Saturday, March 16, 2019

More than you ever wanted to know about my recent sleep patterns

My personal sleep preference is to go to bed by 10:30 at the latest and be out of bed by 6:30 at the latest. Those times are slightly flexible depending on my energy level and the activities for the day, but in general, I aim for 9:30-5:30 or 10:30-6:30.

My sleep schedule has been a little off lately. You'd think Daylight Savings is to blame, but it's not. I've been waking up for odd reasons throughout the night, and it's disrupted my sleep patterns. I've been having a lot of bizarre dreams - the kind where you A) are relieved to wake up and realize it's not real and B) you have to completely rouse to recover.

I've also been hearing phantom whispers of children needing me in the night. They need milk, they are going to throw up, they can't sleep, the seams of their underwear are bugging them... I force myself awake only to discover that I dreamed it (except for the times when my kids are actually hovering over me whispering - that happens at least once a night. It's usually Eva).

One time I thought Nicky was asking me for medicine in the night. I got up and found the medicine and then went to his bed and tried to give it to him. He was sound asleep. Scotty had been awake when I'd gotten out of bed, and when I explained to him that Nicky had asked for medicine, he confirmed that Nicky had been sound asleep the whole time and hadn't asked for anything.

In addition to the creative concoctions of my subconscious, I get night sweats. I'm not sure what's causing them, but it's plausible that I'm either a hormonal mess or its a side effect of my anti-depressants. Whatever it be... it's ew! And it wakes me up frequently.

Which brings me to last night. I woke up twice from night sweats and once from phantom whispering, which was especially annoying because all of my kids were at sleepovers with cousins. Then there was the ultimate, most annoying waking of all... at 4:30 this morning, my toe itched. And I couldn't get it to stop! I kept rubbing it against the sheets, and it would be okay for a few seconds, but then it would start to itch again. So I'd reach down and scratch it, but the itch just kept returning. Finally, after an hour of trying to make my toe stop itching, I got out of bed and found my laptop. I figure, if I can't sleep because of my itchy toe, I might as well spend the morning blogging.



Which brings me to this moment. It's been two hours since I woke up. I'm tired and want to go back to bed. If I do go back to bed, I'll waste a good chunk of my morning which could be used productively. I'd like to work out, get a head start on cleaning the house, and grate five pounds of cheese to freeze before my kids get home.

But none of that matters.

Because my darn toe still itches!


2 comments:

JJ said...

You freeze grated cheese? I didn't know you could do that. Doesn't cheese turn crumbly if you freeze it?

Britt said...

JJ, I've been freezing grated cheese for years, and it works very well. It doesn't turn crumbly. I usually buy a 5 lb block and shred half of it to freeze.