I had terrible insomnia last night. I almost never have problems sleeping. This was the worst case I've ever had. Could a second cup of coffee at 9 a.m. really render me unable to sleep at 11:30 p.m.? Is that even possible? Because that's the only thing I can think of that could have caused it. I must have the caffeine sensitivity of a white rat.
Anyway, the thing that sucks so much about insomnia is that it's SO BORING. There's nothing to do but lie there and think. I tried my usual falling asleep games:
Cities A-Z: Albuquerque, Butte, Coral Gables, Denver, El Paso.... I feel like I've played this one so many times that I keep using the same cities and it gets too repetitive. So I switched to:
Movies A-Z: Apocalypse Now, Bad News Bears, Chinatown, Death of a Salesman (that must have been a movie at some point, right? I gave myself credit for that).
At around 1:30 a.m., the dog got fed up with my tossing and turning and left to go sleep in the front room.
At around the same time, the bar down the street and around the corner had last call, I guess, so a group of about 8 guys was gathered on the sidewalk near my house smoking and YELLING at each other. Does this happen every night and I just sleep through it?
At 2:00 a.m., I turned the light on and read for a while.
At 2:30, I turned the light off. "Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster the People was now stuck in my head on infinite replay. It's an insanely catchy song, but not exactly what you want running through your head OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER when you want to go to sleep. Just hearing it right now is making me feel kind of queasy and desperate.
At 3:00, I started rationalizing. "If I can fall asleep by 3:30, that'll give me 3 hours of sleep. That should be fine. People with new babies get less than that all the time and nobody dies."
Around 4:00, the dog came back in and got back in bed with me.
I fell asleep sometime after 4:00 and had a dream that I was helping a girl pour champagne for a party in my rec room. I lived in a house with a rec room in this dream.
I woke up at 6:20, 10 minutes before the alarm went off.
Other than some clearly noticeable bags under my eyes, I actually don't feel that bad. But I cannot figure out WTF happened. Weird.
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4 comments:
You miss The Wife, simple as that. Or, her body heat or something more scientific. Pheromones?
Think of the most boring class you had in grade school or high school and try to recreate the experience of sitting through it as vividly as possible in your mind. Only thing that works for me.
Sleep in your bed the other way around (head at the foot of the bed). Or try the couch. Or go through random people's Twitter feeds.
If I have insomnia tonight because of this article I will be pissed.
I'm with idrumgood, and will add that the dog misses her, too. The sleep-time rationalizations are terrible. I generally avoid math, yet find myself calculating then hours to be able to sleep again after my day.
I'm not in this predicament often, so I'll just take a very small amount of Ambien to get me over the hump. Not enough to bring out the Ambien walrus, but once in a while doesn't make it a crutch.
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