Climbing a Sleep Hill

Oh Insomnia. You Suck. I woke this morning around 1:30 and climbed out of bed at 3:00 to start my day. Here is the process of what happens when I have an insomnia night.

I wake up after 2-4 hours of sleep - usually with my head fully engaged in a thought. Often it's me being upset about work or some sort of hostile family scenario going through my head. I am not sure if I am dreaming about these things and wake up thinking about the dream or how that works. I just know that suddenly I am full awake and already yelling at a co-worker in my head.

I begin the dance of futility at this point. I start trying to empty my mind and play the "find a comfortable position" dance. While I start flopping and sighing the dog - who sleeps on the floor right next to my side of the bed - thinks me moving around is her que to move around too. Click click click go Emma's nails on the wood floor. Flop flop flop go her ears as she shakes her head. Achoo! The dog sneazes several times which is her" I am sort of barking but not - because I am a timid dog and I want you to know what I want but I don't want to trouble you too much...." My tossing about will get the cat up sometimes as well. She sleeps on a blanket at the end of the bed and generally my flopping about will only cause her to stand - stretch - and lay back down.

This morning after flopping around for well over an hour the dog got more assertive and actually put her front paws on the bed and nudged me with her cold nose. I knew I was doomed at that point. I waited several minutes for her to settle a little (I don't want her thinking she can do that and it means I will wake up and take her out whenever she wants. Our dog cannot tell time even a little and she would be nudging me all night!) and then caved in and got out of bed.

Outside the dog goes - with me praying that there is no wildlife in our yard or nearby. I have had to run out and grab the hose and spray three baby racoons and a mama racoon off the bird feeder with a snarling Emma standing by at 4:00 in the morning in the not so distant past. (we don't fill our feeder in the back yard anymore....) I also pray she will not be out there barking her furry butt off. Nine times out of Ten I let her out and it's Bark Bark Bark Bark. Thank goodness our neighbors haven't flipped over this.

When I let her back in she is all juiced up and ready to play. So she digs her toys out of her bin and starts dragging them around the house.

I Snapped this shot of her after she had pulled two stuffies, a chew rope and a cat ball out of the toy bin and brought them in the den to work on. I also found three destroyed Kleenex laying all over the floor in the living room. Such Fun!

 Meanwhile - the cat starts going bonkers. Just like Emma, Izzi cannot tell time. I typically feed the girls shortly after I get up - so when I get up hours before feeing time, it confuses the cat something terrible. She starts chasing her balls around the house and pawing at doors and chirping her kitty chirp. Above is a shot of her staring down one of her cat balls.

 More staring down the balls. I think she batted this one down the hallway and was watching it move.

If you look you can see Izzi has turned on her lazer beams and is now levitating a ball to her. She is pretty lazy and often wills things to just come to her.

In this one Izzi is angry that I am photographing her telekinetic abilities and is going to launch a ball at me and my camera. I stopped taking pictures at this point and had the urge to clean myself and chase a toy mouse.....

So the pets go bonkers. And I find myself looking at strange websites like Justin Timberlake Does Things and looking at knitting apparel on Zazzle.

I have Insomnia nights a few times a month. I will occationally have up to three days in a row of barely any sleep. Those are rough weeks. I can generally handle one day with a fair amount of grace - but it is a rough day. Today is a day at work where I have stuff scheduled for the last two hours of my day that I need to be on my toes for. I struggle with food on days like today. I was hungry when I crawled out of bed this morning because I had already been awake for an hour and a half. But I don't want to start eating at 3:00 in the morning.... Instead I had coffee and then around 4:00 had a banana. But it's hard to not shove food in your face when you are tired and you are awake for almost 20 hours.

Tuesday is also the start of my three days of exercise, so I am trying to figure out if I can or should exercise tonight. I try not to allow excuses and to push through stuff. (It is so easy to excuse oneself from exercise....) so I am already thinking ahead to that and how will I handle that? Meh.

No matter how you cut it - today is going to be a very long day.