Swistle posted recently about having a hard time sleeping. I loved reading the comments, about ways to force yourself to sleep when sleep refuses to descend naturally. I especially loved one person’s suggestion to go through favorite things alphabetically – favorite foods, for instance, or TV shows, or birds, or whatever. That’s one I haven’t tried but sounds lovely.

After pondering it for awhile, I realized that I have been employing a bunch of techniques over the years to help myself get to sleep. Do you have any tried-and-true tactics that you use to fall asleep?

Get-to-sleep techniques that I have used for many years and work often (but not always, hence the multiple options):

1. A walk to/through someplace soothing. My dad gave me this technique decades ago, so it’s the one I’ve used the most. I have a family vacation spot I love, so I imagine myself leaving the house, walking to the car, getting in the car, driving down the driveway, turning onto the road, bumping over the deeply rutted gravel, passing the horse pasture, etc. etc. etc. until I arrive at the lake. The key to this one is to go through every step of the journey, imagining in as much detail as possible the surroundings and the path to get to the destination. I have also done this with the grocery store or Target – leaving my house, driving to the store, then walking through each aisle and naming pleasant/benign things as I put them into my cart. The only risk with the Target option is that I might start thinking about things I actually should get at Target, and that’s more wakeful than restful.

2. Silently reciting a poem. This one takes prep work, obviously. But it has been SO helpful. I use Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and I just go through it line by line until I fall asleep. There was a particularly brutal period in my recent past when I could NOT get to sleep and I would have to go through the poem backwards as well as forwards. I don’t think I could do that anymore, but it was a distracting brain challenge that would eventually lull me into sleep. Perhaps I should get myself a new poem to memorize so I have choices.

3. Deep breathing. This is a technique I learned during a brief stint in therapy a few years ago. It’s for dealing with stress/anxiety, but I find it helpful when I’m trying to sleep, too. In for four counts, hold for four counts, out for four counts, hold for four counts. The counting makes it hard for my mind to drift and the breathing is soothing.

4. Counting my blessings. This one has the potential to create the opposite of the intended mindset, so. Use at your own risk. But I force myself to list things I’m grateful for, even the Very Smallest of Things, like “my husband is not currently snoring” or “someone else changed the toilet paper roll.” (In such cases, it’s critical to list the thing and move on quickly or else you can wind up feeling frustrated and put upon for having to be grateful for something as toilet paper rolls in the first place.) Or sometimes I will think of a loved one and list all the things I like about him/her, from the big (“kind,” “honest,” “wakes up singing”) to the small (“drew me a picture of a cat today,” “beard tickles pleasantly when we kiss”).

5. Mindless reading.This is something I turn to only when desperate, because I’ve read enough warnings about how screens can actually prevent you from sleeping to know better. But in dire cases, I will read something boring or soothing. In the soothing category is going through the archives of a much-loved blog, like Swistle’s or the Ask a Manager blog. (Although the latter can be potentially riling.) Or I will seek out a Wikipedia article on something I have very little interest in, like engines or stained glass or animal husbandry. Best case, I lull myself into sleep. Worst case, I learn something new which I can use to bore others to sleep.

If I absolutely STILL cannot fall asleep, I have found that the next step is getting out of the bed. Use the bathroom. Get a (small) drink of water. Walk around the house, checking on the other sleeping inhabitants. (Not recommended if you are in someone else’s house, or if you are hosting sleeping inhabitants who are not your own non-adult progeny; otherwise you risk troubling other people’s sleep for the rest of their creeped-out lives.)

Making a list often helps. Things that I am worrying about. Things I have to do the next day. Things I want to make for dinner. Things I want to eat right that second. Things I need to buy at Target. The content of the list doesn’t seem to matter as much as the act of list-making.

My Last Resort technique is to change my clothes. New underpants, new pajamas. Maybe I will even brush my hair and re-brush my teeth. It’s like a getting-ready-for-bed do-over.

I suppose the last last resort would be to just get up and start my day. But with all the above get-to-sleep techniques, I haven’t had to do that.

Yet. There’s still time.

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Live from the Middle of the Night!

It is bad enough that I am a very light sleeper. So light that the sound of my niece turning on the lightswitch in the bathroom down the hall jolts me into heart-pounding alertness.

What’s worse is that I cannot fall back to sleep. I am now awake, even though it is not yet four in the morning and even though I only went to bed three hours ago and even though the house is completely dark and no one else – not even my niece – is awake.

Instead, my brain is bouncing around from toe to toe like a boxer psyching herself up for a fight, except that the boxer has just downed an entire crate of 5-hour energy and her opponent is my desire to sleep.

Let’s worry, for awhile, about our security system. Early yesterday, we got a call from our security company to let us know that the power was out in our area. Great, thanks, security company. Allow my blood pressure to drop from Our House Is Being Invaded levels for a moment here. But then, of course, came the worry that our power was out, and we are… not there. My husband looked up the outage and discovered it should be resolved in a couple of hours; sure enough, it was. But then today, we got ANOTHER call from the security company to let us know that the outage had NOT been resolved and our backup battery was running low and we needed to DO SOMETHING. We could not do anything because we aren’t close with our neighbors and our local friends are all also on spring break. So I told them this, fervently hoped that a burglar would not choose this exact moment to break into our house, and said goodbye. But now, at not-quite-four-a.m., I am worrying and worrying and worrying. Maybe the person who said they were from our security company was not, in fact, from our security company… but was trying to scam me? And, yes, their plan was quite elaborate, mirroring the security company’s phone number and all and having two separate people call me, but STILL. It could be a very elaborate burglar. And, even if there is no scammer, what about our poor house, standing empty and unprotected (you know, except by locks and good, observant neighbors)? And what if the power company is WRONG, and our house doesn’t currently have power and our pipes are freezing and our food is all rotting? Of course there is absolutely NOTHING I can do about it, but let’s go over all the nothing options one by one since there is no one awake to entertain me, shall we?

After I finally decide to call the police station tomorrow and ask if they will increase patrols around our neighborhood for the next few days, my mind turns to the much more productive topic of Embarrassing Things I Did and Said During High School.

I turn on my phone and scroll through my news feed.

I turn off my phone and recite poems in my head.

I push my husband because he is snoring.

I go to the bathroom.

I listen very carefully to see if the noise Carla made (she is sleeping on a mat at the foot of our bed) is going to turn into crying; it does not.

I pick up my phone and start scrolling through a favorite blogger’s archives, because they are lovely and soothing, but it turns out I have overused this particular comfort technique because I can’t find any posts I haven’t recently read.

I find a nice long article about the mysterious disappearance of the world’s most famous actress.

Ah, finally. I am starting to drift off to sleep. I close my eyes and… UPPERCUT. My brain pinches me, hard. OMG, I almost fell asleep! Not on my brain’s watch! No way, no how!

Now I am nice and alert to focus on the important work of worrying about an upcoming trip and how hard/awful it will be to leave Carla behind.

Why didn’t I work harder on memorizing more poems???

Oh good. Here are partial lyrics from the Descendants 2 soundtrack to loop through my head instead.

I know! I can fret about the upcoming dinner party! Maybe I should scrap the Tex-Mex theme entirely and go for chicken and salad.

Go to the bathroom.

My husband is doing that thing where he is lying on his back and he has his head resting on his forehead with his elbow up in the air, but it keeps falling over and he keeps jerking it back into position. I push him onto his side.

Is Carla having a nightmare? Is she whimpering?

Are there burglars tiptoeing through my defenseless home right at this very moment?

Dumb Buzzfeed quiz.

Slow slide into sleep… PUNCH TO THE SOLAR PLEXUS. Almost made it there, but my brain swooped in to intervene just in the nick of time!

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

This goes on until seven thirty when my niece wakes up and starts talking with her mom, at which point Carla wakes up, delighted to get to play with her cousin, and I whine to my husband about my sleepless night. Kind man that he is, he takes Carla out into the kitchen and closes the door behind him. But… two minutes later, Carla crashes through the door to get a stuffed animal, and then two minutes after that my husband comes in to get some medicine and I snarl at him to just let me have HALF AN HOUR OF SLEEP FTLOG and lie there fuming at the rapidly-lightening ceiling. And then thirty minutes of no sleep later I angrily get up and start the day.