Sleepless in Minnesota

I don’t like to wish ill on anyone but I am glad I’m not the only member of some clubs. Like this sleepless issue I have, it seems others suffer from the same thing, possibly for different reasons but sleepless nonetheless.

My friend Sharon was kind enough to share her story with me and I would love to share it with all of you. I’ve been slacking in my stories lately so guest writers are always welcome.

“Sleep or No Sleep, We Must Get Along”

As I have gone through several stages of life, sleepless nights have created a variety of entertainment for me. I have experienced bouts of sleep deprivation for many years. Reasons, reactions, and outcomes of long nights with little sleep have always resulted to be quite interesting. The positive side is the opportunity to share stories and laughter with friends.

Mischievous thoughts are plentiful when you have an awesome husband with nighttime flaws such as falling asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow. It took me many years to understand and accept this flaw. I lie next to him and want to talk about the day or ask questions about tomorrow. The usual response I get is, “Yes, dear.” and before I realize it, he’s sleeping. And I remain wondering, how does that happen and why doesn’t it happen to me? Then before I know it, his snoring begins and another sleepless night begins for me.

Years ago, one night my husband was asleep on his back, pillow over his eyes and forehead, mouth open and was snoring. My mind raced to find a solution to this problem. The only thing I could think of at the time was to hold his nose shut. I thought about it for a while before I acted. I thought, hmm, can’t hurt him because his mouth was open. So I proceeded to pinch his nose shut. As one may have guessed, that was not a smart choice. He was gasping and swinging his arms. I laughed; he didn’t because he elbowed me in the head. The next time I attempted this maneuver; I kept a slight distance from him and put a pillow by my face. I succeeded. He stopped snoring and rolled over. I remember that outcome being a little too boring for my taste.

Throughout the years, I have implemented a variety of actions that I thought would be a solution. After 20+ years of marriage, his snoring and my sleepless nights continue. As my frustrations surge, I say a few naughty words directed at him, and proceed to leave our bedroom and venture to a different bedroom. Why I bother saying anything is beyond me because he doesn’t hear me anyways!

Last night I awakened at 12:40 a.m., wishing it was 5:40 a.m. so I could get out of bed and do something, I knew it was going to be a long night. Of course the mind starts to plan the day and prioritize everything. Like that’s going to happen when sleep has not been part of my routine for quite some time. Once again, my frustrations surged, I said a few naughty words directed at him, and proceed to leave our bedroom and venture to a different bedroom. I lay in bed and thought about our day’s accomplishments and what we still had to get done in preparation for the winter months. That did not heighten sleepiness at all because I started to smile and giggle to myself, followed by a reflection of my mischievous actions in our younger marital years.

At about 2:30 a.m., I logged onto Facebook and played Candy Crush. Through the walls, I could hear my husband snoring. I mumble utterly to myself and became completely frustrated with Candy Crush. I logged off of Facebook and thought, hmm, what can I do now? Then, I had a thought. I went to the garage because I thought of a sign I hung on the wall. I read the sign, and then looked at the boat and snow blower. This concludes how I spent the wee hours this morning.

And you two must share a garage stall!

Sleepless in Wisconsin XIV

I really have no idea if that’s the roman numeral for 14 or not but tonight I don’t care. I am so tired of this not sleeping thing I could throw up. I’ve had another run of bad sleeping the last couple of weeks but have been trying to ignore it……as we already know, that doesn’t work.

For a few days I had heartburn to the point of being on the verge of throwing up which I know was part of the problem. I would imagine some of you are thinking…..’hey chubby, stop eating’, but heartburn has never been a problem for me. I can eat the rear end out of a rhino and things are fine…..normally. That’s why this has been so upsetting to me, although I haven’t been eating rhino lately I haven’t been eating much of anything because of the burn.

I visited the chiropractor today for other issues and when he had me lay down on the torture table he asked “suffering from heartburn are ya?” without even touching me. He freaks me out like that now and then. When I told him I did he took his index finger, poked me near my left shoulder blade and said “I bet it hurts right here”. Pretty sure my scream and jerk were enough of an answer. He adjusted me and miraculously I haven’t had heartburn since. I forget about him for things like that and wish I didn’t because the 8 rolls of tums sure didn’t help.

While I’m ranting I may as well share that not only am I struggling with heartburn, I feel as though I have been drug behind a snowplow by my arms. A friend and I got ourselves into a cleaning project that was more than we could have imagined. At this very moment I would rather be kidnapped by an unknown Amazon tribe and tortured for days than ever wash walls again. I was already suffering from some unknown issue with my elbows (thus the chiropractor and the not sleeping tonight) and I’m pretty certain the cleaning made it worse. The chiro isn’t very impressed with me but he’s used to it.

The person we’re doing the cleaning for also has a sleeping problem so we’ve been swapping stories of insomnia. The difference between us is he has money so infomercials are actually useful to him. I noticed several purchases from crappy late night TV in his apartment. I thought about leaving a note for him with the things I think I could use but knowing him he’d actually purchase them for me.

Tonight I’m watching a Finding Bigfoot marathon instead of infomercials and I can’t decide which is actually worse. The episode on now is in Idaho. Tomorrow when I speak to Idaho (the guy) I will have to see if he’s interested in doing a little squatch hunting the next time I’m there. Maybe we’ll film our adventure and push these four yayhoos from the show and take over. I bet we could be entertaining. To end the show they said “Idaho is part of the pathway from the Rockies to Canada for the sasquatch”. The squatch are migrating north to Canada?? What does Canada have to offer that we don’t? How do we know this for sure? Maybe the Canadians aren’t actually trying to find bigfoot so they’re going there to be left alone………interesting concept. Maybe our show could center around keeping the squatch here in the states.

If there was anything else on I would turn the channel but there’s not. What the hell do I pay $85 a month for if I can’t watch anything better than this in the middle of the night? I’ll call the cable company tomorrow and ask them…..wait…..no, I won’t. I’m pretty sure they won the “Worst Customer Service on the Planet” award last month.

Those were some super random writings tonight, I think it’s time to find something else to do like the dishes or laundry or something. I’m not even making much sense to myself……and that’s bad.

Sleepless in Wisconsin IX

Oh boy, I really thought you had heard the last of my sleep-deprived ramblings but I was so very wrong. You’re a little lucky, I waited 3 nights before I started writing about it again.

I guess I haven’t checked in with you after my sleep clinic…..I got my results back which said I didn’t have sleep apnea, thank you captain obvious, but they did let me know that I wake up almost 20 times an hour due to sudden movements. Whatever that means. To them it meant they prescribed me Trazodone, yup, a depression med that doubles as a sleep aid. I’ve been taking that since I returned from Idaho, almost three weeks and I’ve been sleeping much better.

Some nights I’m super tired or I bartend late so I don’t take it and still sleep pretty well. Now, when I say I’ve been sleeping well, I mean I get a good five hours of sleep, that makes me happy as a pig in poop. I go in for a follow-up next week so I’m going to request they prescribe that by the truckload, we’ll worry about the side effects later or addictions late. I think the list of side affects is the same for this as every other med out there, they just keep adding things to the list.

I did find out from my prescription drug guru, I’d tell you who that is but I’d have to kill you, that once you take this you have about an hour or so window to hit the sheets in order for it to work well. If you happen to blow through that hour and get to the other side, it can have the opposite effect and keep you up for quite some time. That seems to be where I am today, and where I was last night. Idaho called a little late both nights so sleep has eluded me once again.

Tonight I got up and moved to the living room, obviously not looking for something good on TV because we already know how that goes. I also decided I needed to have some nachos while I watch and write, why not make it a full-blown party while I watch people working out on infomercials. Not sure how it is that I can stuff my face at 2:30 AM other than the fact I went to the dentist and didn’t really eat anything after the invasion of my molar. I should be out walking every chance I get after what happened to me on Friday night.

Do you have that pair of jeans that’s so comfortable you just can’t get rid of them? They’re several years old, on their third button, the bottoms are frayed and they’re so light blue they’re almost see-through? That’s exactly what was going on with the pants I wore on Friday night. I was sure I was going to get one more good wear out of them. I did feel that the button may not make it through the night as the two threads holding it on were strained pretty good. No button I can live with. No butt or leg I cannot live with.

The pants made it through the bbq at my house and three bars, truly being troopers. I was headed back to one of the previous bars to pick up someone we left behind and got into the car and felt the left butt cheek area give way. I looked over at the guy sitting in the passenger seat and said “nothing good is going to come out of this”. He looked at me as though I was crazy and then I said “I just ripped my pants”. He laughed and said “oh I’m sure it’s not that bad”. Wow was he wrong.

I got out of the car and pulled my t-shirt down over my butt, hoping to cover the damage. He laughed hysterically when I showed him what was happening and then said, “it will be fine, we’ll be in and out and no one will notice”. Well, he was partially right, at that place no one noticed. As I got in and out of the car again I could feel the rip creeping its way down my leg. Hindsight tells me I should have dropped him off and headed home to change my pants.

We got back to the rest of the group and all hell broke loose from there. There was no covering the damage, not only was I freaking out but with every movement they ripped a little more. Apparently once they were done, they were done. At one point one of my friends decided to be a complete jackpot and grab my pocket and pull. Needless to say that’s all that was needed to rip the pants down my entire left leg and through the bottom, leaving me with a right pants leg and my right butt cheek covered and nothing else. The worst part of this story……..I wasn’t wearing underwear.

After some futile attempts to cover my bare ass, I turned to leave the bar with as much dignity as I could muster, which wasn’t much, and walked out the back door. I got in the car to wait for everyone else to join me. I then had to get out at my house with everyone still in the car laughing to go in and change.

I’m pretty sure when he grabbed my pocket he got more than he bargained for, no one deserved to see that…..well, maybe he did. I’m sure the sight of my cottage cheese thighs and butt cheek are forever burned into his brain, that’s what he gets. Lesson learned for me, don’t wear the pants out of the house that you think have ‘one more wear’ in them.

Oh boy, enough embarrassment for this evening and I think I finally yawned. It’s 3:00 AM and I better try to get a few hours in before I get up for work.

Sleepless in Wisconsin VI

Urgh.

It’s 3:30 AM and I’ve been up for an hour. This has been the story of my life since Idaho left. I’m certainly not blaming him but I have seen 4:00 AM for a week and I don’t like it one bit. Today will be no different.

I’m mad and frustrated so that doesn’t help the situation. My cold from hell doesn’t seem to be gone either, this morning I have an ear ache and I constantly feel like I’m going to sneeze. I hate everything right now…….except for tennis.

That’s right, I said tennis. The Australian Open is on live at this time of the morning so it has fast become my favorite early AM show. Why is it that I can turn on a tennis match on a Sunday afternoon and nap like it’s nobody’s business but at 2:30 AM it’s like an adrenaline rush for me? If I still owned a tennis racket and knew where a tennis court actually was, I would probably be out there playing right now. Of course I would be in winter boots and a parka but I’d be given it a go. Mind you, I haven’t played tennis in at least 20 years.

Do you ever do that? Watch a sport and think ‘I can do that, no problem’. I’ve caught myself several times this morning talking to the players, as if I’m some sort of an expert. I should probably tell you at this point that tennis was never my sport, I’ve played quite a bit but was never more than a novice. But right now, in my mind, I could do this seemingly simple game quite easily. Ya right.

I do this with golf as well. My clubs ride around in my trunk most of the summer and rarely get used but I watch a tournament on TV and I’m suddenly a pro. I have perfected my swing, adjusted my attitude and become a lover of my woods…..until I actually get on the course. As we all know, my only golf outing last summer resulted in a groin pull because I slipped in the porta potty.

I’ve watched some pretty good matches in the last 90 minutes but right now I have to conclude my little rant as I have to find Mary Jo Fernandez’ email address because she is wearing a terrible shirt. Yup, seems I’m the fashion police at this time of the morning as well. My contribution to society never ends. 🙂

Sleepless in Wisconsin V

Here we go again, after a couple of hours of sleep I’m sitting on the couch and have been attempting to watch TV for over an hour. Tonight I’m not only wide awake but I’m restless which isn’t good. I’m thankful at this moment the grocery store isn’t open or I would be there with my list, coupons, bad hair and inappropriate outfit. Yes, I could go to Wal-Mart but that would be tragic, completely tragic, as I would end up in the next people of Wal-Mart email. Some of those people already hit too close to home, I don’t actually need to be one of them.

I watched college football a good portion of the day today so Sports Center is out of the question and I’m sure I don’t have to reiterate why that is. My channel surfing went well beyond my normal limits and I’m watching Comedy Central. Not that I don’t ever watch Comedy Central, it just happens to be in the channels I rarely get to and tend to forget about. I’m enamored by the commercials on this station.

The commercials that are on at 3:30 in the morning are kind of crazy. Did you know that Jimmy Johnson does a commercial for Extenze? Seriously Jimmy, Extenze? I don’t even know what to say about that. Are you really that hard up for money? I bet one of my next posts will be another one about search engine terms, some poor guy trying to find out how to enhance his sex life is going to find this blog because I’m flabbergasted by Jimmy Johnson. Sorry buddy.

Along with Jimmy there are tons of commercials for a chat line of some sort. Apparently this isn’t a date line, it’s a phone call with benefits. And the commercials aren’t for the same one, there’s several numbers, I wonder if it’s really the same people answering all of those numbers. They show these sexy men and women on the commercials and you know darn well the people actually answering the phones do not look like that. There’s a good chance they’re toothless home bodies that haven’t showered in three days. Sexy huh?

There’s two other commercials that are completely disturbing to me this morning. One is for something called Forever Lazy which seems to be one piece pajamas. Ok people, I understand we might want these; however, the commercial shows people running through a field, having drinks with the neighbors and having dinner with the family. What? You couldn’t put actual clothes on to do those things? I really think they could have stopped with the scenario of watching movies at home and being snuggled up on the couch because I’m pretty sure that’s the only place anyone is going to wear this thing.

The second commercial is for something called Good Vibrations or something like that. This is a personal item for women. Ok, fine. The commercial shows a woman getting this in the mail and talking to her neighbor about it. This is not something I’d be sharing with my neighbor, let alone standing on the street opening the package for the world to see. Again, can’t we think of better scenarios to portray this product? No matter how good this product is I’m most likely not going to be talking about it and showing it to my neighbor.

I’m afraid if I keep watching there will be more so I better attempt to get some sleep. It’s after 4:00 AM and people are actually getting up for the day. Maybe I’ll read and stay up until the grocery store at 6:00. Hmmmm.

Sleepless in Wisconsin IV

Oy ve. This no sleeping thing is for the birds. 2 nights in a row it’s been bad, bad, bad.

Here are my ramblings from those 2 nights.

Sunday morning 3:37 AM. What in the sam hell am I doing awake at this time of the morning again?? Going to the gym has helped me tremendously with my sleeping, at least I’m giving the credit to the gym, I actually have no idea why I’ve been sleeping better.

Here I am once again, on the couch, surfing through channels hoping to come across something that will lull me to sleep. I’m also looking for something that won’t embed itself into my unconscious if I do happen to fall asleep. I’m down into the ‘normal’ channels and I see nothing but infomercials and sports shows. Not good sports either, a Big Ten football game from 1991, a classic baseball game or some ultimate fighting rerun. Hey, guess what, we know who wins!!

The infomercials actually do lull me to sleep but then I wake up certain I have an acne problem, wanting to get rich quick on real estate or feeling like I need to order work out DVDs. It’s the same with overnight news programs. I think I know the news but get it mixed up because it’s buried deep so I wake up thinking there was guerrilla warfare in Canada, a plane crash in Kansas and a factory fire in Russia. When in all actuality there were gunshots reported in Minneapolis, a train derailment in Seattle and wildfires in California.

Perhaps if I’d stop writing at this time of the morning I could sleep!! Now there’s a thought. Back to my attempt to sleep.

It’s 6:30 AM and last night I couldn’t even get to sleep, forget the couple of hours of sleep BEFORE being up for the night. Well, last night I decided that I wasn’t going to look at the time, get out of bed or play Minesweeper or solitaire. Unfortunately what was left was to let my brain run wild. Not sure why I would do that…..well, actually I do know why, you just read how middle of the night TV works for me so I’m boycotting that. My back is also boycotting the couch, no matter how comfortable it is, it’s still not a bed.

My mind was mostly on my vacation that’s coming up so in my mind I:

Packed my bag, mad I haven’t been buying new clothes, then went off on a tangent of how I spend my money.
Got my outfit situated for the plan ride.
Worried about our room – I have to call the resort today.
Made plans for a day in Daytona.
Paid my credit card bill.
Made a work to-do list for before I leave.
Counted the number of times I can go to the gym and if I starve myself for 2 weeks how much weight I can lose.
Wondered if we’ll be ‘that couple’ at the airport when we see each other for the first time in almost 10 weeks – no, not ‘that couple’ looking for a broom closet – get your mind out of the gutter.
Made a home to-do list before I leave, like turning down the heat, having someone check on the place and doing laundry so I don’t come home to a mess.
Got off on a tangent about housework, work presentations, New Year’s (possibly traveling to North Carolina) and people from high school (don’t ask, I have no idea).
Thought of people who I could ‘borrow’ pain killers from to help me sleep. I have to be careful what kind though, some make me itch and I don’t mean a little itch. Itching from pain killers will be a story for later.

How is it you go through these things step by step in your head and they work out so perfectly? Then, when it comes time to actually do them, they don’t seem to go as planned? I will get to Florida and have forgotten to pack a pair of actual pants and it will rain every day or I will forget my ID or credit card for renting the car. Perhaps if I’d stop obsessing about it I would sleep!!!

Sleepless in Wisconsin III

Whew, we’ve got to stop meeting like this!! I mean, it’s 1:50 AM and here I am once again on the couch, writing, wondering why I’m not having some spectacular dream (which doesn’t usually happen anyway) and cursing my crappy sleep habits. Tonight’s non-sleeping issue is especially irritating because I didn’t get off the phone until midnight and didn’t go to sleep until about 12:30. Yup, 12:30, just over an hour ago. Yup, 12:30, TODAY!! This is the craziest damn thing, all I can think of is what the hell is wrong with me….well, could be several things but we’re not going to go there.

This morning I’m thinking that I might be able to find something good on TV or at least something that will put me to sleep but I realize late-night TV is crap….and I mean crap!!

I’m settling on ESPN for once. I did miss some of the highlights as I haven’t been home a lot so this will give me a chance to catch up.

Well, it’s now 3:07 and I’ve caught up on sports, that’s for sure. After SportsCenter it switched over to NFL Primetime which is SportsCenter on football steroids and now we’re back to SportsCenter. I have now watched every highlight about 4 times. Every other show is nothing but SportsCenter, you’re not fooling me. I’m not sure how guys can watch these things over and over again because he still makes the catch, he still drops the ball, he still steps out-of-bounds at the one yard line, she still gets fined $2000 for yelling at the ref (really?), he still hit a home run, the damn Vikings still lost and the Gophers coach still has a seizure!!! How many times do we need to watch the highlights (or lowlights)?

It’s amazing to me how people can watch this stuff over and over and over again and act like it’s the first time they saw it. Ohhhh, when they come back from the commercial now they’re going to tell me who the best of the best of the best was. I can’t wait, I bet it’s something I haven’t seen yet……..or not.

I think Jerry Springer is on somewhere, perhaps I should get an ego boost quick before I try to go to bed again. This show makes my life look like a walk in the park as my parents weren’t cousins, my boyfriend isn’t sleeping with my sister, I’m not pregnant and not sure which of 6 men is my baby’s daddy and I’m not going to lose my shirt on national TV when I get in a fight with my aunt because I’ve been sleeping with her newest husband. Nevermind, that was enough of an ego boost for me not to have to watch it.

Hey, guess what? Tom Brady threw for over 500 yards and the Vikings lost….haven’t heard that yet tonight!!

Sleepless in Wisconsin II

Here we go again, watching the overnight bad news of the weekend and wondering why I’m not snuggled up and sleeping peacefully like my company. Nope, I’m awake, on the couch wishing once again someone had a large frying pan to knock me out with.

Tonight I won’t tell you what ridiculous things I’ve been thinking about but I will share some points of his visit.

Trip home through several construction zones
Meat raffle
Burgers at Anchor Bar
Strip club (nothing I can talk about here)
Headaches
McDonalds
Garage sales
Nap
Dinner with friends
Drinks with friends
A hilarious bear story (if I ever figure out how to make it half as funny as it was I will write about it)
Company mows my lawn (yes I felt guilty about it….for a minute)
A drive through construction to friends in Spooner
A bean bag tournament
A severely dislocated finger and a trip to the ER (the host of the day)
Stories around the fire (nothing that I can ever repeat here)
A drive through construction back home
A displaced rib (company)
Nap
Phone calls to friends for some sort of pain killers
Grilling and fire at home
Phone calls to chiropractors for help
Trip to chiropractor
Nap
Trip to chiropractor
Phone calls to more friends for more pain killers (yes I realize this is bad but he’s in some massive pain)
Trip to pick up said drugs
Dinner and fire with friends at home (discussing events from strip club)

After making this list I see we have spent a good portion of time in construction, napping and tending to injuries. I can’t decide if that’s a good or a bad thing. I do know we’ve done lots of laughing and we had a great time despite an injury that’s still killing him. I feel bad about sending him home like that.

I am now so delirious I’m contemplating stealing some pain killers from him that we ‘borrowed’ from someone else. I better go back to bed before I pilfer through his stuff…..I think the little shit is trying to hide them from me.