Counting down

NaBloPoMo has just 5 more days to run. Yay! I'm almost there.

I spent the vast majority of the past weekend in bed, dozing off and on. I slept even more poorly than usual last week, and I felt like I needed the rest. Sunday, then, I woke up at 3 AM with a headache that lasted until about 7 PM.

So how is it that I'm so tired on a Monday morning?

Burn The Day

That's from a Dave Matthews Band song, and I'm misquoting it there. The line is actually "DON'T burn the day away".

I'm not heeding his advice. I'm tired, haven't slept well all week and ya know what? The house can be cleaned tomorrow. So say I!

If you will excuse me, I'm off to take a nap.

An ugly - and sadly familiar - demon rears its head

I've had trouble sleeping for years.  Long years, as in perhaps more than ten.

I hate to say it thusly, but 'tis true; this started happening when DH and I had been dating for a while.  A year.  Maybe slightly more or less.  Was he the source of stress?  What-ever!  No, of course not.  

The problem started with me falling asleep at his house, waking up, and driving home around 1:30 or 2:00 AM.  Then I'd have problems falling back asleep.  Then I'd get up the next day and start all over again.

This went on for years, quite literally, until we got married.  Once we lived in the same space, I didn't have to wake up and drive anywhere in the middle of the night, but my body couldn't get used to that.  Additionally, our first apartment was above ground, and my bedroom at my parent's house was in the cellar.  The dark, cool, silent cellar.  Every single outside noise woke me; cars, wind, the birds, rain, the early morning light....

After we'd been married for a year or so, the stress level at Ye Olde Evile Bank ratcheted up by 1000%, and I had trouble sleeping because of the worries and woes of work.  Fights, ahem, "discussions" were had about DH's alarm at that time, too; he sets it for almost 2 hours before he gets up.  Oh, yes, he plans to be out of bed at 4 AM and off to work, but that seldom if ever happens, and his alarm wakes me during those last few precious hours of sleep.  He, however, falls back asleep, and then leaps out of bed at 6:30, rushes around frantically, and makes it to work at 7.  Not that the alarm thing still irritates me all these years later.  Nope.  Not at all.  Have I mentioned that he sleeps like the dead?  I'm more jealous of that than annoyed over the alarm thing, honestly.  Wish I could too.

It was then that I started investigating alternatives to OTC sleeping pills, which I leaned on back then when I'd slept badly for a few nights in a row.  I've listed so many times the things I've tried for sleep:  melatonin.  Lavender.  Chamomile.  Valerian Root.  None of it worked well.

I changed jobs, and then we moved out of that horrible apartment.  The stress at the new job was different, and at first I thrived on it.  But later, around the end of 2005, it got so much worse.  The death of my old non-profit job was a slow and painful thing, like watching someone die of cancer that wastes away a vibrant person and leaves a nearly skeletal shell.  

By that time, I'd tried both Lunesta and Ambien, and discovered the wonders of prescription sleep aids.  Ambien has always been my favorite.  It is like turning off a light; BAM, you're out, blissful unawareness for at least a few hours.

As the deterioration of my beloved non-profit escalated, and I got progressively more depressed, sleep was such a wonderful refuge.  When I could sleep, that is.  Mostly, I got an hour or two, and then I'd be awake worrying about things outside of my control.

A quick aside here; the meds seem to help with the worrying.  I worry less about a lot of things, and I know that's the medication, not me mellowing with age.

When I was unemployed, when my world finally imploded, I slept a little better because I could sleep whenever I wanted.  I'd sleep until 10 or 11 AM, and then I'd go work out, come home, spend some time surfing the J-man forums, look half-heartedly for work, made dinner for DH, and wait for him to go to sleep so I could go back to the forums.

In 2007, my Auntie H got really sick, and I was on night duty at the hospice.  That further messed up my internal clock.  After she passed away, I started working that horrible sales job, and we all know what a really shitty year June of 2007 through June of 2008 was for me.  The winter of 2008 was easily the hardest of my life, bar none, and I relied on Ambien for getting more than 2 hours of sleep.

My work now is different again from anything else I've previously done, and I love it.  Wholeheartedly, but my entire life is not wrapped up in it, as it was at the old non-profit.  This job is super-stressful in short bursts, and in between, is not so horrible for stress.  But years of bad sleep habits are hard to break.

Spending more than a month in Europe isn't helpful either.  That 6 hour time difference...hooo boy, does it mess with MY head.  I dunno if it bothers everyone else the same way, but I've been home for more than a week now, and at 3 PM in Ohio, its 9 PM in Sweden, and I think it is bedtime.  I didn't get to bed in Sweden even one night of the entire trip before 10 PM, but I'd be ready to end the day before that most of the time.  So at dinner-time here, I'm dragging.  But at midnight, its time to get up!  

I slept better there than I do at home.  I'm unsure of exactly why, but there are a few solid reasons.  One, I had the window open in my room, wherever I was staying, almost every night.  Cool nights and cool rooms make for wonderful sleep conditions.  Two, we had 16-18 hour 'work' days.  You slept when and where you could, and I'd sleep pretty solidly 5 hours at a time.  Home, its rare I get more than 3 hours at a time.  Three, the stress I was under in Sweden is a vastly different thing that here in the states.  What I did there was often emotionally exhausting, and I think I'll write about that more soon.  But you were essentially "on," being cheerful and friendly and agreeable whenever you were awake.  That does take its toll on you, but it isn't the same as worrying about work.

I'm tired.  So, so tired.  But not sleepy.  After midnight, with a spring thunderstorm raging outside, and I'm chillin'.  Relaxed, in my jammies, at home.  I am not, however, asleep.  As the Brits say:  BUGGER!

Night-time/Fright-time

Here is mistake #1: I picked up a new Stephen King paperback at, of all places, the grocery store the other day.  I love him; he's talented, spins a hell of a tale, and he scares the crap outta me.  So I haven't read much of his work.  

When I was 10/11, a girlfriend had a book of short horror stories at the community pool one day, and I read one titled "One For The Road" by Mr. King.  "Salem's Lot" grew out of One For The Road, or so urban legend tells.  I read that story sitting on the grass in the sun, surrounded by happily screaming kids and splashes.  It almost makes it more sinister, somehow, to read it in the bright light of day than during a dark and stormy night.

I've read about 100 pages into "Duma Key" and although the really scary hasn't started yet, he does an incredible job of building the suspense and giving you hints of what's to come.  It is captivating, and I felt immediate empathy for the main character, someone I should not really be able to relate to: he (yes, he) is a middle-aged white guy, survivor of a terrible accident that left him with brain damage and just one arm. 

Of course, I was reading before sleeping, and when I finally turned out the light....guess what happened?  I heard every little noise the house makes and reacted with terror.  We're using a small space heater in the bedroom to warm the room a little, and therefore keep the bedroom door closed.  I could swear that I heard it creaking open, could see it moving bit by bit, was certain that there was someone there.  I started thinking about Dean Koontz's character Odd Thomas, and the evil spirits Odd can see, bodachs I think he calls them.  Scaring myself further, of course.

Eventually, I calmed down enough to doze off, only to be jerked awake when DH rolled out of bed and went downstairs for something.  I realized that I was being ridiculous, and that were someone really hiding behind the door, DH would have run smack into them.  So I fell asleep, finally.

A few hours later, I was dragged back to consciousness by a dream that had my heart pounding.  In the light of day, it seems so silly.  I was dreaming about my old non-profit job, and the board of directors.  Technically, every board member was my boss, and believe me, they acted like it.  In reality, I reported to the chair and vice chair, and as long as they were happy with me, I mostly didn't sweat the details when another board member was angry with me.  The chair was very supportive of me, had my back every time.  

As with every job you'll ever have, there were a few board members in particular that I wasn't really fond of.  I used to joke to friends that two board members would call each other before the board meetings and decide whose turn it was to attack Lucy during the board meeting.  Both women.  And both of them intimidated the hell out of me, although I was careful to not let them know that.  There was The Society Matron, old money and proud of it, who thought the rest of the world existed to serve her, and there was The Old Battle-Axe, a career woman and someone who was angry, bitter, and nasty.  She ruled her department with terror and threats, and man-oh-man I couldn't stand her.

The dream ended with one of The Old Battle-Axe's flunkies telling me that she expected to see me immediately, and that I was in for a hell of a meeting.  She was mad.

Heart racing, gasping for breath, I sat up in bed and attempted to just breathe for a minute.  I haven't seen The Old Battle-Axe for more than a year.  Haven't spoken to her in around 8 months.  (Thank you, gentle goddess!) And yet, she has apparently retained the ability to terrorize me.

No more.  Not ever again.

While trying to go back to sleep, I visulized her shrinking, from oversized and looming over me to smaller and shorter and eventually just the size of an ant.  Where she can be squashed if she ever tries to terrorize my dreams again!

A derth

Normally, I have no trouble a'tall coming up with things to write about.  Lately, though, I've got no inspiration.  

Maybe that's not quite the word I'm searching for.  I have inspirations, they just don't get written down, and then when I sit down in front of the computer, there's a giant blank in my head.  I'm spending almost no time in front of the computer at home in the evenings, which is when I've done my writing for years now, so not much gets done.

I'm tired.  Not depressed-tired, thankfully.  Bone-weary tired.  And I don't even have kids!  On evenings when I'm able, I've been heading to bed around 8 pm, which is early, even for me.  There are weeks where I've got something going on every night after work, and then the 8 pm bedtime slips later, sometimes until 11.  Then, I'm exhausted for the next several days.  I'm getting more sleep than I have for years....last night, somewhere around 7 hours.  Uninterrupted sleep is something I've not gotten since I was a teen, and I dream of a day when I get more than 3 hours of sleep at a stretch, but I'll take the 7 hours, happily.  And yet, I'm still tired.  I find that utterly mystifying.

I saw something I wanted to write about the other day, and the image keeps haunting me, so I'm going to take a stab at it.

I get to spend some time on a college campus, and I treasure that time, mostly.  People-watching is perhaps my favorite sport in the whole world.  Since I was a very young child, I've made up stories about the things I see, chance interactions between people that are completely out of context for me.  I never know these people, and I'm possibly reading more or less into the interactions I see.  But that is part of the fun, if you ask me.  Students entertain me a lot.  Drama, drama, and more drama envelop their daily lives, hormones and emotions running so high.  I remember well that time in my own life, when everything was both fantastic and catastrophic all at once.  Students annoy me too, I want to bemoan their lack of courtesy, not holding a door open for someone behind them, or purposefully blocking a hallway, or being overly loud when it is completely unnecessary.

Like every other season all year long, fall is unpredictable in Oh-hia-ia.  We can have beautiful days where the temperature hovers just below 70 (~19 or 20 C) with very low humidity, not a cloud in the perfectly autumnal blue sky, or we have days where it is dark, grey, overcast, 40 (4C), and raining.  I treasure those beautiful fall days, when there is a crisp chill in the early mornings, and the leaves are their riot of fall color, scarlet, orange, yellow.  You learn to dress in layers, because while the morning is chilly, by the time you're heading home it is too warm for jackets and long sleeves.

Late one afternoon, I saw two students standing right in the middle of a sidewalk, embracing one another.  They were polar opposites; the girl was short, chubby, cherubic cheeks, blonde, dressed in jeans an a dark long-sleeved shirt, colors so muddy that they might have blended into the background.  The boy was tall and skinny, dark curly hair, dressed in the colors of the Ohio State University, scarlet and grey, shorts and a t-shirt.

He was cradling her, so gently, rocking back and forth a little.  I wasn't close enough to hear them, so I imagined that he was comforting her after a difficult test, or just a rough day.  They pulled apart, still holding on to one another, and he said something to her.  She nodded, and he pulled her close again, and I was reminded of the way we comfort one another at funerals, when words are incredibly useless and we feel so helpless.

I watched as they stepped back from one another and walked away from me, down the sidewalk.  They walked close to one another, but not touching, not holding hands, which is why I assumed that they weren't lovers, the body language hadn't indicated to me that they were anything more than good friends.  

I've been haunted by that simple image of kindness for almost a week now, it pops into my head from time to time.  I wonder; were they friends who hadn't seen one another for a long time?  Were they a couple, and breaking up?  Or was I right, she just had a hard day?  

Why do I keep thinking of those two?  It was a mystery to me for a couple of days, but then I realized that I was so moved by what I saw for two reasons.  One, it was an incredibly intimate moment, a private moment.  They had no idea I was watching.  I hasten to add that it was not with malicious intent that I watched, just idly curious.  Two, you don't often see such kindness on display.  

How sad.

So I challenge you.  Do something extraordinarly kind.  For a stranger, for someone you love, for a friend.

I mizzes you!

Once upon a time, I kvetched that returning to work full time after being laid off last summer was going to cut into my available blogging time.

And then some!!

Now I'm not only working full time, I'm staying late at work, working through my lunch time, excited about what I'm doing for a living, into a routine that has me not spending any time at all on the 'puter in the evenings. I'm behind on a whole lot of correspondence, both real-world and webby.

I miss my writing. I miss working on the book, which I haven't done since March. That's a whole 'nother story....but y'all know I luurves me a tangent.

My fears of being less prolific a writer when I'm in a better mental state turned out to not be unfounded. I think, unfortunately, that when I'm in a bad mental place, I'm a better writer. There's a fine, fine line between depths of despair and that place where I was churning out 10-15 pages of the novel a day, though. This past winter, I was perhaps more of a mess than I was in the spring of 2007, when I admitted that there was a problem and I needed some help.

Doc gave me an additional anti-depressant this past winter to add to my med regimen, and it helped, but not a lot. I couldn't write, hell, I could barely get out of bed. The days got longer, though, and the sun returned from its winter hiatus. I started to feel better, the job situation started to look like it might change (I think the old job was at least 85% of the problem) and suddenly, whoa, I was feeling like I wasn't worthless any more.

But the creative spark hasn't come back from wherever it disappeared to at the end of last summer. Writing here on the blog has never been a problem. The problem is that the fiction writing isn't happening. The novel writing came from nowhere, and disappeared back into nowhere. I miss that, but I accept it (well, mostly), because I no longer feel so horrible.

I also miss writing a daily update here on the blog. I regret that I haven't had a lot of time for it since I started this new dreamy job. My dad has something that he's said my entire life that I mostly am annoyed by, although it is true. Dad says, "Everyone has the same amount of time. 24 hours in a day. It is about what you choose to do with that time." Lately, I've been choosing to sleep a little more and blog a little less. I like sleep! And I'm managing it without nightly sleeping pills. I do still take them, but not every night. Thankfully, because I think they're more dangerous for the potential of dependence than the anti-d's.

I'm constantly thinking of ideas for blog posts, thinking about ways to turn the things I see and think about into snapshots of life, stories that I can tell. But by the time I get home each night, I'm wiped out, in need of sleep to face the next day. There are posts galore sitting in my mental queue, even a few that I've scribbled ideas into Google Docs, but they haven't been finished. I miss it, I miss reading everyone else's blogs, I miss all of ya!

Still here, doing much better, working! But that doesn't mean I'm not thinking about you. I am. More soon.

These

Other than as an excuse to casually mention how cute Jared and Jensen are, I don't normally write or talk about paranormal activities, or ghosts, or psychic phenomena. People already think I'm crazy, y'all; I don't need to help them out by treating them to chapter and verse about ESP. Right?

I also don't like to write about my dreams. While sometimes it is fascinating to have a peek into someone else's psyche by reading about their dreams, sometimes it is less interesting than watching paint dry, too. So I tend to think that unless the dreams relate to something that is going on in my life, I don't give a daily run-down of what I dreamed about last night.

But I'm breaking both of those rules today. And most likely, when my mother reads this post (Hi Mom!) she will call DH on the sly and perhaps suggest that I ought to be committed. I already know how completely insane this is going to sound, but I need to get it out of my head and into some semblance of order so that I can deal with it, or explain it.

Going back as far as my elementary school days, I've had dreams that have happened. Not "dreams come true" like you always wanted Barbie's Mini-Camper and you got it. Dreams like drinking coffee with a relative and having a conversation that subsequently takes place.

Freaky, right? I've always thought so. It doesn't happen often, but it makes me sit up and take notice when it does happen.

These aren't life-changing events; I didn't dream about my wedding day, or graduating from college, finding that all-important first job. I dream about finding something out of order, or picking things up, or small chance conversations. Then, when that instance does happen, I get a shot of ice down my spine and a deja vu moment.

I've never really talked to anyone about this; I had a teacher in middle school who told the class that very intelligent people sometimes dream about how to handle a particular situation in advance. This was a class of high-IQ kids, and I just sort of shrugged my shoulders and went on, because these were never stressful situations that I'd dreamed about.

It hasn't come up in therapy because, hello, about 300 other things that need worked on first before we start talking about some fringe pseudo-science.

Getting ready to leave the house today, I was winding up a few balls of yarn that I am carrying around as I work on my next knitting project. I'm using a very vividly coloured ombre yarn that shifts from a flame orange to a dark maroon. (Don't ask me how, but it works, it is very pretty. Just go with it, ok?) I frogged out a scarf that I didn't like the finished project to add that yarn to my current project, and whilst ripping out the old project, I ended up with 3 or 4 balls of the ombre. I quit knitting late last night, and left it all in a mess. When I was getting ready to go this morning, I wound one section of the yarn, red, orange, maroon, green, and bam! there was that deja vu again.

(N.B. frogged: knit-speak for tearing out knitted rows, ripping back to before a mistake, or to unravel completely the finished product. Frogged because you have to 'rip-it, rip-it, rip-it')

Now you could say, c'mon, Luce, how often do you wind up balls of yarn that have gotten all messy, and you've used this particular stuff before, so clearly, this is something that you've got yourself all psyched out over for nothing.

And I would agree with you, except for the fact that I always wind yarn the same way, but this morning I was doing it in a different manner, and it was that configuration of the yarn twined around my fingers that sparked the 'oh, I've been here before' sensation.

For many years, I tried to keep track of these events to see if something "important" happened that same day that I had the deja vu, or if there was some pivotal moment in the weeks afterward. I never did discover a pattern.

So I am left with a vague sense of foreboding, that there's some event on the horizon.

Or that could just be the crazy talking.

Gain

I had been avoiding my bathroom scale. Tossing dirty clothes and towels on top of it to cover it up, so I'd forget it was there. Except that didn't work; whenever I got up to use the potty in the middle of the night, the glass disc where you stand would be glinting out from under all the dirty clothes in the light of the night-light. "I'm still heeeeeeerreee!" it would whisper to me at 2 AM. "I know you're avoiding meeee!"

For good reason, too. I have gotten out of the habit of daily gym, run on the treadmill, stretch, do crunches, do push-ups (getting rid of that flabby upper arm was priority #1, and push-ups are the only way I know to do it), do some yoga, and then move on with my day. Out of that habit for a handful of reasons, absolutely not one of them a 'good' reason, they're all excuses.

In the dark part of the winter, when the snow and the cold and the dark began to seriously wear on me, there just wasn't much point to my depressed mind, in getting out of bed. Then starting the Lexapro in addition to the Wellbutrin, in an effort to pull me out of one of the darkest periods of my life *ever,* the Lex made me tired. Really, really, really tired. I took the Lex for two months, during which time it seems to have managed to completely change my internal clock/diurnal rhythms to no longer an early morning person.

No, I did not consult with my doc or the shrink about discontinuing the Lex. The simple fact is that it was too expensive to add to my med regimen, and since it was making me sleep more and be even more reluctant to get out of bed, it seemed to me the better part of wisdom to give it up. I'm doing all right without it. I think that's mostly because the days are longer and the weather is better, not because I no longer need it. I'd be trying to fool both you and myself should I claim otherwise.

So not a single one of those is a good reason for being out of the habit of working out. Let's call a spade a spade, then, and call it what it really is: laziness, and my usual self-defeatist principals working against something good happening. The fact that I can recognize this for what it is, though, shows that therapy = progress.

When I did finally bite the bullet, and step on the scale (first thing in the morning, after using the restroom, not a single bite to eat beforehand, and not wearing a stitch of clothing) I thought I was prepared for it to show a higher number. The clothes that had been loose are fitting fine or in some cases are snug, so I knew I'd gained some weight. 5-6 pounds, I thought, no big.

Yeah.

The number on the scale was nearly 10 pounds more than what it had been. Eeep. Eeeeeeeeeeppppp!!!!

Then I was angry. I've worked too damn hard to get healthy and thin, and I refuse to gain all of that weight back. I've come too far, and I am NOT going backwards. Hell, I refuse to gain an ounce of it back, so obviously, the scale is wrong. Uh-huh. What was that we used to say in the early 90s? Not!!!

I've allowed some of my old eating habits to creep back, too. A conversation with my mother reminded me that we share an addiction that can be as lethal, as deadly, as any narcotic: food. I have replaced my processed sugar addiction with more natural sweeteners, which are fine in moderation, but there are other temptations. There is no longer granular (white) sugar in my house. When I'm craving a bad 'sweet' fix, I take a swig of apple cider, or make a cup of herbal tea with a generous spoonful of a spectacular find: Really Raw Honey. (yum! I could write a whole post about that stuff, but I shall admirably restrain myself. Buy some, do!)

But there are other food addictions in that bunch: carbs, carbs, carbs, bread rice and pasta are all large weaknesses of mine. We've been eating out more than is smart, and I've allowed myself to mostly eat exactly what I want at restaurants, instead of being a pain in the ass to wait staff and specifying exactly how something should be prepared for me. That started on our vacation in Florida, where I allowed myself to eat a whole lot of a south Florida/Caribbean regional specialty: conch fritters. Deep fried conch fritters. Plus the temptation of trying all sorts of things unavailable here in Oh-hi-ia: Caffe Cubano (an espresso-esque coffee with PURE CANE SUGAR, the liquid from a stalk of sugarcane, added served hot and super-sweet, woooo what a a caffeine fix!) and all sorts of other Cuban foods, along with booze, booze, booze! We were on vacation, why not?

Well, because then your clothes don't fit, dumbass!

Getting back into the habit of the gym has been tough. I managed to make it two times last week. Today being Tuesday and all, I wish I could say I'd been there two times THIS week, but I made it this morning, so that's one. My work schedule has been interfering with my Pilates classes, which is very annoying. I made it to a Pilates class a week or so ago, and OUCH! I've lost a whole lot of strength and muscle tone that I had from Pilates. I won't make it to both classes this week either, which is frustrating.

I wish I could pinpoint when exactly I quit the daily gym routine, because then I'd be able to figure out how much weight I'd gained each month. Which is a silly thing to obsess about, anyway....I didn't put on 10 pounds in one month, there is nothing seriously wrong with me that could contribute to the weight gain, this is laziness and sloppiness and nothing else.

But remind me of that tomorrow morning at 5, will you, please? Because I still can't figure out a way to be dragging my ass out of bed at a normal time. (Yeah, 5 AM was normal for me, until very recently.) I find that unless I get to the gym when I first get out of bed, and preferably when they open their doors, I'm unlikely to go at all. The place is so darned busy any other time of the day that it irritates the hell out of me. I pay them almost $600 a year for a membership; I don't think they should allow so many people to join that there are no parking spaces available. Ugh, that's a rant for another day. And another excuse: I don't want to go because it is too busy, whaaaaa.

Multiple alarms haven't worked; having coffee brewed and waiting when I would get out of bed has also not worked; my clothes fitting tighter hasn't been motivation either. And yes, I have tried heading to bed earlier, too. I'm sleeping (knock on wood) with no sleeping pills right now, not over the counter, not prescription, nothing, so curtailing the sleepy pills isn't a suggestion either. I'm not sleeping well, waking at least once every hour, but I'm hoping that evens out and that I only need to use the Ambien when my anxiety levels are particularly high. Sleeping, for the moment, isn't the problem; waking is.

Questions, comments, suggestions?

Dagnet Rund

Swedish, for 'All day long' or more literally, 'the day round'

I have had trouble with sleeping for years. Long years, since college. No remedy I have tried, other than habit-forming sleeping pills, has ever helped much. Before I sought help for the depression, I was sleeping less than 3-4 hours a night.

Not being able to sleep is not the same thing at all as not being tired. I'm always tired. Tired does not always equal sleepy. I don't climb in to bed until I'm actually sleepy; otherwise, I'm tossing and turning for hours instead of sleeping.

In the last few weeks, I've been sleeping too much. I know, how on earth can I complain about too much sleep? I'm not complaining, exactly, just observing. I have been heading to bed earlier than usual, and sleeping much later than usual.

I've been a morning person as far back as I can remember. Early rising never presented a problem for me. As a teenager, or in my early college days, you would seldom if ever find me still sleeping at 11 AM on a Saturday. When I started working out in 2006, I was at the gym every day at 5.30 when it opened, usually waking shortly before 5 AM and out the door before 5.10.

Lately, though, it is all I can do to drag myself out of bed before 7 AM. This isn't quite the same as the days when I can't get out of bed due to the depression. When that's the case, I'm not sleeping, just can't summon the energy to get up, get moving. This is different, because I'll glance at the clock, and it is 6.30, and I'll say to myself, "just 5 more minutes" and the next thing I know it is 7.30. Somehow, that switch in my head that gets me not just awake at 5 AM but conscious, isn't working anymore.

I haven't needed an alarm clock for years. When I was working for ye olde evile bank, I was driving about 110 miles a day for my commute, spending huge amounts of time on the road. I had to be in the car, on the way to work by 6.30 in the morning. I did that for 7 long years, and my internal clock would just wake me up by 5.30 at the latest.

My internal clock still wakes me up at 5, but I go back to sleep. Deep sleep, so deeply that I don't hear DH leaving for work as he does daily around 6.30. And I'm normally a very light sleeper.

I want to write this off as normal, because I've been running around like a maniac quite a bit. My weekends for the last month have been insanely busy. I'm busy during the workdays, and stressed over my soul-sucking job. Every time we change the clocks either way, spring or fall, it messes with my internal clock and I get over-tired. The weather is still dreary, grey, overcast, cold, rainy. So yeah, I should be sleepy. Right?

I'm always trying to keep track of how many hours of sleep I get; even when I sleep well, I never sleep for more than 4-5 hours at a time. I wake frequently. Uninterrupted 8 hours of sleep is that holy grail that I can never seem to attain. Often, when I wake at 2 or 3 in the morning, that's it, my body says, 'sorry, you're done sleeping' and I'm awake for good. Not lately. I wake, and then go back to sleep, and only have vague memories of waking in the morning. I feel like I could sleep round the clock.

What the hell is going on here?

Spleepy

I don't usually sleep well. This is something that I've bitched frequently about, as proper sleep is so important to being healthy. Not just your physical health, but mental health too. Depression makes it tough to sleep or makes you want to sleep all the time, yet another lovely paradox of the disease.

When the depression got really bad, before I got any treatment for it at all, I was sleeping about 3-4 hours a night. When I started getting help, it improved a little bit, to 4-5 hours a night.

In the last week, my sleep habits have improved pretty drastically. I've been taking Ambien for my sleeping trouble for a long time, nearly every night. I'd hazard a guess that I've been taking that on and off for about a year. So I can't attribute this recent improvement to the Ambien.

In October of 2006, I started working out 6 days a week in an effort, initially, anyway, to get better sleep. That didn't help my sleep. I lost weight, and I was hopeful that being more healthy physically would help me sleep more. It didn't, really.

Today, I'm 43 pounds lighter than I was in October of 2006, with about another 20 pounds left to lose. Undoubtedly, I am in far better shape than I was, physically. My whole lifestyle has changed, my eating habits have made a 180 degree turnaround from where they were. I can't attribute the better sleeping to the lifestyle changes, because I would have been sleeping better a long time ago, not just in the last week.

I'm sleeping between 7 and 9 hours lately. Not an un-interrupted 7 to 9 hours, that would be apparently far too much to ask, but un-interrupted two to five hour bursts, and enough of them to get what I consider nearly adequate sleep. Finally.

See, when I was a kid, I slept 10 to 12 hours a night. I need my sleep. My family can attest to the fact that without enough sleep, I'm supremely unpleasant to be around. I've never been ashamed or embarrassed to admit that I simply need the proper amount of rest. Eight hours is good, ten is preferable. Six is about the bare minimum of acceptability. So you can imagine what it was doing to me to get 4-5 hours for just about 2 years. Devastating me, essentially. I have no doubt that my mental health suffered even more because of the lack of sleep.

(When we're listing reasons Lucy doesn't have kids, sleep is up there on that list. Baby=no sleep.)

What's changed? The only thing that's different is the Lexapro. My job stress is just as bad as it was at the non-profit, although it is a different sort of stress, it is just as high or higher than when I knew that the non-profit was on the verge of closing. I'm exercising less lately than that gold standard of 6 days a week. (It pains me to admit that. I'm not sure what is the de-motivational factor there, but I need to get the fuck over it and back to a regular 6 day a week schedule to lose those additional 20 lbs and to get in shape for the May 2 race I'm going to run in, a 10 K.)

Dr. H gave me samples of the Lexapro with instructions to take 1/2 of a pill daily, 5 mg. He also told me that when I had a handle on whether or not that was going to help (a week or so) to adjust the dosage up or down as I thought necessary, as long as I kept in touch with him so that he knew what I was doing. Half a pill was helpful, but damn, still not enough to push me over the edge into being able to get out of bed and be back to being me. So I upped it to a whole pill, 10 mg. About a week ago.

Isn't that interesting?

So Wellbutrin+Lexapro+Ambien=sleep.

A friend who is a nurse reacted with alarm when I told her about the addition of Lexapro to the Wellbutrin. She told me that over time, those medications work less well, something that I think I can attest to, as I've needed to up the dosage on the Wellbutrin several times to get it to the right place. She also warned me that sometimes the side effects of the meds can become permanent, and that they're often very difficult to discontinue taking, when you think you're ready to get off of them. My one and only lingering side effect is the hand tremor, which is worse some days than others. I'd rather that didn't become permanent. It makes me look nervous when I am not, and it makes me feel like I've got Parkinson's. She asked if maybe the cure isn't worse than the disease.

Emphatically, no. Unconditionally, no.

Getting the proper amount of rest has been unbelievably helpful. I wake up feeling still tired for a little while, but about an hour after I get up, I'm refreshed and nearly ready to face the day.

The addiction to the Dunkin' Donuts iced coffee might be something we need to talk about, though, because before that cup o' decaf joe, facing the day is unthinkable.

Feeling like the weight of the world is off my shoulders

"G'on, brush yer shoulders off"~Rapper Jay-Z

I told you a week or so ago that my personal life had a bit of a blow, that I'd be dealing with the fallout for a while. I could not share the details at the time, but I can now, and it feels so incredibly freeing.

I'm tempted to throw caution entirely to the winds and share the whole story, and shed my anonymous pen name, almost like "coming out" must feel. I'm giddy, and thinking that perhaps I ought not feel giddy, that I ought to feel sad, or bad, but I just don't. Can't.

I resigned from my job. The job that has been such an important part of WHO I am, the job that has given my life extraordinary meaning for almost 3 years, the job that in the beginning was a dream job, being the boss, being in charge and doing something for the community where I live. Things at the job were closing up shop, and I resigned before the bitter end, when I would have been laid off anyway. Gave up, in a way, I suppose. But I don't feel bad about it, I feel that I made the best decision I could for myself, for this time, this place. That "living in the NOW" idea, which has always been so hard for me, that sense of serenity, that almost state of grace is with me now that I have decided to finally let it go.

This job has also been the reason, well, the primary reason, but maybe not the only one, that I've hidden behind a pen name. My stance as an abortion-rights activist, flaming liberal, and champion of feminist ideals probably wouldn't have gone down very well with my employer. I never hid who I was and what I was from them, but I didn't flaunt it in their faces, either.

I'm old enough, and wise enough, to continue to use the pen name, and to not identify the former employer by name. But now I can tell you that I was the director of a local chapter of a global non-profit organization whose work on behalf of children is recognized worldwide. If I did tell you the name, you'd know who it was right away. Heck, you may be able to guess just from those details. *shrug* SOOOO not my problem anymore.

I was the head of the local chapter, a small branch of the wider organization, responsible for keeping our programs fiscally healthy, running the day-to-day operations, supervising a small staff and a group of volunteers. I loved it deeply. It was the most frightening, trying, and at the same time the most exhilarating thing I've ever done in my life.

Coming as I do from a white-picket-fences background, two parents, stable home, good schools, college education, around the time I turned 25 I realized that I wasn't doing much to give back to the community at large, which had shaped who I am. Working as I did back then for a huge super-regional bank, what was I doing every day? Making the rich, richer. Pushing paper. Data entry. Stock transfers, legal document review, taxes....it mostly made me miserable. I wanted to be doing something that made a difference. Something that mattered.

In business school, they don't teach you how to become a middle manager, a corporate slave. Many of us with business degrees end up as just that, but I assure you most business students have plans to take over the world, to run a company, to be the top dog somewhere along the way. And the curriculum, indeed the instructors themselves, encourage that ideal, that when you graduate, you're set to hit the ground running.

For most graduates, reality smacks ya in the face about a year or so after you graduate, when you realize that no one is going to give you that promotion to senior vice president, and you have to work hard to impress everyone. For me, the first epiphany came when I was passed over for a promotion and they hired someone even younger than me for the job. The second one came when I hung up the telephone with a client one day after the client said, "Thanks, you've been really helpful. We couldn't have gotten through this whole process without you, Lucy." I realized when I hung up the phone that I'd just had the best compliment I was likely to get all week, and that was possibly the most satisfaction I would EVER get out of that job, the occasional times when I was able to help someone with a specific problem, solve some issue for them. Six months after that phone call, I was out of there when I was offered my non-profit job.

You might wonder, and perhaps rightfully so, "Lucy! How could you? Walk away from a children's charity? How *DO* you sleep at night?"

My answer to that is twofold; first, my insomnia has been a well documented occurrence on this site. Since making this decision, I've been sleeping better. Not fantastically, but better. Next, it is simply time. Time to move on to something else, time to re-evaluate what the hell I'm doing on this earth, time to breathe for just a minute.

We all spend more of our adult lives at work than we spend doing anything else, including sleeping. Think about it. Forty hours (and most likely more than that, 50-70 perhaps) a week if you work full time. Fifty-two weeks in a year. Most of us get 2 weeks vacation, so for sake of argument, and the easiest possible math for me, let's call it 50 weeks a year at 50 hours a week. 2500 hours a year spent at work. Multiply that by 40 years or so and be prepared to be astonished. But let's stay focused on just one year. There are 8760 hours in a year, 365x24=8760. So you work 2500 of those hours. That leaves you with 6260 hours a year to yourself. If you get 8 hours a sleep a night, lucky you. Most of us don't, so let's go with 6 hours a night of sleep. But that deletes another 2,190 hours from your free time, so you're left with 4,070 hours to do with as you will. I'm not going to sit here and figure out how much time we all spend in running errands, commuting to and from work, working from home or on our CrackBerries, e-mailing when we're supposed to be "off" because my point is this. If you don't love, and I mean absolutely LOVE, what you're doing for a living, why are you doing it?

Yes, yes, we all have bills to pay, and we're all looking for that dream job in Hawaii, but really, if you get up every morning and think, "Ugh, I have to go to WORK today. I hate it there. Please help me get through this day." Then you are wasting what little time you have on this earth. You're a grownup. Change it.

I loved, with my whole heart and soul, this non-profit job, loved it as much as I despised the bank job. It breaks my heart that the services we offer to people are going to disappear from my rust-belt community. That is far more painful, as idealistic as that sounds, than the fact that I'm going to be out of a job. Really, it is. I can get another job. I have a degree. I'm pretty damn employable. I'll survive. Thrive, even, who knows what I might find as another job in the future?

So now what for Lucy? I'm not going back to the bank, I can tell you THAT beyond a shadow of a doubt. I'm in the rather silly position of being 32 years old and having no idea what it is that I want to be when (if) I grow up. I think I'd like to stay in the non-profit arena. I also KNOW that I'd like to move far, far, far away from Oh-hia-ia, and that this may be the last, best opportunity that I have to do so.

But for the immediate future, I'm going to take a minute.

Breathe.

Savor the fact that I've survived the terrible depression that I suffered from, which was related in no small part to this job, as it broke my heart to watch it slowly die.

Take a week or two to work on the book, sit in the sunshine, watch the world go by, and for once, (and maybe the only time in my life) be unemployed. And then I'll get back into job hunting and being a productive member of society. How lucky I am to be able to do that for a minute. How scary, and how exciting.

Really Weird Dreams

Sleeping is such a problem. I want to lie in bed and do nothing, but I'd also love to get more than a few hours sleep, and it just isn't happening.

Last night I climbed into bed around 12:30, after watching Supernatural (twice). I spent from 10 pm until just after midnight talking online to other SN fanatics. Yes, a new episode of Supernatural aired last night, and yes, it was wonderful. I'm resisting the urge to write a complete rehash of the whole episode. I do have this one thing to share...Jensen's character had several lines that made me laugh out loud, but the best one has to be when he's being interrogated and someone asks him "You think you're REAL cute, don't ya?" and he responds with a mile-wide grin, "I think I'm adorable!" Yes, yes, you are. And that sound you heard? Was about 30,000 fangirls screaming their agreement.

Moving on. I'm going to talk about sleep today. Really.

I am still taking Ambien, and it gets me to fall asleep very quickly, but it seems to level out at about 4 hours of sleep, because without fail, unless I climb into bed after 1 am, I wake between 4:17 and 4:38 every day. I get up at 5, and waking thirty minutes or so before when I am going to really get up irritates me. I'm not sure why, other than perhaps I feel that I'm being robbed of a precious few minutes of sleep.

Sometimes I am able to fall back asleep for those precious few minutes. Sometimes not. I have vivid dreams in that short space of time when I do manage to fall back asleep. I am able to "lucid dream," something I've been able to do almost as far back as I can remember. Sometimes I'm even able to control the dreams. Not all the time.

This most recent one that bothered me was one that I wasn't in control, nor was I lucid. It involved a dinner at a restaurant, with a table for about 12. I can tell you what the table looked like, the chairs, the decor of the restaurant, even what the dishes and glasses looked like. Very, very crisp, vivid detail. I can't tell you who all was around that table for twelve, but one person was one of my ex's, and another was a parent of an old friend, a third was a high school classmate that I haven't spoken to in a while. The parent was asking how on earth I could be friends with the ex when I'm married to someone else. I tried in vain to explain it, finally coming up with the lame non-explanation "Because we're friends." (real life answer isn't all that much more clear: he's a good guy, and we're both grownups enough to be able to be nice to one another. We share a political viewpoint, I like his wife, and we're not interested in ever getting back together...this is a friendship, not an opportunity, fer gawd's sake.)

My classmate and I left the restaurant, shaking our heads over the inability of some people to recognize that men and women can actually BE FRIENDS, walking down a set of concrete steps, and we ran right in to another ex-boyfriend of mine. In the waking world, I haven't seen this particular guy for a very long time, and in the dream, he of course looked exactly the same as he did when I was 15/16. I'm not sure I'd be able to pick him out of a crowd today, like many of my schoolmates, he remains forever 17 in my memory.

He persuaded me to come back into the restaurant with him, after spending several minutes kissing me in the parking lot. Um? WTF? Hadn't I just finished explaining in the dream a few minutes ago that I was married to someone else? And in real life, I am very happily married to someone else. Dreams like this bother me so much. Not only did I go back into the restaurant with this ex, holding his hand, but also introducing him around the table as "my ex-boyfriend Joe" and then kissing him again in full sight of everyone, who gave me jaws-on-the-floor-shocked glares. I woke up a minute or so later, gasping for breath, convinced I'd done something wrong. I was very disoriented to discover myself in my own bed, DH asleep beside me, instead of where I'd expected to be, standing in a restaurant surrounded by accusing glares and angry words.

Sometimes dreams mean something. Sometimes they're just dreams. I attach no particular significance to this dream, it isn't allegorical or a statement about my life, but man, it made me squirm. I don't have dreams quite like this when I'm not taking the Ambien. Never as vivid with the detail, and hardly ever traumatic. The level of weirdness knows no bounds.

Running Down A Dream

Before I get to my usual Tuesday Brain Dump, I need to point your attention to this piece on NPR, heartbreaking in its simplicity, about the shootings yesterday at Virginia Tech. Audio isn't available as I am writing this post, but will be later today. Judith Miller says so eloquently what I struggle to put into words. Give it a listen.





I'm thinking today about running, and the 'runner's high'

I'm still only able to run for 10 minutes out of the 35 that I'm on the treadmill. Some days are easier than others. I don't know why. My routine varies only by a small amount each day; get up, get dressed, go to the gym, come home, shower, get dressed for work, work, drive home, dinner, write, bed. Tuesdays and Thursdays there's an exercise class in between dinner and writing. That's about it. I drink a ton of water each day. I'm watching my portions and eating healthy. So why is it that some days are super easy and some so incredibly tough? I wish I understood.

I have been a runner for a very long time, but taken very long breaks in between times when I run and times when I don't. I was on the track team in junior high school, 7th grade? Or was it 8th? Too long ago to remember now. The junior high school in my hometown was on a tree-lined street, which has about 10 century houses on it, and in fact the original portion of the school is a historic building as well, was at one time a private college. A very, very, very small one. At the end of the school's street is a forest preserve, 243 acres of wild lands. I spent a lot of time there as a kid, and for conditioning for track, they'd have us run from the school, to the preserve, around the loop trail in the preserve, and back up to school. Then we'd have practice. I'm not really sure of the distance. Maybe 3 total miles, maybe less. It was tough, I'd get to the practice field dead tired, panting, and in no mood to do time trials or sprints. I hated it, but kept pushing myself because I wanted desperately to fit in somewhere, and since one of my closest friends at the time was a track star, I thought that this might be my niche. It wasn't.

I'm not a good runner, or a fast one. They stuck me with running the 400, and I never won. I did it for only one season of track, I remember saying frequently at the time that "The only GOOD thing about running is when you stop." I never felt that endorphin high that everyone talked about.

In the spring of the year I lived in Sweden, my best friend and I looked at ourselves and realized we'd gained some weight over the winter. Which is really ridiculous, she was 5'7" and weighed maybe 140 and I was 5'2" and didn't weigh over 100, but I was 17 and she was 19 and we thought we were 'fat'. We embarked on a very ambitious journey, swimming 2 kilometers in the community pool after school on Mondays and Wednesdays, and running between 2 and 5 kilometers on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Fridays and Saturdays we drank. Sundays we recovered.

We made a list, that I still have, of things we agreed to not eat. Nothing fried. No more stopping for something to eat on the way home from the clubs on Saturday nights. The town's cafe/bakery made these donut sort of things called munkar, which were square, filled with a wonderful apple/sugar/cinnamon blend, and I agreed to stop buying them when I got out of school every afternoon. No ice cream.

We did get into better shape, but what I remember most is coming to the back door of my host family's house, panting, opening the door and calling out to my host-mum, Snalla, kan vi har lite vatern? (Please, can we get some water?) We weren't allowed into the house without taking off shoes, and we'd stretch in the backyard before going inside. The route that we ran took us though farm country, and I had to really work to get the mud off of those running shoes. I still hated it, and I remember mamman asking me why we didn't just walk if we hated it so much. I would tell her how we'd look so cute in our bathing suits during the coming summer and she would roll her eyes at me. She ought to have smacked me one, considering what I weighed and my body image at the time. Not that it would have smacked some sense into me, but still, I wince when thinking about how I used to whine about being fat at 17. Someone really should have given me a beat-down.

Through most of my college years, I lifted weights, but did very little cardio, and my weight gain really escalated after I got married. Sure, I walked in our old neighborhood from time to time. I exercised never, though. I joined a series of gyms, but never really got off the couch. The thing that's different this time around is that I now recognize and understand that the working out has to be part of my life every day for the rest of my life, that once I've gotten to the goal, I can't just stop doing whatever finally works to get the rest of the weight off. I might be able to do 3 days a week at the gym instead of 6, but it has to be a part of who I am and what I do for the rest of the time I'm on this earth.

And I finally get that runner's high. Each day, when I manage to get to the ten full minutes running, I feel like raising my hands over my head and cheering. I want to jump up and down and shout "LOOK!! I did it! Ten minutes!!! GO ME!" I restrain the impulse, but it is there.

I'm still having trouble with cramping in the tibia muscles, and it hurts when I stop running. Which is a complete 180 degree turn from where I was, that it was good to stop. I have been trying for about a week to get up over ten minutes (woot! 11 whole minutes!!) but I can't quite get there. It will come, I know. Patience has NEVER been my strong suit.

What I love about running is that it is now very meditative for me. I can't focus on anything else but breathing and putting one foot in front of the other. I can't think about anything else, and considering the craziness that is going on in my life right now, a blank slate, a clear head, is a wonderful thing. It doesn't last for but a few minutes after I get off the treadmill, but it is nice to experience while it does last.

I was out of bed at 4 this morning, giving up the battle to sleep even a few minutes longer after watching the clock from 3:17 AM on. Can't sleep, can't focus, don't want to do anything, endless circles of the same thoughts chasing around and around in my head. I was at Dr. Hottie's office last week, and he encouraged me to continue to use the Ambien to get the sleep I need. Muscle repair and your body's regeneration happens in stage 4 sleep, and I'm not getting even a minute of that. Dreams occur during REM sleep, stage two. I have very little of those, either. The sleeping pill gives me exceedingly weird, disjointed dreams, but also about 5 hours of sleep as opposed to the three or so I get without help.

So I'm continuing to chase after that elusive fitness goal, and a good night's sleep. But looking in the mirror this morning, I can finally see some muscle definition in my shoulders, and when I turn around and look at my back, there are two fewer rolls of fat. Twenty-two pounds lighter, and that's all the difference I can see. Guess my self-image still needs some work.

Finally, I'm jumping on a bandwagon that I've just discovered. Searching for new music to run to on iTunes the other day, I found Podrunner, produced by LA's DJ Steveboy. Once upon a time, dance hall and trip-hop was all I listened to. And then I figured out that it can get pretty damn annoying. But I'm in love with the mixes that Steveboy produces. I'm gooving to Paintshaker, which was featured the week that Podrunner had its four MILLIONTH download. So yeah, I'm behind the times a wee bit. I haven't subscribed to the podcast yet because I'm running out of space on my iPod, a project for the coming weekend is to delete everything that I haven't listened to since uploading most of my music library in January.

I hope your Tuesday doesn't suck out loud.

The Ambien Experience

I've blogged, copiously, about my insomnia. The only thing that seems to help it is a prescription sleeping pill, Ambien, or zolpidem tartarte. I hate it that I'm dependent on a medication for sleep, viewing this as something completely different than needing an allergy pill, or an anti-depressant, for example. My opinion in general about medications is that if you need it, honey, take it.

The insomnia thing, though, is something completely frustrating and apparently, I'm unable to solve it without medication. I have tried everything. Everything. And I have written about this a bunch of other times, here, here, and here. So let's list, just one more time, the various natural and artificial means I've used to try to get more than 3 hours of sleep a night.

Melatonin. Didn't work.

Lavender oil, rubbed at the neck and temples. Didn't work.

Lavender baths, around bedtime. Didn't work.

Lavender body lotions, homemade, not filled with artificial fragrance. Used with massage, an attempt at a relaxation technique. Didn't work.

Washing the sheets and blankets in unscented laundry detergent, with lavender essential oil added. Smelled nice. Didn't work.

Chamomile tea. Drunk before bedtime. Didn't work.

Rozerem. Prescription. Made me groggy the next day AND didn't give me any more uninterrupted sleep than I can get on my own. Didn't work.

Nytol. Over-the-counter medication. Didn't work.

Valerian root. Herbal pills. Tasted like hell. Didn't work.

Sleepinol. Over-the-counter med. Didn't work.

Took up yoga. I love it, but it doesn't help me sleep.

Tylenol PM. Over-the-counter med. Didn't work.

I began working out every single day. Cardio, 35-45 minutes a day. Weight training, 4-6 days a week. Pilate's classes twice a week in addition to the cardio. Yoga classes weekly. I've lost weight, my asthma is under control, and my flexibility, much to DH's delight, has improved dramatically. (Hee!) But it doesn't help me sleep.

Luensta. Prescription. Didn't work. And, oh, the side effects. Ick on an epic scale.

Tylenol's Simply Sleep. Over-the-counter med. Works for a few hours only if I exceed the recommended dosage by a factor of 3. I don't think that's smart, so I don't do it.

Meditation and biofeedback, trying to consciously relax every single muscle in the body, preparing it for sleep and relaxation. Can't focus enough to do it right. So it doesn't work.

Ambien, which is a very powerful prescription sleep aid, seems to be the only thing that helps. This stuff comes with dire warnings, having the potential to be highly habit forming. My cute doctor prescribed it for me only after hearing that laundry list above and me begging over a series of three visits spanning six months with him. He gave me samples of Rozerem, and suggested that I try those before filling the Ambien script. Yeah, I listened. For two nights. I blogged here about the experience I had with Rozerem.

My bastard insurance company won't allow a continuous prescription of Ambien; I'm allowed 60 days worth of it every 90 days. So for one month out of three, I don't have it, unless I ration the pills and take it only every other night. Which doesn't really work well for me, no matter which way I go, rationing or being without for a month.

I know why I can't sleep. I can't write in any detail about it. It is all work-related. My job is a very stressful thing, and several things that have been happening there over the past....year, I suppose, have made it impossible for me to turn off the cacophony in my head, which makes me worry incessantly about things that are far beyond my control. Stray thoughts run around and around my head when I try to relax, both possible solutions and doomsday scenarios.

So, quit, I hear you say. Move on, do something else, let someone else worry if it is damaging to your health. I wish....well, I don't know what I wish. I wish I could up and quit? I wish that I could fix it? I wish that things weren't so awful? Yeah, all of those. Mostly, though, I just wish I could get a decent night's sleep.

I told you that whole long, convoluted story so that I could tell you this short funny one.

At the moment, I have the prescription. Monday night I was on the computer, and around 10 pm, got up to get some water. I saw the prescription bottle sitting on the kitchen counter, and took one, after looking at the clock. Take it too late at night, and I can't get to work on time, which creates a whole 'nother level of problems. I went back on to the computer, and continued the conversation with a friend in Michigan. Not ten minutes went by before I was nodding off over the keyboard.

Remember falling asleep in class as a teen, when you could hear the teacher's voice coming from a distant planet and your eyes got heavier and heavier until your head would droop, which startled you awake? I was doing just that over the keyboard whilst still typing. I thought I'd copy and paste the message I typed here because it is funny, but taken out of context it won't make much sense.

When I was dozing, I was dreaming about my mother and grandmother standing over my shoulders, one on each side, and that's weird because Gran has been dead since I was....uh...18. And they were telling me what to type. And while I was typing exactly what they told me to in the dream, when I woke up, what was on the screen was gibberish. So I deleted it, and tried to sign off before I said something stupid, but as you will see, I didn't really succeed.

"I've typed three rambling sentences apprapro of nothing at all and just realized that I was trying to typ the dream...Yeah, it is time to quit for the nigt. Some of what I typed was completel gibberish, so this is about as goof as it gets, a bit of Lucy trying to fight the sleep deamon.

Yeah, dreamland. It is caling me."

I managed to forget the cardinal rule of sleeping pills....when you take them, GO TO BED. Those dire warnings are to be taken seriously. One of them, I swear, really says, "Warning. May cause drowsiness. " Ya think? But it ought to include one that warns you that you might say or type something pretty rambling and drugged sounding. Oops.

Regularly scheduled posting interrupted....

I've caught whatever is going around...intestinal, sinus, and other related distresses, and won't be online until I feel better. DH had this for about a week.....ugh. I'm exhausted, and going back to bed.

No, I'm not a drug addict. Really.

I wish that I could post every single day, but it is just beyond my abilities to log into blogger every day and write something. My working life, which we never discuss here, is full of problems and very busy, so when I go home at the end of the day I don't want to log on to the computer. Add to that fact that the 'puters are doing some strange things in my house. One shuts itself off, mid-surf, for no discernible reason. Another is far too S-L-O-W. And the laptop, which can be used all through the house due to our wonderful wireless, freezes when the fan comes on and you have to turn it off and start allll over. I'm not allowed to use the "new" laptop, due to my tendency to install Firefox on any computer that I plan to use for Internet access. So I haven't been posting daily.

What I really want to talk about today is the progress that I'm making (or rather the lack thereof) with my sleep troubles, my weight loss, and the black hole of despair that I am threatening to fall into when my youngest sister moves away in a week, leaving me alone of my siblings here in Oh-hi-ia. One sister lives in Brooklyn, and the moving one is going to St. Louis. I'm not happy about it, to say the least. I'm happy FOR them, because they're both happy, but miserable for my own self, not because they live in big, bad cities and I don't (well, okay, that is part of it) but mostly because it is hard to have dinner with someone or blow off an afternoon's work to sit in a cafe with your sister when she lives more than 500 miles away.

They've both lived far, far away before; one in California for about a year, and the other has previously lived in NYC, also for about a year. It sucked. Big, hairy goat balls it sucked. I was still working for the big ol' bank, hating every moment of my job, living in a really crappy apartment, and the only bright spot in my life was my DH, who is great about telling me to just go visit them and stop bitching about it. His support is something I couldn't do without.

Anyway, I felt like I was falling into an giant pit that summer, that the world was randomly opening up and swallowing me whole for days at a time. Or that I was drowning, only periodically able to surface to gasp for breath. Yeah, my sisters and I are close. I don't think that either of them reads my blog, so I am not too worried about embarrassing either of them. When they live nearby, we do our grocery shopping together, we have dinner often, we sit in cafes and discuss all sorts of celebrity gossip, a favorite pastime. When they live far away, I talk to them only periodically, in far too short conversations that mostly revolve around who is going to come visit whom.


I'm trying really really hard to not focus on that, and instead focus on getting to the gym, hanging with my Martini Girls, write some fiction, and getting the things done that need done before Christmas. Let's not talk about that, it will make me feel all neurotic again, no, the presents aren't purchased, aren't wrapped, the house isn't decorated, (inside OR out) the baking isn't done, plans for New Year's Eve are not finalized.....arrrgh.

I've been going to the gym every single weekday, getting there when they open the doors at 05.30 in the morning, and spending at least 35 minutes doing cardio. I try to get some weightlifting in after that, but as I need to be at my office by 07.30 most days, that limits somewhat the things that I can do. I've been going to the gym every single week day for more than a month...somewhere, perhaps more like 6 weeks, and getting more exercise than I have in years and years and YEARS, and I've lost a grand total of 6 pounds. Yeah. Six lousy pounds. Man, that's really annoying. I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I drink a TON of water every day, I'm working really hard to improve my eating habits, and trying to get the sleep that my body needs, and guess what? I've lost six fucking pounds. I've scheduled a session with a personal trainer at my gym next week to see if she can help me to design a program that is going to get me some results, but I only have plans of spending time with a trainer about once every six months. It is expensive. But I'm hopeful that she will be able to give me some insights.

In my 20s, I worked out with a male trainer, who was baaaaaaad news. Not because he was not good at what he did, but because he was hot and I was very tempted. He was married, and I got engaged not long after we started working out together, so both of us were not available, but I think he would have ignored his marriage vows in a second. Fortunately, I never let him know that I thought he was really cute. I ran into him about 2 years after I was married, in a grocery store, and he was with a woman who wasn't his wife. I stopped and said hello, and he told me in excruciating detail all about his divorce proceedings, which were in the middle stages. Yeah, I so knew that was gonna happen, he was such a flirt. I am really happy to have been assigned a female trainer by the gym this time.

Then the drugs part. I've been taking the Ambien almost every night, and getting about 6 solid hours of sleep. Rarely is that an uninterrupted six hours. Last night it was, but only because I didn't climb into bed much before 11 pm, which is really really late for me. I didn't take the Ambien with me over Thanksgiving weekend, when we visited Rocky Gap for the holiday, and I managed to sleep without it, but it wasn't "good" sleep. I do chalk that up to the fact that they assigned us a queen sized bed and we're used to a massive king more than the fact that I was trying to sleep without the drugs. I'm really worried about developing a dependency on the sleeping pills, but not worried enough to not take them on the nights when I have to work the next day. When I don't take them, I end up worrying all night long about things that I can't really fix or change at work.

I'm also a bit worried about all the meds Dr. Hottie prescribed for my asthma. I usually remember to take the Singulair pill every day, but using the Advair inhaler four times a day seems excessive to me and is difficult for me to remember to do. I don't know why. And while my attacks are down, way down, I credit the pill more than the inhaler with that success, because I am more consistent with the pill. One thing that all allergy meds have in common is the runny nose side effect. I despise that, but am willing to put up with it if it means fewer asthma attacks.

Mostly I'm not crazy about having 4 prescriptions to manage at 31 years old. While I have yet to use the rescue inhaler he prescribed for me, the fact remains that I have 3 scripts for allergy/asthma, and one for sleeping. It makes me sad that I need a pill to sleep. Last night, I read until shortly before 11 pm and wasn't sleepy at all until the meds kicked in. I wonder when I would have fallen asleep without help? What, short of quitting my job, and curling up in the fetal position, do I need to do to get back to a "normal" schedule?

What do you do to get a good nights' sleep?

Went to see the doctor man

I had an appointment with Dr. Hottie on Thursday. My asthma has been out of control this month (mostly due to the changing seasons, allergies, et cetera) and I have not taken any prescription or over the counter meds for asthma for about 5 years, so I thought it was time to run the tests again and see if I ought to be managing the disease better. Dr. Hottie had me do a test where you take a deeeeep breath, and exhale as forcefully as you can into a tube. You do that 3 times, and the test has some very silly sounding name, like spynomiter, but I don't remember what it is really called. The results show that yes, I still have asthma (what a surprise!) and he listened to my breathing through a stethoscope for a long while, and said that it wasn't all that bad yesterday.

"Of course, I'm not wheezing", I told him. "I just spent an hour and a half sitting on my ass in your waiting room. Let me run up and down a flight of stairs or 3, or spend 20 minutes on your treadmill, or you light up a cigarette, and then listen to me breathe." He agreed that I might have a point. Plus, the time spent in the gym each morning results in a pretty debilitating asthma attack on the drive home. My asthma manifests itself in a deep, hacking, I-smoke-three-packs-a-day sounding cough. I can exhale all I want, but I can't take a breath. And only after I'm done coughing do I wheeze. Heavy artificial fragrances, from perfume to air freshner can set it off. And while cigarette smoke is bad, cigar smoke is much worse in terms of starting an attack. I quit smoking probably about a year before I was diagnosed with asthma.

Speaking of smoking, and off topic for a second, Ohio has an "issue" on the ballot this November to ban smoking in all public places, from bars to laundromats. Actually, there are two ballot inititives; Issue 4 is from the tobacco lobbyists, and will not really ban smoking in bars and restaurants because it is full of the loopholes and exceptions you would expect of the typical lobbyist written bill. Issue 5 is the smoking ban, and I'm urging everyone in this reddest of the red states to vote YES on Issue 5. Link to full text of all 5 Issues here, but you'll need Adobe to read it.

Anyway, back to the doctor's visit. He prescribed 3 meds for the allergy/asthma problem; Advair, which I am to take daily, Sigulair, which I am to also take daily, and will treat both the asthma and the allergies, and Xopenex, which is a new rescue inhaler. I have not had a rescue inhaler for a really long time, because I really dislike the side effect of a racing heart.

He also prescribed Ambien, as I asked, for my sleeping trouble. But he gave me a sample of Rozorem too, with the instructions to try the Rozorem first. I did, on Friday night and the jury's still out. I was reading Augusten Burrough's memoir, Dry, and between one breath and the next, literally, I felt the drug take hold. A dizzying sensation, and immediate hyper-drowsiness. (if that's even a word). But I finished the book before going to sleep at 11pm, and I was up at 3 (wow, 4 hours uninterupted) and again at 4.30, and again at 5. I didn't go to the gym, as I had gone twice on Thursday, and had a really tough time getting moving, getting started on Friday morning. Friday night I took it again, with pretty similar results. Quick falling asleep (bonus), and quick falling back asleep after I wake in the middle of the night. (Also a bonus). But it does not stop me from waking multiple times, and makes me feel groggy in the morning which is not the result I'm looking for. So I filled the Ambien prescription, and took that last night. Around 7 pm, which is in fact too early. 7 pm + 8 hours equals 3 am. I did fall right asleep, was up at around 9, midnight, and then 3, but managed to fall back asleep each time, even being jolted out of a sound sleep by the alarm at 5.30, which meant I was late for the gym.

On the upside: more sleep, definately. And with the Ambien, my butt's not dragging, I don't feel all groggy. On the downside: still searching for the elusive, perhaps mythical 8 hours of uninterupted sleep.

Soundtrack: Jewel Kilcher had a song on her first album about "Let's go back to sleep"

Thinking About Condee and My Sleeping Trouble

The nuclear crisis in North Korea has me thinking about Dr. Condoleezza Rice, current US Secretary of State. Mostly because she’s been in the news while she reassures Japan that the US intends to support Japan against North Korea’s insanity.

(In an aside, I happen to buy into nuclear non-proliferation. I think you have to be crazy to want the whole world to have access to nukes.)

Previously in the Bush administration (or as I prefer to call it, the Evil Empire), she was the National Security Advisor. While I despise most of what she stands for, and the fact that she works for the most evil human being on the planet, I admire her.

She is one heck of a smart lady; earned her doctorate in 1981, and has been on the faculty of Stanford University since she earned her doctorate. Since President Idiot was (not by popular vote) elected at the end of 2000, I have said that he at least has the wits to surround himself with VERY smart people…I’m a big fan of Colin Powell, the first Secretary of State for the Idiot Administration. And like him or not (and I don’t), Dick Cheney’s a smart guy too.

I’ve heard Dr. Rice a couple of times on the BBC in the last couple of days. I’m getting out of bed earlier to go get to the gym as a positive start to my days and the Beeb is on my local NPR affiliate from 5 to 6 (IN THE MORNING, folks). I find it very interesting that the Beeb always refers to her as “Dr. Rice” and NPR always says “Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice”. I wonder if that is a cultural statement from the Beeb (purposefully not mentioning that she’s SoS) or if the whole name/title is just too long to say over and over. Perhaps since Britain’s equivalent office is Foreign Secretary, the obvious confusion that would ensue from a listening British public is simply eliminated by them saying Dr. Rice. I hope, with all my heart, that she’s able to bring most of Asia into consensus about North Korea, and that this isn’t the beginning of the end of days.

Have I mentioned how poorly I’ve been sleeping lately? I note above that I’m getting out of bed earlier, not waking up earlier. I sleep from about 10 pm until midnight or so, and then again until 3 am and that’s about it. As a child, I would ask my parents, “Can I go to bed now?” and I’m known in my family for sleeping 10-12 hours and more, up until my 20s. Now I count myself extremely fortunate if I get more than 7 hours total sleep. I have trouble falling asleep; DH falls asleep like turning off a light switch, bam, he’s out. I take forever to nod off. And I have trouble staying asleep. I’m up at least twice every night to pee (keee-rist is that annoying) and then heaven only knows what wakes me otherwise, but I wake on average 7 or 8 times in those scant 5-6 hours of sleep I get. I’ve tried a couple of things; first, natural remedies like Melatonin, which is supposedly the chemical secreted by your brain that regulates your sleep/wake cycle (it didn’t work for me). Then I tried lavender essential oil; baths, rubbing it on my temples, adding it to unscented laundry detergent and washing all my bed linens in it. DH despises the smell of lavender, so that’s out if I want to continue to sleep next to my husband. It didn’t solve the problem anyway, other than making me feel a bit more relaxed because I <3 lavender.

After my honeymoon six years ago, which was spent in Alaska, I did talk a doctor into writing a prescription of Ambien for me. Seven days worth. To help my body’s clock reset itself to the Eastern time zone, which is I think at least 5 hours ahead of Alaska. I was having trouble readjusting, unable to fall asleep until the wee small hours. It worked, and for about a year, I slept all right. But by 2002, I couldn’t sleep again. And I went back to over the counter stuff (Nytol, Sleepinal) but only when I had a few nights in a row of sleeplessness.

And then Lunesta (eszopiclone) was unleashed on the world. Here in the US, Lunesta’s marketing campaign is spearheaded by a very cute green luminescent butterfly, which drifts into bedroom windows, and brushes its wings over the faces of sleepless adults who immediately close their eyes and get a good night’s rest. I bought into the hype; the commercial talks about “if you have trouble turning off your restless mind” and I do, so I mentioned my sleeping trouble to my friend and family doctor, who is nearly as cute as McSteamy on Grey’s Anatomy. Dr. Hottie first suggested that I get tested for adult ADD, but I really don’t think that is my problem. And I argued against that by saying that the main problem is getting settled into a good night’s sleep and that I’d really like to try the Lunesta. So in 2005, he wrote me a prescription for it, and I took it.

It did help me get a few night’s rest, but then the effectiveness diminished over time. (About a week’s time, not months.) And the commercial mentions that “side effects may include unpleasant taste”, but that sure didn’t prepare me for the sensation, which is best described as the taste left in your mouth by a three day drinking bender, combined possibly with cat urine, coupled with the unfortunate fact that it can’t be brushed or rinsed away by toothpaste or mouthwash. No, it just has to go away on its own, and that takes a whole day to wear off. “The Taste” makes EVERYTHING you put into your mouth taste bad; water tastes like “the taste”, and it flavors everything else you eat with its unpleasantness.

So I quit taking Lunesta last year and tried a product made by Tylenol, called Simply Sleep. As OTC sleep aids go, it has no side effects for me, is inexpensive, and gets me about 4 solid hours of sleep, so that’s fine. But it isn’t the long-term solution that I’m hoping for, and I don’t know what is.

There is another new prescription sleep aid on the market called Rozerem, with another slick advertising campaign, (featurning Abe Lincoln, a chess board and a beaver) but my research shows it is just a hyped up version of Melatonin, which I don’t think is going to work for me. And I don’t want to buy into the marketing hype again, I’m hoping that I’m older and wiser now.

I’ve started working out every day in an effort to get a better night’s sleep. I need to lose weight, probably about 70 pounds, (and I’m being BRUTALLY honest there) but that isn’t my main motivation in getting to the gym. Getting a better night’s sleep is. It seems to be working thus far (a whole 4 days into it) and I’m getting at least 4 hours uninterrupted. Right now I’m only doing 30 minutes of cardio each day, which is tough and intense because I’m fat and asthmatic. I’m using the elliptical trainers, which force you to move both your legs AND your arms (I’ve earned a sore shoulder, but no other ill effects) and each day increasing the amount of time I spend in my target heart rate zone. (18.47 today!) After I’ve done that for a month or more, I plan to add strength training to the regimen, and I’m also actively seeking to add a Yoga class now. I used to take Yoga from a lady named Pam, and I loved it. But she moved to Florida (smart Pam!) and I’ve never found another yoga practitioner that I clicked with so well. The Y has one yoga class a week, on Saturday mornings at 8 am. I don’t think that’s going to work in my schedule, but I am going to give it a shot this week and see if I like the instructor. I don’t want to join another gym just for Yoga classes.

Do you have sleeping problems? What works for you? I’m going to visit my sista in New York City next month…should I try to take a Yoga class with Mimi? I think that would be really awesome, and I should have at least one full day when my sis is working and I have nothing but time on my hands. But is that too stalker? I read Mimi almost every day, and I think it might be way too weird. What do you think?

!*@$%

Woke up in a foul mood this morning due to the new neighbor in my duplex POUNDING ON THE MOTHERFUCKING WALLS at 06.45. I'm usually an early riser, and would have normally been out of bed around 05.30, but I've been having trouble sleeping lately and have been going to bed much later than usual. I heard the neighbor in the shower at 06.00, but went back to sleep. The place next door has been vacant for more than a year, so this is new to me. In her defense, DH leaves for work most days around 06.30, so she may think that we're both gone, but I was STILL SLEEPING, goddamit. I understand that you want to hang pictures, but for christsakes, is 8 am not a good time to do that?

How do you politely ask someone to not do that until after at least 7 am on weekdays and preferably 9 on weekends? It is HER home, after all, but she may think that we can't hear it and I don't want to have a confrontation about it, because I hate fights.....

Soundtrack: "11 AM" Incubus

The Dreaming Tree

I've been having very vivid dreams of late. So vivid that when I wake up, I'm struck with the urge to get up in the middle of the night and write them down. I did that a few years ago, but stopped because in the harsh glare of morning light, they usually ended up looking like so much gibberish.

I have recurring nightmares that I remember all too well, but more positive dreams are not something I end up remembering, so the vivid dreams of the past few nights have been fun. The recurring nightmare, I think, is a manifestation of fears of abandonment that I have. The dream takes the same path, even thought the circumstances change. I'm running away from something or someone, and I'm in a crowd of people, and I can't scream, or the whole crowd is ignoring me en masse. I wake up in the midst of an asthma attack or gasping for breath, which is the beginning of an asthma attack. My darling husband, after witnessing this phenomenon for the first time when we were newly married, told me that I had been making sounds in my sleep. Sort of pitiful moans, low and deep in my throat, not something I can adequately describe with words. I told him about the nightmare, and that I'd been having it for years and years and years, and now he wakes me up when I start making that noise. Thank god for that, it saves me from feelings of utter terror when I wake myself up.

The more fun dreams, though, have been about me meeting one of my idols, although they’re weird dreams as well. I’ve written before about my teenage obsession with a rock band, Def Leppard, and about what a hottie I thought the lead singer was when I was 14. (Well, yes, since you ask, I still think he’s cute, but my husband is much sexier.) The first dream was that I had the chance to meet him, and hubby was right there with me, and just as the rock star turned to speak to me, I woke up. Kind of like the cable going out during a really important scene in a movie, no? But I can tell you all about where we were, the colors on the walls, what the rock star had on, what I had on, what my husband was wearing, even the details of the chairs we were sitting in, what the tickets that we had to the event looked like. The dream itself is not so strange, as I’ve been listening to the CDs my sister-in-law got me a lot. So it seems realistic to me that the band or the music would show up in my dreams when I’m spending more time listening to it during the day. What’s weird to me is the striking colors, the reach-out-and-touch-it quality of the surroundings in each dream. I never remember stuff like that. Wonder what it means? The smart alec side of me says, hey, bright girl, try listening to some DAVE instead. Did I mention that I have tickets to ALLL the shows near my hometown? And I spent the day listening to O.A.R.'s "In between Now and Then", about 4 times or so, and perhaps they will show up tonight.

Soundtrack? Tuesday's Coming, by O.A.R., stuck in my head courtesy of hearing it several times today.