Hitting the Wall

Before posting three whole hours late today I hurried to the handy people-counter called Site Meter to see who I'd disappointed and found someone in Paris, several people in Australia, three in the Netherlands, several in the UK, somebody New Delhi, somebody in Estonia and many more who came looking for something new from me and found only yesterday's lame post about the raspberries.This is a lot of people to let down and I’m sorry. It happened because I couldn’t sleep at all the night before last. At midnight when I had lain there for an hour I got up and changed the sheets. That didn’t help so at 1:30 I tried the Bath of Surprise where I get into a tubful of scalding water to stun myself into near-unconsciousness. That didn’t help either. Finally, at 3:30am I got up again and took an entire shower complete with hair washing, hair drying and hair squeezing –  what David calls the flat-iron step - AND, in an effort of true desperation, poured a giant tumbler  of cheap white wine and drank it all down while standing on one leg which is what I must do when I work on my hair. My hips are out of alignment these days and I find it feel better if, when standing for 40 minutes, I do the stork thing.It was 4:30 by the time I got back into the bed and finally did fall sleep, chirping birds or not – until 6am anyway when my alarm went off and I got up to do the thousand things I did yesterday.. Thus, last night, right smack in the middle of the evening fun I left my ten family members all still laughing and carrying on, went into my room and wham! toppled over onto the bed  like a felled tree.Blankness, Dreaming. Tardiness posting. And now a brand new day with all new adventures ahead.

The Narrow Path

This child goes right to sleep if you read to him for  ten minutes.  Last night I hadn’t been reading for even that long before he folded his small shoulder into his body like a bird preparing for rest, turned on his side and was dead to the world.It was different with his littler brother, who, somewhere in the last six months, has gone from the man of limited vocabulary you see here to someone who has more to say than Robin Williams himself, and can say it just as fast.At home, the two sleep in twin beds pushed together to make better use of a room that is at all times spiky with Lego towers, and draped in clotheslines and various fort-making fabrics. But during their sleepover at our house last night the older child begged to sleep alone.So we tried the little guy in his old crib, with one of its side removed to make it seem like a youth bed. He wasn't having it. He kept saying that he wasn’t going to lie down; that he wasn’t tired at all and in fact thought he'd like to have another whole supper, then play with his toys... I tried for a solid hour to get him sleepy with songs and picture books.We finally left him there in his little room and for 15 whole minutes his grandpa and I lived in a fool's paradise, believing him to be asleep at last. That’s when the door to his room creaked open and he emerged all smiles, a toy hammer in one hand and wearing the kind of hearing protection ear muffs you see on the runways of your larger airports.It was then that David finally picked him up, “Let’s go tell stories in TT and Papa’s bed!” he said and into our room the child went, and there remained the night through while I took my pillow and slept elsewhere.  Poor little boy! He was fine today, as shiny as a new penny and ready to help dig that hole clear to China with his big brother above. (Here he is below, appreciating the heck out of those wind chimes I spoke of yesterday.) What a hard time we all do have when we can’t find that narrow path to dreamland![youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGhpX7OdwgQ]

Sleep Aid My Foot

I hate taking a drug to help me sleep. For me the Excedrin PMs and the Tylenol PMs are a total bust. They don’t work at all for like three whole hours and when they do they work they hold me under, against my will almost, like a bully holds some poor little kid under in a swimming pool.I do have a prescription for Trazadone but that stuff holds me under too - plus it makes my mouth feel like it’s been wet-vac’d. I have a prescription for Ambien even but I totally hate that stuff. It makes me feel like I’m having other people’s dreams and what do I want with that? I like having my own dreams during which my subconscious mind delivers to me cruel and searing truths about my own sorry self. (Example: The other night I dreamed I had a houseful of people over for some giant day-long event and there I was, car keys in hand, telling them all I had to go out on this crucial errand - and there they were looking at me with these baleful cow eyes. Even my clueless sleeping self knew there was a message in there for me all right all right.)No, sleep is like love making: it’s best begun upon with a clear head.Of course sometimes with insomnia your head is just TOO clear, like last night when I kept having thoughts about this one subject which I can’t quite recall now though the word ‘chute’ keeps coming to mind. Hmmmm. Was I having thoughts about stuffing things down a laundry chute? Could it have been about Chutes and Ladders the only board game I have ever been any good at? Maybe if I get back in the bed it will come to me but oh no wait it’s a weekday and I have all this stupid work to do never mind that trip to the darn YMCA with its zillion treadmills and ellipticals and wave machines all waiting for me to get over there and pump some blood through the  small splashing creature that lives in my chest; through that little pulsing fist that works day and night whether I’m out cold and doing dream therapy or lying awake like I was for hours last night, talking ragtime to the moon.  

Starin' at the Ceiling

I'm coming to the end of my rope with the sleepless nights. I tried what the pharmacist told me was a harmless little ‘sleep-aid’ the night before last and was a stone in the bed still at quarter of 8– and I usually get up 6:00.  So last night when insomnia once again came to stay and the sheets felt like sand and my sad little feet kept cramping, I finally tried the scalding bath method. This involves filling the tub to sternum height with water just short of the boiling point and sliding into it. I always expect to melt like Jell-O and that's what happens sort of. After about  ten minutes I can feel even my bones softening. Then, moments short of a swoon, I get out, open the bathroom window, and sit on the edge of the tub in just a towel reading my Newsweek as my body slowly chills. Some 30 minutes later, whip-sawed by thermal contrast, I begin to feel sleepy.Only last night this didn't work. I lay in the bed. I turned on my phone and took pictures of the moon which never works because even with your cell phone a flash goes off and all you get is your window treatments. I thought about Steve Buscemi, and about the movie I’d sneaked away to see at noontime. I thought about that lame sleep-aid and then remembered my Irish mom who always did what her Irish dad did too for the fever and the cold and the pain in the belly: I laced a glass of hot milk with two fingers of whiskey and drank it down, talking to the moon until sleep overtook me. It doesn't make intoxicate me; it doesn't even make me mellow. It just sort of pushes my reset button which is sometimes all a person really needs.

Insomnia Alley

Can’t sleep. Leftover fireworks and headlights from street sweeping through bedroom. Mate out cold, lucky dog. Sheets ropey and damp. Toss. Turn. Get up 2am, pour  lemonade, drag pillow and fan to different room and turn on tube. Hotter than hell. Try hanging upside down off the couch.Notes from the night:

1. People’s teeth look really great when they’re up at the tops of their faces.
2. Look into these ads with smiling girls in low-cut dresses who want me to call them. Yet they don’t SEEM lonely. Easy work-from-home job with mother’s hours?
3. Consciousness can be lost in any position, even while hanging like a bat: significant gaps in “House” episode as a result.
4. “House” will never ever go off air. Day or night, flood or famine you can always catch an episode. That Hugh Laurie is good all right; you’d never know he was really a British comic. HEY, let's all watch this video!

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJW_yTbYGoI&feature=channel]Ha ha, right? Well, it’s MORNING NOW. Woke 4am, drank 3 cups coffee to assist cogitation. Why did I wake holding me cell phone? Amnesia ? Small stroke? Make mental note check next month’s phone bill. (But oh isn't Hugh a cutie?)