This Post Brought To You By Insomnia

I can’t sleep. Like ever. It has been at least two weeks since I have had a full, restful, uninterrupted eight hours. Or seven. Or six. Hell, I’d be happy with five hours of sleep, but that ain’t happening either. I’ve been averaging four measly, pitifully nauseating, excruciatingly cruel hours of sleep a night.

Martha Stewart sleeps only four hours a night and she’s a multimillionaire, but she’s also a convicted felon, so it’s hard to know how this is going to work out for me. Donald Trump also sleeps only four hours a night and he’s the president, but he’s also the worst president in the history of history. So, again, this does not necessarily bode well for me and my insomnia. Just know that if I start combing my hair in a strange fashion it’s from the lack of sleep.

I’d love to say I’m spending all my free time weaving intricate tapestries or writing the great American novel or solving the world’s energy crisis, but I’m not. I’m mostly just lying there contemplating my navel or trying to figure out why Buzzfeed thinks I live in New Mexico based upon my Sonic order. Doesn’t an order of onion rings and cherry limeade scream North Carolina? I don’t know. Maybe I threw the whole thing off by choosing the french toast sticks.

Perhaps I should use all this time to come up with a new invention, like the Hurricane Spin Scrubber. It’s like an electric toothbrush on steroids and it’s apparently going to change everyone’s lives. We’re never going to have to strain to get rid of soap scum again. I’d get one, because no one hates straining to get rid of soap scum more than me, but I always think about what happens when I take my electric toothbrush out of my mouth to spit. Toothpaste goes everywhere, including on my glasses and the bathroom mirror. I guarantee that is happening with the Spin Scrubber, toxic cleaners in people’s faces all over this great land, even as we speak. It should be noted that I’m receiving no compensation from The Hurricane Spin Scrubber. I’m just completely fascinated this thing exists.

spin scrubber
They don’t show her face, but I bet you ten bucks it’s all winced up from the pain of scrubbing bubbles in her eyes.

 

If I had more sleep I’d be less prone to deception. My husband knows this and revels in my weakened state. Just this weekend he somehow managed to get me to walk around our apartment complex carrying a box the size of Texas all while I was in my pajamas, even after I specifically said I refused to do that. “Just help me carry it down the stairs,” he said with a coy smile. He assured me no one in the breezeway would see me in sweatpants and a tank top, sneakers with no socks, hair wildly dispersed, mascara and drool embedded into my left cheek. We got down all three flights and, in my exhausted haze, I failed to realized he just kept going until we were almost at the garbage dumpster. At least I had the box to hide behind.

The cat loves when I can’t sleep. She thinks it’s party time. She drops all her worn out, chewed up, smelly and rotten cat toys on my torso as I flop from one side to the next foolishly believing I just need to change positions to make it all better. Sadly, there is no better position. They all suck and end in heartbreak. No heartbreak for Jojo, though. It’s party time for Jojo.

My husband can sleep through anything. I’ve often considered waking him just so I can ask him how he sleeps through my sleeplessness. Wouldn’t help matters. He’d just roll back over and go to sleep quickly and then I’d have to kick him in the shins repeatedly. That would likely bring me no joy either, for he’d just roll over and go back to sleep again and the vicious cycle would continue.

My husband can also nap. Same with Jojo. Who the hell cares if we’re up all night? Just take a nap! Refresh yourself! Oh, fuck off. When my husband naps he wakes up like he’s had a full night’s sleep, refreshed and ready to take on the world. When I nap, I wake up nauseous and confused. Always, some part of my hair is glued to my cheek from drool and I’m never quite sure what year it is. I’d rather refresh myself by shooting you the bird when you tell me to take a nap.

I want to be productive when I have these sleepless nights, but ‘they’ say not to. ‘They’ are the incredible internet life wizards and ‘they’ know what is best for you. ‘They’ know I should never get out of bed and do another activity. ‘They’ know I shouldn’t look at my phone because the light is going to upset my circadian rhythm. ‘They’ say I shouldn’t look at the clock. ‘They’ say I should just lie there and wait for sleep to come and it will. I have no idea if any of this is true. I’m too tired to do any research.

The silver lining to all this insomnia is coffee. Coffee is the greatest thing to ever have been invented. You may think it’s the polio vaccine or the Snuggie, but no, it’s coffee. I love coffee and, coffee, it loves me. It loves me more than my husband who just rolls over and goes to sleep any damn time he wishes even though he knows I am painfully suffering from a devastating loss of sleep. Coffee understands. I should have married coffee.

I discovered that one of my fish is a murderer. That has nothing to do with my insomnia, but one of the side effects of insomnia is lack of focus and my attention was diverted for a second and that thought popped in my head. Yeah, he’s full on eating all our cherry shrimp, which were $4 a pop, by the way. So, here I thought I was the murderer. All my fish were dying and I took it all so personally, but he’s the true assassin and now I have to wait for him to die before I get anymore fish.

img_7183
As of today it has been zero days since I’ve killed any fish, but now I know it’s not me, it’s him. I literally caught him hovering over a neon tetra corpse. When I leaned in, I swear I heard him say, “You’re next, bitch.”

‘They’ say you should get an aquarium to relax yourself so you sleep better at night. I think ‘they’ fail to take into account that you may get a homicidal fish that will ruin your life by making you think you’re killing all the fish when you aren’t. How the hell am I supposed to sleep when I am haunted by all those tiny crustacean bodies I have to scoop and flush? I actually have no idea if ‘they’ think having an aquarium will help you sleep. ‘They’ say one side effect of insomnia is hyperbole. I have that. ‘They’ also say another side effect of insomnia is not knowing how to end a blog post written about insomnia. I have that too.

 

*Featured image courtesy of Pixabay. 

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31 thoughts on “This Post Brought To You By Insomnia”

  1. I’m not rubbing salt in your wounds but I’ve only had 2 of those sleepless nights since I retired several months ago.
    Have you tried getting out of bed and reading a really boring book?

    Liked by 1 person

  2. Hi, Love your blog, really makes me laugh..I also have really bad sleep problems. My teen has problems sleeping as well. I bought him a weighted blanket . I know it sounds weird, but honestly, it was a miracle for him. It seems to help people fall asleep and stay asleep longer..You can Google weighted blankets..
    Take care,
    Carla

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I have heard of those and know people who swear by them. I feel like it would be very hot, though. I’ve already got the A/C down so low there are polar bears setting up house in the living room. My husband might revolt if I go lower.

      Like

      1. I do polar bear cold in my house, too. The kids wear sweats year round, and my mom asks for a sweater as soon as she comes in the door. When they ask (and they ALWAYS ask) why I keep my house 64 degrees, I tell people it’s because I make afghans, dammit, and so they should shut their mouths, grab one and park it before I get hateful.

        Liked by 2 people

  3. I am constantly drooling when I use my electric toothbrush, no matter how I do it. (I was going to say how tightly I wrap my lips around it, but that sounded very dirty, and it’s quite the opposite.) It’s a love-hate relationship at this point.

    I don’t get naps either; I tend to wake up more tired than when I fell asleep– what’s the point?!

    Fish freak me out a little. Mostly it’s their gills that really gross me out, and I can’t help but look at them. *Shudders.*

    And, that is all my rambling, none of which is related to your insomnia. Oops.

    Liked by 1 person

  4. Yikes, you poor kid. Random thoughts on your predicament:
    – novel, navel… Look, they’re only one letter apart, may as well start the damn book! Write about what you know… a woman who has insomnia. And an ex-tumor. And a kickass blog.
    – It’s the drool! Stop doing that!
    – Have you tried counting backward from, say, 1,000? I have a special way of doing it: In your mind’s eye, each number is printed/embedded/nailed onto a piece of wood, like a house address number, see? You can really get into this, make each plaque a different colour and design, maybe wood, maybe metal, maybe… get it? Okay, you still may be up for hours but at least you’ll be exercising your creativity!
    – Coffee?!? COFFEE??? The world’s greatest delivery method for CAFFEINE?? How is this a good idea given your proclivities for staying the fuck awake all night?
    If I think of more stuff, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, take a darn nap already!

    Liked by 1 person

  5. I was going to say maybe stay the fuck away from coffee but Ellie P up there, just like Marcia from the Brady Bunch graph stole my thunder. Ellie Ellie Ellie!!! Where was I? Oh I know! So here is what I want to know….why do my eyes get so heavy I can’t even prop them open with nails but the minute I put the book down and turn off the lights I’m wide awake? I’ve given up trying to make sense of what ‘they’ say. I suspect ‘they’ might be morons. My new favorite word thank you Rex Tillerson even though I still don’t like you much you nailed that one. But I digress. I can’t help you with your sleep problem. Since we’re both awake wanna hang out, though?

    Liked by 2 people

  7. I once had four rosy barbs in my aquarium. I don’t remember all of their names, but one was Elliott. I looked in the tank one day and saw the three other rosy barbs all attacking Elliott. Poor Elliott had lost almost all of his fins and tail. I isolated him for a little while because he could barely swim, I thought he wasn’t going to make it. He recovered a bit but never got more than some nubs of fins. It was enough so he could swim pretty well though, so I put him back in the tank with everyone. The other three were still jerks to him sometimes, but he managed.

    Elliott ended up outliving all three of them (I was so proud of him), and I never got another barb again.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. Have you considered putting the sassy pants fish in something like this? https://premiumaquatics.com/products/lees-net-breeder-small-fine.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIwJS1qp_r1gIVDC9pCh0GSgFlEAQYFCABEgLMWPD_BwE

        I have a plastic one that just hangs on the edge of my tank so that the fish is still in the tank in the same water, but he is isolated. I feel bad because obviously that isn’t the most fun life for him, but your other fish aren’t having very fun lives with, you know, being killed.

        So if he doesn’t like his new digs, you could tell him he should have thought of that before he murdered his roommates.

        Liked by 1 person

  11. I haven’t slept well the last six nights and I don’t even know why. I do know I used to suffer much more insomnia than I do now, and for that I am grateful. I use earplugs and lavender lotion and I break all the rules if I can’t fall asleep or wake up long. I will get up and write, iron, watch tv, read a book, clean the toilets, I don’t care what THEY say, cause THEY don’t live here.
    I am a great napper, tho.
    Also? Cherry limeade — YES.

    Liked by 1 person

  12. Sorry to hear that you have not been sleeping well. Have you tried melatonin to sleep better? My husband has been taking it because he’s a light sleeper and he works nights which upsets his sleep schedule often.

    Also, I recently read in my gardening forum about magnesium deficiency. I’m going to copy and paste what someone said just for your reference.

    Y’all, for magnesium, I use Dr. William Davis’ recipe (from his Wheat Belly books) for a simple drinkable form of magnesium that is easy for the body to absorb. You make it by adding 3 tablespoons of regular, UNFLAVORED, Milk of Magnesium to a 2-liter bottle of seltzer water (not tonic water). It has to be unflavored because the flavorings prevent the chemical reaction (that occurs between the seltzer water and the Milk of Magnesia) from occurring that creates Magnesium bicarbonate, which is the most highly absorbable form of magnesium.

    So to make the magnesium water, I open up a 2-liter bottle of seltzer water, pour off about 3 tablespoons worth of seltzer water, add 3 T. of unflavored milk of magnesia to the bottle of seltzer, cap the bottle and shake it up to combine the two. I leave it on the counter and check again in 10-15 minutes to see if all the milk of magnesia is absorbed. If it isn’t all absorbed or dissolved yet, I shake it up again and leave it on the counter for a few more minutes. Then (and this is important) I label it. I stick a piece of duct tape on the bottle and write “Magnesium Water” on it with a big black marker so no one will accidentally drink a lot of Magnesium Water (which would have a strong laxative effect).

    To get your daily dose of magnesium, you drink 4 oz. of the magnesium water twice a day, which gives you 180 milligrams of easily absorbed elemental magnesium daily. (A person needing to correct a magnesium deficiency can drink up to a total of 16 oz. per day, which would give them 360 milligrams daily.) Before trying the magnesium water, I had tried various forms of magnesium supplements in pill, tablet or caplet form, and it didn’t seem like they had any effect on my body so I think I wasn’t absorbing them well.

    You can add a few drops of liquid stevia to the magnesium water byusing flavored Sweetleaf stevia drops (they come in fruit flavors like berry) or the flavored extract of your choice if you don’t like the natural flavor of the magnesium water plus liquid stevia for a little sweetness.

    I cannot believe how much better I sleep (I’m even sleeping through Tim’s alarm clock going off at 5 a.m.) and how much better I feel (and no muscle cramps) since I started drinking the magnesium water regularly—instead of intending to drink it but then sort of forgetting and having it be hit-and-miss. Consistency seems to matter. (grin)

    Liked by 1 person

  13. I can so identify with : the insomnia, the coffee, the toothbrush, and especially the cats’ delight when a human is awake in the middle of the night. Your post has made me laugh. Hope your party with cats doesn’t go on too long tonight, 🐱🐱

    Liked by 1 person

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