Tag: Sleep

Sleepy

There was a stretch of time there overnight when I was pretty convinced I wasn’t going to get to four hours of sleep. I didn’t get to bed until a smidge before 1:00am and it was a little before 5:00am and both of my parents were up and about. Mom was making breakfast and dad was using the bathroom. I would guess I was at about three hours and 45-50 minutes. Almost made it. Then my father went back to bed and a few minutes later my mother was back in bed too and shortly after I was asleep again. The total sleep time ended up being four hours and 35 minutes. I was up before 6:00 and I tried to get my morning bathroom routine done before they got up again. I almost made it. My mother’s bladder interrupted me. That was okay though.

Now at 7:12am I have a load of their laundry running and I am setup for work. I am going to cleanup my sleep station a little and then try to sneak in a little of last night’s The Walking Dead episode (season 11, episode 2). I think I can get it all in before work starts, but I will have to stop a few times for parent duties.

I was out of the office on Friday so I will have some hectic catch up to do once I sign in. That’s normal on the first day back after being out. I know I have some stuff that needs to be done for tomorrow, but I am hoping things are quiet today. I got enough sleep to be able to handle whatever the universe throws at me. It’s just a question of when I run out of gas. I am going to try to conserve enough energy to make it to 9:00-10:00pm tonight.

Fingers crossed, my dear readers*.

*In my silly attempt to paraphrase Stephen King’s regular greeting to his readers (what does he write? Loyal readers? Something like that) I misspelled “readers” as “reasers” and left it that way through a full proof read even though the Chrome spell check flagged it as an error. Oh yeah, we gone have a fun wun tuhday.

Why?

It’s 12:38 am and I’m still awake. Why? Why am I still awake?

I took a vacation day tomorrow because Bellana is coming over. She’s not going to be here until close to noon though, so I technically can sleep super late without screwing anything up. I do want to get some car music in though, so I should get up early.

Examining the potential consequences of still being awake at 12:42 am does not answer the pertinent question of why.

We may never know the answer.

Bummer.

Last Night Sucked

Last night sucked but I think it was all in my head. At least I don’t know if my reaction to the situation was appropriate, or was it a huge overreaction. It honestly doesn’t matter, the night just sucked.

I didn’t sleep much on Monday night. By the time I finished up my parent sitting duties (around 8:00pm) I was really tired and starting to get crabby. When my mother started dozing off in the living room I tried a couple of times to get her to go to bed. At one point she actually said she was going to bed and then fell back to sleep. My father offered me the TV remote when the Sox game ended. Not because he was going to sleep, just because he was being nice. I knew he wanted to watch the news so I let him. That was the last I saw of the remote.

When did my temper tantrum start? After 10:00, at least. Maybe around 11:00? I really needed to sleep, that’s all. I know they are both half deaf and crank the TV volume, I know they put the TV on as background noise (my mother’s TV is on right now even though she’s not in the room with it), I just really needed to go to sleep.

My father woke up a little before 1:00 and turned off the TV. He also turned off the air conditioner, so you win some and you lose some, I guess. My mother was still asleep on the recliner but I didn’t care anymore. I turned on the light in her room and lowered the volume on the TV. I didn’t turn it off because I’m pretty sure if I did she would not be able to turn it back on by herself. I wanted her to be able to have enough light to get back to her room if she needed to, but I sure as hell turned off the light in the living room before wiring myself up to the CPAP and going to sleep. I woke up a little less than four hours later, because I always wake up after a little less than four hours when I am on that piece of shit love seat that passes for a couch, and she was in bed with the TV and the light both off. I was able to go back to sleep eventually and I ended up with 4.75 hours of sleep. Yipdy-fucking-doo.

My mother was up long before I was. After she finished her morning routine I went into the bathroom to do mine. When I walked in there, I knew my father’s piss jug (they gave him one at the hospital to take home in case he has an emergency in the middle of the night and can’t get himself up in time) was half full. I made a note that I would empty it for him before I got him his 8:00am pills. When I got out of the shower the piss jug was empty. No one walked into the bathroom while I was in there. If they had, they might have seen me throw a temper tantrum over the empty bottle of shampoo, but no one did. I have to assume that means one of them, most likely my mother because I’m pretty sure my father didn’t stand up until around 8:20, dumped the jug full of piss down the kitchen sink. So remind me not to put anything in the fucking kitchen sink today.

…and after all that, I get to punch into work now. Woo-fucking-hoo.

Yes, I am probably overreacting to everything. I honestly don’t care. I am due for a temper tantrum or 12.

Oops

I wear my AppleWatch over night to track my sleep data. I charge it to 100% before I go to bed, then put it on when I turn in.

At 11:45 I decided it was time for sleep. That’s when I realized I never charged my watch.

Think I’ll stay up a little longer.

Oops, dumbass.

Feels Like Home

Last night was pretty quiet. My mother fell asleep sitting up on the side of her bed. She was like that for over an hour. I woke her up and told her she should lie down or she was going to hurt her back. She told me she hadn’t been sleeping and that I was crazy. Now she’s complaining about how much her back hurts.

My father didn’t sleep terribly well either. He has some aches and pains but I am not sure that is what was bothering him. I heard him sleeping and waking off and on. He’s supposed to take some Metamucil with his morning pills. He’s complaining that I made it too thick. Sorry, dad.

I went to bed a little earlier than I usually do when I am here. I turned in at 11:15 or so. I woke up a little before 4:00am again. That keeps happening. This time I woke up on my own. Both of my parents were sleeping. I didn’t fall back to sleep until sometime around 4:30 and then I stayed under until about 6:00. I got five hours and 45 minutes of sleep. That’s like hitting the jackpot around here.

I got up and started getting ready for the day. I showered, packed up my dirty laundry, packed up my CPAP machine, and took it all out to the car. That’s when a little piece of home followed me here.

I often bitch about the friggin’ wildlife in our yard getting into our trash barrels. It’s pretty common for them to knock them over and scatter shit all over the place. As I was walking back from the car to the house I saw that something knocked over one of my parents’ trash barrels. I got to have the homey experience of cleaning all of their shit off the yard too. Hooray.

The home health worker is going to be a little late today. She should be here around 9:15. I only have two short meetings on my schedule today. I am seriously hoping for a quiet day at work. Yesterday wasn’t bad, but overall I really need things to go simply and smoothly today. I can already feel my fuse getting shorter and shorter. I just need to keep my head down and not lose my shit over something irrelevant.

Duck and cover, everyone. Here comes Friday the 13th. In the immortal words of that guy Samuel L Jackson played in Jurassic Park, hold on to your butts.

Wednesday Morning

Happy Wednesday everyone. I’m not sure why, but I woke up pretty convinced it was Friday. I even checked YouTube to see if there was a new episode of That Pedal Show. That is not what I would call a positive omen for the remainder of the week.

I posted already that mom was asleep before 9:00pm last night and that one of the mouse traps was tripped without catching anything. I was asleep by 11:30 and hoping that I might be able to snag a six hour night. Not quite.

I woke up about 1:45am. I’m not sure what it was that woke me up, but my mother was awake too. She got up to turn off the light in the kitchen (the same one that she leaves on most nights) and when she saw that I was awake she asked for a pain pill. I was pretty nervous that the boom was about to be lowered right onto us but she did go back to bed right away. She didn’t go to sleep. She sat up in the dark for a while, then turned on the light, then after a short time turned it off again. I sat up waiting for some sign that she was asleep. It didn’t really come. I was still up at 2:45 and made the judgement call that things had been quiet for long enough that I could sleep.

I woke up once more, about an hour and a half later, but fell right back to sleep. The alarm woke me up at 6:00. I’ve been taking overnight nana sitting shifts since… April? I think? That was the first time I have needed the alarm. Every other time I’ve woken up at some grotesquely early hour and just stayed up. While it’s true that the alarm on my iPad scared the ever loving shit out of me when it went off, it was nice to have needed it. I still only ended up with about 5.5 hours of sleep. I was really hoping to hit six. Six hours is a bit of a magic number. 6.5 is noticeably better, and 7+ is the goal, but six is nice.

Anyway. It’s almost time for work. The doors have been switched from alarm to chime, the 8:00am pills have been taken (though she’s complaining about pain already… come on morning pain med, kick in!), the mousetrap has been reset (though I think the trigger was bent a little when it snapped closed last night and it seems to be hanging on by a thread right now. Is that good? Does that mean it will take less pressure from Mickey to close again? Or is it bad because Mickey won’t be in a good position when it goes off and he’ll get away again?), and the universe has been updated with the goings on at Chez Parental.

Time for work. Have a good one, everyone. I’ll check in later. I’m sure you can’t wait.

Bedtime

My mother was asleep by 9:00 tonight. Thank goodness. There was no pain outbreak. Now we just have to hope she sleeps through the night.

One of the mouse traps was tripped about an hour ago. Nothing in it. There is still at least one Mickey among us. Great. I paid for a single but I guess I have a roommate.

I’m going to sleep. Fingers crossed I can get 6-7 hours of good sleep. Yippee.

Friday

Lunchtime on Friday. This is about where the last couple of Fridays have blown up in our faces. It’s been very quiet today (too, too quiet) and I am optimistic that the quiet trend will continue for another three hours and 45 minutes or so (I hope).

It really hasn’t been a long day, but somehow it sort of feels like a long day. I might just be overly tired but I can’t quite put my finger on whatever it is I am talking about. I think I need a weekend. Preferably a long weekend, but I don’t have one of those on the books until September. I’ll have to settle for a normal weekend.

I think I have four more cans of Diet Pepsi flavored caffeine in this house. That should be more than enough to get me through the work day. I have a meeting at 2:00, and the next round of meds is also at 2:00… so I guess she’s getting her meds a couple of minutes early.

I’m here at my parents today. I will be home around 7:00. Then tomorrow evening I come back here and stay until Sunday evening. Then I am working in the office on Monday. Then I come back here on Tuesday evening. Shit, man. I need this to end. I have a doctors appointment on Tuesday, but that falls squarely in the none-of-your-business file for now. Maybe someday I’ll mention that again. Nothing bad, just not shareable at this time. It’s all part of needing my father to be well enough to come home and then figuring out how to move forward from there. Plans are being fabricated. Actions are being researched. You know, the whole drill.

I wanna go home.

Four Hours of Sleep

I got four hours of sleep last night. I finally conked out around 1:30am and I had the alarm set for 6:30. I was banking on five hours but I woke up at 5:30 and that was it. I couldn’t fall asleep again then, but I bet you a dollar that if I tried right now, now that I am up and showered and setting up for my work day, I would blink out in less than a second. Stupid sleep cycles.

I just did a caffeine check. There are seven 12 ounce cans of Diet Pepsi in this house. Three in the fridge and four in the 12-pack box on the floor next to me. I think that will be enough to keep me functioning until bed tonight.

You can do it, red head! You can do it!

Okay, the clock just struck 8:00am. Time to reset the door alarms and give my mother her morning meds.

Wednesday, here we come!