Well, I suppose that is a win

The kids are out of school for summer.

I go to the gym 3 days a week for about 50 minutes.

So I have two choices, not go to the gym at all for 2 months or paying huge sums for 2 months of ‘unlimited’ childcare.  It’s not really unlimited, just 2 hours a day  but you can go every day.

They did away with the ‘buy a block of childcare to use as needed’ option they had last year.

Not going to the gym is not really an option. First, I have to pay membership dues whether I go or not so it’s a waste of money. Second, I like food & work out so I can eat the food I want, so it’s a waste of waist.

If I pay the huge childcare fee I feel obligated to go at least 4 times a week & stay at least 90 minutes, or I am not getting my money’s worth.

Knowing me this actually means I will just feel more guilty than usual as I lay in bed in the morning skipping the gym.

Enter Dr Sleep with unexpected motivation.

After looking over my sleep chart yesterday during our appointment she commented on the facts that

1. I seem to take 2 hours a night to fall asleep, going to bed at 11ish & not falling asleep until 1ish

2. I have no consistent wake up time (due to school days vs non school days)

She thinks these two things are related  & talked about your body natural rhythm & circadian clocks needing reset, etc etc

Upshot of this is I am now supposed to go to bed at midnight & get up at 7am.

Every. single. day. Including weekends.

One of the reasons I lay in bed until 8, 8:30, 9 is due to the fact that most mornings there is NO GOOD REASON to be awake any earlier.

But I have paid for the gym childcare. And it opens at 8am.

So I will be going to the gym 3 mornings a week because there is NOTHING BETTER TO DO. One day a week I have a class at 4:30pm so I suppose that morning I’ll *gasp* CLEAN or something.

That leaves me with 3 mornings still. My brain isn’t alert enough to scrap at that hour. And I’m not coherent enough to read & comment on blogs

I suppose I could go to the gym 5 days a week but the kids would be unhappy with that. They have to put clothes on to go to the gym & my kids believe no school=no clothes & get cranky if they have to get dressed too often.

So I need some suggestions of things to do at 7:30am (allowing 30 minutes for breakfast).

Help!

Erratic sleep due to books

So another week on the sleep regimen has passed & really, nothing too exciting to report. Mostly I fall asleep around 1am & wake up around 6. So, it seems the ‘staying asleep’ issue is improving & the ‘falling asleep’ issue still needs work.

And I have cheated on the no chocolate thing a few times to the tune of 1 Reese’s Cup and 2 dozen M&Ms with no real effect one way or the other.

End of story.

Now on to an even better story, which is the reason for the ‘mostly’ in the opening paragraph.

I checked out two books from the library on Monday & spent Monday-Wed consumed with reading them, so much so I totally lost track of time & forgot to meet the boys’ bus Tuesday & found out just what happens when no parent is waiting…

They call the house & inform you the bus is at the end of the driveway & would you please go get your kids.

All that angst last year about CPS…

The books I read were by Connie Willis – Blackout & All Clear. They are combined about 1200 pages, so they are an investment in time (not to mention money but my copies came from the library). You cannot read one without the other. If you just read Blackout you will be annoyed,confused, irritated & have no idea how it ends. If you read just All Clear you will be confused, probably irritated & have no idea how it began.

These books tell the story of 3 time travelling historians (Mike, Polly & Merope/Eileen) from Oxford in 2060 who travel back to 1940 to study various aspects of the early part of WWII on the English psyche – specifically Dunkirk, the Blitz and London evacuees in their relocations. Each of them was only supposed to be there a short time but due to various circumstances they are each unable to return to 2060 & find themselves trapped in the past. Eventually they meet up in London, each hoping the others’ ‘drops’ are working.  A good deal of both books is spent on speculation as to why this happened, is someone watching their drops? did they accidentally change history? but historians can’t change history, that’s been proven, right? or not? or is it something else entirely?

The narrative hops around in time between 1940, 1945, 1995 & 2060 as we learn about various characters visits to those times & efforts by the time travel team in 2060 to get the drops to open & rescue the stranded travellers.

There is a wealth of period detail in there books. To say I felt like I was there does not convey the wealth of detail. London in the Blitz is wonderfully researched & the day to day lives of ordinary people comes through excellently. The main characters are fully drawn & you care about them, so much so my brain could not let it go & kept me up most of Monday & Tuesday night speculating on what happens next & going back over bits trying to draw conclusions & wondering if any of the were going to die. After all, it was the Blitz & while the characters had some knowledge of which Underground Stations were going to be bombed, that knowledge ended in December 1940, so come Jan 1, 1941 they were in the same position as the contemps, never knowing when or where a bomb might hit.

The main criticisms I have seen of these books are that they are 1. too long & 2. there is too much repetition as the characters run around & around checking drops & trying other things to get word back to 2060.

However I have just recently read Land of the Painted Caves & let me say Connie Willis has nothing on Jean Auel for length & repetition.

I’d much rather read about Mike, Polly & Eileen trying desperately to contact fellow historians through various means (and failing) repeatedly than the endless repetitive description of every single cave painting in prehistoric France.

Willis’ makes far more sense. Imagine you were trapped in the past. Wouldn’t you do everything you can think of to get back, even if all the previous attempts to connect had failed, wouldn’t you keep trying? IMO that needs to be described fully to convey the emotions & desperation felt by the characters. Not to mention the motivation for later actions and the conclusion.

Whereas nothing is really added to the story by yet another description of yet another horse on yet another cave wall.

Though perhaps we did not need to keep hearing about Polly’s deadline & the whole ‘for want of a nail’ metaphor could have been cut from a few places. (much like the Mother’s Song in Painted Caves could have as well)

There are small annoyances, like Wardrobe in 2060, where time travellers get appropriate clothing. Wardrobe can’t find a tweed jacket or a black skirt. Seriously? In Oxford? I suppose we’ve all switched to polyester jumpsuits by then, but no there are contemporary people walking around wearing both. Perhaps they are wearing the only ones still in existence?

There are the Hodbin children, who are at times completely believable & at other times completely implausible.  They can be quite hysterical though & turn out to be very important indeed.

Then there is the popular ‘keeping secrets so as not to worry others’ plot device that can & did go on a bit too long. (Really, if I have learned nothing else from fiction it is to trust other adults can handle the truth & you should tell it to them.Even if they seem distraught & you want to save them from more distress.  Otherwise they will draw their own conclusions, take their own misinformed actions & cause even more problems than you thought the truth would.)

There was also the confusion of names the FANYs in 1945 gave one another, using first names, last names & a variety of nicknames, often for the same person, including what I can only assume were all names of WWII era British motorcycles, which left me feeling the same way I did about Ford Prefect’s name in HHGTTG - as if there was a joke, I just was not in on it - and then when one of those names turned out to be Douglas I was convinced it was a sign I was correct.

And last there is part of the conclusion, which left me, and a number of other reviewers going “wait, what?” and paging back through previous chapters to figure out the cryptic statements.

These books are a wonderful mix of historic fiction & sci fi. There is humor, tragedy, perseverance, sacrifice & triumph. I highly recommend them to non-insomniacs & as for my fellow non-sleepers…just surrender & stay up & read them, you won’t sleep anyway.

Healthy Sleep Habits

April 27, 2011 – My first visit to sleep specialist, who gave me a list of ‘clean living’ things to do over the next 8 weeks. I’ve done almost all of these things at various points over the past 9 years, but this time I will do them all AT THE SAME TIME!

• Give up alcohol
• Give up chocolate
• Give up caffeine
• Give up ALL screen time after 10pm
• Exercise vigorously for 20 minutes prior to sleep
• Get out of bed if can’t sleep after 20 minutes
• No going back to bed in the morning

April 27 – I decided I need time (and a glass of wine) to take this lifestyle change on

April 28 – I created a schedule to make this happen (the doc told me to take up to a week to give up the caffeine so I don’t feel bad dragging this out a few days)

April 29 – I gave up caffeine (not too hard really, my coffee was 2/3 decaf already & Coke & Sprite are interchangeable to me, no headaches reported, despite much naysaying).

I woke up at least 6 times, probably more, during the night. I felt I never really did sleep all night long.

April 30 – I gave up chocolate. Yep, booze is more important to me than chocolate. (also not too bad as I ate the last of the ice cream on the 29th & just didn’t buy anything chocolate to replace it)

I fell asleep about 1a & slept until 7a.

Oh so it’s the CHOCOLATE’S fault! Damn Damn DAMN!

May 1 –I got off the computer at 7pm & turned the tv off at 10pm (thus missing the announcement at 10:30 about bin Laden being killed. First time I have the tv off at 10pm in a decade & look what happens). I also gave up alcohol (tricky, there are 4 bottles of wine and 8 of hard cider in my house & I have to keep reminding myself not to drink it) I started some meds for my not-quite-but-almost restless leg syndrome. Side effect of the meds? May cause drowsiness.

HA! I laugh at your puny side effects!

I went to bed at 11. At midnight I forced myself to get out of my nice warm bed & go sit in the living room & read. I was physically uncomfortable now & had not been uncomfortable in bed. I ached, I was cold, my hips hurt. I could not get comfortable reading. I did some yoga & then paced in circles around the kitchen island until I felt I’d been up long enough. I fell asleep at some point after 12:30 but then was awake from 1-3 off & on before finally dropping off around 3:30 & woke up at 6:30.

May 2 – I added the nightly exercise. I did the the Prison Workout.  Ok, really I just *tried* the prison workout.  210 burpees are not happening anytime soon. 12 burpees was as many as I could manage before my arms gave up. I did some planks and some wall squats & tricep dips & then some really really slow burpees with no jumping at the end.Also? Another side effect of the meds is headaches (which may or may not clear up after a few days) I had one. It sat right between my eyes for about 4 hours in the middle of the day & possibly was allergies.

I went to bed at 11, made myself get back up at 12:30, read a bit & did some jumping jacks, went back to bed around 1, eventually fell asleep & stayed that way until 6ish.

May 3 – Had another headache, hit at the same time as the last one & lasted about as long, but this one was in the back of my head. Did mostly the same exercises as last time. I need to get that better planned.

Went to bed at 11, got out of bed at midnight, read, did some yoga, paced around the island & went back to be around 12:45. Not sure when I fell asleep but it was not long after 1:20, which was when I thought to myself “Dammit! I have to get back up again.”. I slept until 6:15 when my kids started screaming at one another about who gets the last of the Frosted Flakes.

May 4 – Brain function is down. I went into Safeway to buy taco shells & mexi cheese for dinner, found the aisle & grabbed the box. On my way to get cheese I had to walk past the meat department & then I began to wonder what I was going to make for dinner. No lie, I spent several minutes looking at the various meats, considering what was on sale & what I might make with it, or do I just want spaghetti, maybe DH could bring home a pizza. All while holding the box of taco shells in my hand. It was only through association of various ideas that I finally recalled that I was making tacos.

I had 2 chocolate chip cookies & I did not exercise last night because I did Pump at the gym & your body needs a rest. Went to bed around 11, not sure when I fell asleep but it was around 12 I think, woke up at 5, fell back to sleep woke up at 5:55, fell back to sleep & then the alarm went off at 6:40. I think I might have found the right dose for the muscle spasms as I had  none last night.

So, progress is being made. 5 hours in a row is 2 hours more than I normally get.

I also lost 2 pounds! Yay me! 5 hours sleep and 2 pounds down!

To sleep.

I had an hour & half long visit with Dr. Sleep yesterday. She’s a great lady & I feel hopeful she can help me solve this problem.  If it comes to the worst case scenario, she studied at Duke, where apparently they have a world renowned sleep program & she can get me into it.

I’d have to go to NC for who knows how long but we’ll cross that bridge if we come to it.

There’s a good sleep program ‘locally’ though so that’d be a last resort.

Why ‘locally’?

Well…as with everything other medical thing in my life, the good docs (or in many cases, like this one, the ONLY special docs) are over an hour away. (My regular doc is 25 minutes away to the south & is part of a group based around a specific hospital 35 minutes away from them, with specialist scattered around that city. If I went to a doc 20 minutes to the north, they would send me to specialists 35-45 minutes further north. We drove over 90 minutes in an ice storm when I went into labor with Mayhem)  Blocking out 3+ hours of my day 2x a week to attend cognitive behavioral therapy is bound to be challenging.

So the sleep program is Phase 2 now, at least 8 weeks away, probably longer since that would be July & there is no way I can manage it until the kids are back in school.

For now I have Phase 1, which is a full page of instructions (many of which I have tried in the past) and a sleep log.

9 years of insomnia has caused me to develop certain mental habits (like a refusal to get out of bed when I can’t sleep because then the insomnia wins) & many of the instructions are to help me recognize where I am self-sabotaging.

The getting out of bed thing is going to be hard. So’s the no chocolate & the exercising vigorously before bed (sounds counter to advice but recent studies on my particular form of long term insomnia indicate it can be beneficial).

No screen time an hour before bed (jury is out on the Kindle but the lack of backlight makes it ok for now).

But Nathan Fillion is on at 10pm Sun & Mon!!!!!

DH says that is what tivo is for.

It looks like I will have time to finish the Longest Cross Stitch Project Ever because she wants me to try non-mentally stimulating things during that hour, like cross stitch, crochet or word search puzzles (not crosswords, too stimulating, so’s sudoku).

I’ve got to cut out caffeine but my coffee is already 3/4 decaf now so that switch is not too bad & I’ve done it before. I drink Coke & Sprite more or less interchangeably so that’s not too bad either.

No alcohol. That’s challenging. I like my wine with dinner or my cider in the evening (often with some chocolate)

No more going back to bed after the boys leave for school & I’m supposed to get up at the same time every day.

Now I ask you, what is there to do at 6:45am on a Saturday? I don’t garden. Sure I can read blogs but then what do I do in the afternoon? One of the reasons I go back to bed 2x a week is because there is NO GOOD REASON TO BE AWAKE at 7:30am. Nothing is open at that hour to run errands. I can’t make or return phone calls. Once you start a load of laundry there is nothing to do until 45 minutes later when you rotate it & wait another 45. Why not go back to bed?

So I have the feeling that rule may get fudged on the weekends. I can suck it up and find something to do on Tues & Thurs probably but the weekends will be a problem.

These various things are not permanent, after 8 weeks we’ll see where we are & then I can experiment with adding stuff back & seeing what happens.

And I have to keep a chart of my sleeping habits.

I’ve tried most of this, except the getting out of bed thing, in the past. But not all at once, so I am curious how these next weeks will play out.

The many parts of my brain

A list.

I generally refer to them as the Voices in My Head. You probably have Voices too, you just may call them by different names, maybe you hear your mom’s voice in your head every time you look at new shoes. “And where will you be wearing THOSE?” or maybe you simply do not acknowledge them at all, but they are there.

You may only notice them after the fact, like when you are cleaning your closet and find a pair of really cute but really impractical sandals with 3 inch heels and beading and you wonder “What was I thinking when I bought these? They go with nothing in my wardrobe or in my life actually?”

In my case *I* was not thinking anything.

Vanity was thinking how great I’d look in them & a sundress (that I don’t own) at a pool party (that never happened).

Or maybe you come home from grocery shopping & as you put your purchases away you find a tube of Sun Dried Tomato Paste and you wonder “How the heck did that get in there?” with  sudden flash of  memory of you reaching up to get it off the shelf. “What on earth did I intend to do with it?”

In my case, Chef Foodie had seen an opening, connected the paste with a recipe I once read somewhere , shouted ‘Yeah! Lets make that!” and tossed the paste in the cart before the rest of my brain caught up with “wait…what recipe?…where?…” and had moved on to the Asian sauces & thus distracted me.

Or you catch yourself all excited to try something you know you don’t really like to do but *something* inside you thinks this really is the time you need to do that bungee jump being offered at a nearby bridge. And as you get strapped up to jump the normal part of your brain is screaming “What the hell am I thinking???”

I will never be in that situation because I cannot imagine what Voice might think that bungee jumping was a good idea. Thrill Seeking Immortality left town around the time I got pregnant with Havoc & none of the others has tried to carry that torch since.

And of course, we all know Martha and her ways.

Admit it.

You have moments like that too.

These are the main players in my head:

1. Martha – Lately the most frequently heard from Voice in the group. Martha often manages to drag one or more of the others into her projects so she usually succeeds in getting her way. Martha’s reach frequently exceeds my grasp which makes her very frustrating to deal with. I’m not going to be constantly washing cloth table clothes & napkins. I’m much too lazy for that. Yet Martha talked me into buy not 1 set BUT 3!

2. Vanity – Often in cahoots with Martha and at odds with Common Sense. Vanity has watched every single episode of What Not to Wear and taken Stacey & Clintons words to heart. Sadly Vanity also believes I am in possession of a Visa gift card with $5000 on it and a Manhattan lifestyle & is always disappointed to be reminded it’s just $50 and $20 of that has to go to a pair of new shoes for Mayhem. And we’re shopping at JC Pennys.

3. Ambition – Gods above, I hate ambition. I am a lazy so & so. Lazy I tell you! Lazy! And ambition gets in the way of my bonbon eating plans with “Oh you could scrub & seal the whole slate kitchen floor before lunch today” or “You can give everyone handmade gifts for the holidays this year”. “Go on, you want to be the PTO secretary” Ambition lives to make my life difficult.  Ambition & Martha are very buddy buddy these days

4. Common Sense – The voice of the budget & the lifestyle. Common sense knows me very very well (and sounds a bit like my mom). CS steps in when the others get a bit carried away with their delusions of grandeur. “Put the shoes back, it always ends in tears when you buy heels that high” “If you really want your hair highlighted for the love of all that is decent PAY A STYLIST! Don’t buy a box.” “Think about you existing commitments for a second. Just WHEN are you going to be able to BE the PTO secretary. What part of your little free time is going to be lost to that?”

5. Chef Foodie & her side kick Cravings – CF is the voice behind the $30 worth of cheese in my fridge and the 7 bottles of wine in the rack. Cravings is why I go on food binges  - a month of wanting pepperoni rolls, a couple months of needing fried fish, a few weeks making tofu, avocado & edamame salad for lunch nearly every day. Cravings has gone off somewhere lately, leaving the field open on to Chef Foodie and her ‘make a pan sauce & toss in these wild gourmet mushrooms’ plans

6. Ms Erudite –Who doesn’t like my general reading material & is constantly sneaking ‘literature’ into my book bag at the library. MsE doesn’t make it onto the blog because generally I only talk about books I finish. I rarely finish things MsE thinks I *need* to read. MsE forgets that Insomnia has the only vote that counts in my reading material & densely plotted, emotionally draining, very meaningful books do not make the cut. MsE (who sounds like Sister Joan, my sophomore English teacher) makes me feel guilty about that when Common Sense isn’t looking.

7. and of course the Insecurities & their heckling.

How about you? Do you ever find the Voices or different facets of your personality have sometimes taken control of your brain?

And now he is 7

My baby boy.

The sleeping baby, the VBAC, the one who nursed for a year. The 9lb 2oz surprise that made my OB wonder how I had hid such a big baby from him those last few weeks, when he was expected to be similar to his brother’s 7lbs 7oz at birth.

The one who’s infancy I remember only in disjointed moments due to rampant insomnia and 10 months of battling chronic bronchitis.  I was so very tired when he was a baby. So very glad this one slept more & cried less than the other, making it easier to care for both of them & not feel I was neglecting anyone.

The one who has more than made up for those easy months by developing a stubbornness that is astounding in one so young and a tendency to solve problems with violence that we are still struggling with almost daily.

The one who shrieks and wails and sobs when things don’t go the way he wants in a game, but who absolutely refuses to give up until he succeeds. Even if he cries the whole way through.

The one who’s learning comes in sharp, often harsh, spikes rather than his brother’s gentler curves. And who is less likely than his brother to insist that things be ‘equal’.

The one who so far, is still not embarrassed to be seen hugging & kissing his mom in public. Who still likes to sneak up on people and then suddenly announce “There is a hug coming up behind you”

The one who has insisted on pizza for his birthday every year since he turned 2.

And cupcakes. “With lots and lots of sprinkles”

Happy Birthday Mayhem!

Contented *sigh*

Do you know what the boys did today?

They WENT BACK TO SCHOOL!!!!

Yippee!!!

Granted it’s only for a week & half…they have half days Jan 13 & 14 and then have Jan 17 & 18 off … but it is still something. And by the 15th we’ll be happy to once again have some all day together time. I’ve got some color them yourself wooden toys as a project for the 4 day weekend.

I think I never really recovered my equanimity from those two snow days right before Xmas vacation. They threw me off & today I am still trying to get stuff done I was going to do those two days.

Like clean the pantry (blog post no doubt coming soon!)

Like reorganize the office (also a good source of blog fodder)

Like clean & scrub the utility room (not at all blog worthy)

oh, and like sleep in uninterrupted.

They have been up at 6am all vacation, including Jan 1, and except for Dec 31 when they got up at 4:05. I do lay in bed until 8 or so, but since I can clearly hear them fighting over toys or rustling around in the kitchen, I never really go back to sleep. This has made me no end of cranky the last few days as the insomnia plus lack of nap has caught up with me.

We did have a lot of fun though, making cookies with friends, shopping for gifts, having endless battles with dinos & clones, playing Wii and other games. 

But it has left me with a burning desire to nap until noon so I can feel rested.

Tomorrow I will be doing just that.

Today I am packing up the ornaments & trees and cleaning/reorganzing the heck out of the living room. We have sufficient board games, card games & Legos that we really need to revamp the toy keeping system in that room.

I felt a bit disoriented this weekend with no new daily photo project to work on. That is going to take a little getting used to I think after 3 years. But I did manage to finish nearly all my layouts for the 2010 photo book. Here are a few more of them:

With any luck I’ll get Nov & Dec done Tuesday & the whole thing sent off to blurb by Friday.

Then I just have to finish Journal Your Christmas.

Numbers, in lieu of prose

6:40 – when I wake up

7:30 – when I go back to bed

9:30 – when I wake up again

8 – years I have struggled with insomnia

3 – years I took Lunesta

10 – months I have been off of it

43 – nights I have had more than 3 hours of sleep in a row

22 – days I have been congested in my chest

20 – giant horse pills of amoxicillin I have taken for bronchitis

8 – containers of pro biotic yogurt I have eaten

4 – times I have served spaghetti for supper this month

1 – times I have actually eaten it myself

6 – pounds lost while ill

7 – pounds regained in the past week

?? – cookies eaten since my appetite returned

8 – games I already owned & played this month

3 – games I have purchased this month from Big Fish Games

0 – times I have made it to the gym this month

5 – new books read so far this month

.25 – crochet projects completed since school started

3- episodes of The Tudors Season 4 I have viewed so far

This post inspired by Day 2s prompt in Shimelle’s True Stories class

Lessons Learned

No photos and no layouts for these…yet. I feel a couple may be calling for layouts

~Sleep – sometimes more necessary than exercise

I try to keep a rein on my desire to crawl back into bed after the males leave for the day. Usually I accomplish this by talking myself into going to the gym with that old adage, you’ll feel better after exercising. And really, 95% of the time I do. But DH has been gone this week and my insomnia has been worse than usual. I think I slept 2 non-consecutive hours Wed night and while I did put on my work out clothes and walked the kids to the bus stop, I came home removed those clothes & put my pjs back on. I was worn out tired. The sort of tired that might just cause me an injury at the gym. Probably I would feel good after working out. But not rested and I really really needed to feel rested. I was back in bed at 7:30. I woke up at 9:30 and thought “get up now, things to do”  then I thought “what? what do I need to do this morning? nothing. there is silence. no one to disturb me. no one needs me.” and I rolled over and woke up at 11am. I feel good to

~ Books seem shorter on the Kindle

I know it’s a perception problem but it seemed like Wicker Appetite, Janet Evanovich’s latest, was really really short. I watched the progress bar at the bottom as I read and was constantly thinking “50%? so soon? 62% already? 98%, it can’t be?”. So when I was in Target Wednesday I took a moment to compare the thickness of the hardback copy with the thickness of the hardback copy of Sizzling Sixteen, which I own & read in hardback & seemed longer than Wicked Appetite.

They were the SAME SIZE. Then I had to go pick up “The Nasty Bits” by Tony Bordain and once again, the hardback book seemed so much more substantial than the Kindle book I read.

That is going to take some getting used to.

~Rice cooked in a steamer – not as easy as it appears

And I have 2 cups of undercooked rice floating in water after 90 minutes steaming to prove it

~ Never read new books after 8pm if you want to sleep at night.

Part of the insomnia problem is an over stimulated brain caused by reading new books before going to bed, and reading them longer because they seem shorter on the Kindle.  I had gotten into a habit of switching my reading material in the evening to old familiar books, like Agatha Christie. Things I could recite in my sleep, so they don’t get my mind all worked up, but I got 3 new books this week and with DH not being around to talk to and nothing much interesting on tv, I indulged myself and read them right up to bedtime and occasionally past bedtime. If I have had 12 hours sleep this week (including the 3 I had napping Thursday morning) I’d be surprised.

~ Soaking the dirty lasagna pan before washing is useful, over soaking it is just nasty

No comment necessary I think

 

I sort of wish I had taken a photo of the steamed rice soup, because it does lend itself to a layout and my mind has more or less designed a layout for the sleep being more important than exercise one as well. I don’t think anyone will be more surprised than me at how my book of this project finally turns out.

Back it up

Consider this a PSA that doesn’t come with a tragic tale of photos & data lost.

Though, considering it has actually been since November since I did a back up, it could easily have been a tragic tale.

In my mind I back up my photos to Smug Mug on a near monthly basis. In my mind I burn my digi supplies to DVD as soon as the ‘download’ folder reaches 4GB. In my mind I copy the contents of my My Personal folder to both my EHDs every 3 months.

Lots of happy thoughts in my mind.

Many of them involving Nathan Fillion, sushi and a deserted beach.

But, unfortunately, like Nathan & beach, none of the backing up, copying & burning ever happen in real life quite the way I imagine they do.

See, I have a rather selective & idiosyncratic memory due to a combination of motherhood and insomnia. Mostly I remember things that happened years ago and things that happened hours ago. Anything in between is a mystery. So if I actually remember doing a thing I assume it must have been a recent occurrence, otherwise I wouldn’t remember it. Right?

This is the leading cause of the long expired items in my kitchen. I assume since I remember buying them, it must have been recently & so I don’t look at the date.

My recent discovery of 20 month old Milanos led me to wonder what else in my life I was remembering wrongly. Later that night I read a post in some forum or other about someone’s hard drive crashing & they lost 6 months worth of photos and half the book they were writing.

And I thought “well, at most I’d lose a month of photos since I back up regularly” and thought about the last time I plugged in my EHD to do just that. Because I clearly remember doing such a thing it had to have been recently. Hmmm…wait, that wasn’t last month. It was still cool out then (I have better luck remembering things if I think of what was going on around me instead of the thing itself), so it might have a been a few month after all. Maybe April. Probably I ought to back up the summer’s worth of stuff.

So I went out to Smug Mug to check the last month I uploaded.

I was right, it had been cool out.

It had been November.

So it’s been almost a year without backing up photos & I’d have been fairly devastated to discover that had my hard drive suddenly failed on me.

I had last done a back up of my folders in February and there are currently 7GB of stuff sitting in my download folder waiting to be burned.

Then upon further investigation I discovered there are three months of photos that I have not edited from their raw format. I started shooting in raw in December for more control of editing but Smug Mug does not upload raw format so I edit the best photos of the month save them as jpgs and upload those & delete the raw format versions to save space. I was missing March, June and part of July.

How did I miss March?

Wednesday night I started an upload to Smug Mug for Dec-Feb. I also started a sync between one EHD and my personal folders and realized why I hadn’t done it since Feb. I have random files all over the damn place on two EHDs and this laptop from back when I bought it a year ago and I have no idea what is what. I need to catalog the darn things & then combine them & then I can back them up properly.

Guess what i am going to be doing Labor Day weekend (since Nathan has yet to call me offering sushi and a plane ticket)?

Bad hotel karma

One of the reasons I am no fan of travel is that I have bad hotel karma.

I always end up with the room by the ice & vending machines, or the elevators, or the side entrance from the parking lot, or with a bed that as a huge dip in the middle, or the a/c that sounds like a freight train charging through the room whenever it kicks on, or with the neighbors who watch TV loudly until 3 am, or end up on a fold out couch bed with a mattress that is mere millimeters thick over hard metal bars.

Hotel pillows are terrible, soft, flat things & I hate them. They are too flat to lay on one pillow but piling two of them makes the pillow too high. So I have to travel with my own pillow.

Plus I travel with children who wake at the crack of dawn. When I was a child I traveled with adults who woke at the crack of dawn.

Does no one I am related to by blood understand that humans are meant to stay in bed until at least 7am, 8am preferably?

Oh. And I have insomnia, which makes sleep under the best of conditions a challenge and sleep under any of the above conditions damn near impossible.

Yesterday we checked into the hotel we will be staying in for 4 nights. It is a room by the ice & vending machines, with an a/c unit that sounds as if a freight train is rattling to pieces while emitting a high pitched whine. It is a room on the first floor by the door that opens on the parking lot & people were still coming & going, shouting & honking horns at one another until 2am.

And I left my pillow at home.

But the mattress was decent.

At 7am I went to the front desk & requested a new room, mainly because of the a/c problem. OMG! the noise. It sounded like this for about 8 minutes

WOMP!

WHRLLLLLRRRRRLLLLLRRRR

 

RRRRRLLLLLRRR!!!!!!!

rattle rattle rattle rattle rattle rattle rattle

rattle rattle rattle rattle rattle rattle rattle

RRRRRRRLLLLWWHHWWW!!!!

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

rattle rattle rattle rattle rattle rattle rattle

rattle rattle rattle rattle rattle rattle rattle

RRRRRRRLLLLWWHHWWW!!!!

rattle rattle rattle rattle rattle rattle rattle

rattle rattle rattle rattle rattle rattle rattle

WOMP!!!

Then suddenly there was total silence for about 5 minutes and the humidity began rising then it would start over again.

Supposedly they will be moving our luggage to a new room while we are out today doing our family photos.

Given my hotel karma I somehow doubt this will happen.

 

Two weeks of summer vacation so far

We’ve swam most days. The pool has not turned green yet but it’s early days. Heat and rain combined cannot be defeated by chemicals & filters as I learned last year but I am trying to keep ahead of it.

It’s been in the 90s most of the time, hitting 101 yesterday! And it’s only June.

I’d like to take them to the park or something but it’s just too damn hot.

Vacation bible school was this week and the little heathens have enjoyed it for the most part, but I think they are done having to be somewhere every morning.

We’ve been to both libraries. They read almost daily, but we’ve been slacking off on the workbooks.

DH has been gone from 6:30a to 10p weekdays for going on 3 weeks now. I have no idea when that will end. It should have been this week but it turns out large corporations are just as disorganized and screwed up as tiny companies.

Which I already knew but seems to surprise some people.

I’ve baked cookies twice and been to the gym 5 times.

I consider that breaking even.

Sleep comes and goes. I had a few nights of 7 hours of sleep. I’d hopes that meant I had gotten a handle on the insomnia. But then I was awake most of the last 3 nights. The boys have been waking too & that isn’t helping.

The cats have fleas, despite pricy flea treatments to them & the yard. So the house has fleas & has been fogged twice & I am now spraying it  regularly to hopefully get the last crop of eggs as they hatch.

How’s your summer been so far?

Randomness

Today’s post is random because I am tired.

I’ve been fighting the unmedicated insomnia fight since Christmas and for awhile there I was winning. After 3 solid years of Lunesta induced sleep I was off the meds and actually sleeping some, most of the time, by mid-Feb. I filled my last Lunesta prescription on Nov 30 and I still have 2 of those pills left.

I would have had 5 but it’s been a hard 10 days.

Sometime in late Feb the balance tipped and insomnia has been winning over half time time. For awhile there it was various aches & pains keeping me awake & Tylenol PM helped but that soon stopped working. Meditating was never more than 50% successful, neither were the various herbal teas I have tried.

Lately I seem to sleep best from 5am until 9am, with a 45 minute period of wakefulness around 6:45 when I get up to get the kids ready for school. So I’ve been getting about 3 non consecutive hours of sleep lately. I’m a bit cranky as a result.

Then the boys started night waking again from nightmares brought on by … something… maybe that thing on Big Foot on the Travel Channel.

I don’t think Big Foot is scary though and the show wasn’t scary.

Sometimes I believe Big Foot exists and sometimes I think it’s just a legend but even then I sort of hope there is a Big Foot creature out there somewhere. I like that science is wrong sometimes & that some creature has managed to hide from humans all this time.

Did you catch the new Doctor Who? Looks promising! I love Doctor Who, have ever since I first saw Tom Baker as the Doctor on PBS back in the 70s.

Now that we have streaming Netflix on the Wii I get to watch old Tom Baker Dr Who episodes on it during the day.

It’s been sci fi heaven around here lately. We’re re-watching the Babylon 5 series currently, just finishing season 2 now.If you have never seen it, you need to. Best sci fi series ever. It was written to have a 5 year story arc and nearly every episode ties into the overall story. There are maybe 2 episodes in 5 years that don’t. There are no one appearance characters, no throw away lines, no unnecessary dialog points. Everything at some point ties into the full story line. The characters are great, the story is epic. Season 1 is a bit slow but season 2 is like riding a plot rocket.

Speaking of story arcs..I just finished the Betrayal of the Blood Lily, which is the latest book in the Pink Carnation series by Lauren Willig. It was a good story, set in India for a change, Interesting characters, starring Penelope who is a friend of Henrietta & Charlotte & appeared in a couple of the recent books in the series. She’s packed off to India with her husband who she was forced to wed after being compromised with him in the previous book. She doesn’t love him, barely even seems to like him actually but tries to make the best of things being her flirtatious outgoing self. She ends up getting involved in some political intrigue involving the English, the French & some of the local rulers, as well as with Capt Alex Reid. It does a very good job of giving the feeling of life in Indian at the time (pre Raj) but I think the flower motif is getting a bit forced at this point.

And there was no Blood Lily. There was a Marigold, a Frangipani, a Moonflower and a Gulmohar (an ornamental tree with red/orange flowers). The book was mostly about the Marigold. And isn’t the Blood Lily African, not Indian? So the title makes no sense at all. Betrayal of the Marigold would be better. Though not as dramatic sounding.

Marigolds are not at all dramatic.

Despite the floral inconsistencies it was a good story & if you have read the others it is worth reading this one too. We learn a bit more about Colin’s strange family as well as hearing Penelope’s story. I enjoy the series but it falls under “library only'”. I’m unlikely to read them enough to justify buying them.

Unlike say, the Stephanie Plum series,which I own all of and recently finished rereading for about the 4th time. DH is reading them for the first time now & I must say it is interesting getting a male viewpoint on the whole Stephanie-Morelli-Ranger thing.

I’m going to go attempt some sleep now. Later this week I’ll have highlights of my yogurt making and some praise for my new toaster oven.

Because that is what my incoherent sleepless life has come to – praising toaster ovens.

Sleep 3 Insomnia 12

And those 3 had to be medicated.

Plus one of the insomnia nights was medicated. WTF? I pay $1.78 a pill and insomnia wins?

What is keeping me awake? Nothing in particular. Just a busy brain that won’t shut off until 4am or so. I free associate thoughts all night long. No particularly stressful thoughts, just an endless stream of consciousness.

Relax, relax and empty your mind, relax, drifting, nothing, calm mind, let it empty, like in that book Holy Cow, where she took the week long brain dump, I wonder if that would work, who would watch the kids if I went to it?, Brad would have to take the week off, and I’d have to fly probably. Hey! trying to sleep here, knock it off. Imagine relaxing, picture yourself in a soft bed, floating, drifting, what kind of sheets? white? what is sort of glaring, not really soothing, maybe warm cream colored sheets, flannel with a nice thick comforter, warm and relaxing and like hot chocolate, that was really good hot chocolate I made the other day with the Special Dark cocoa, i need to do a layout about it, I wonder what kit would go well with it? and what about that pot roast recipe, where did it come from? did I copy it or save it? AHEM! trying to sleep now! Drifting off, empty the mind, picture a warm dimly lit room, soft & comfortable. I wish I wasn’t allergic to wool. Wool looks so soft and comfortable but them I break out in hives if i touch it. pity my mom didn’t remember that. It’s a nice scarf but I can never wear it. I’d like to get some bamboo silk blend yarn & crochet a scarf, maybe a lime green or it could be a good knitting project. knitting, yeah, I don’t know, crochet just comes so much easier for me but if I practiced more then I suppose knitting would as well, what was that book I was looking at with the hats in it? Yo! Trying to sleep here!

and on and on and on all night long

Sometimes the anxious part of my brain tries to take over but the sensible conscious part of my brain, that wants to sleep but can’t, always seems to know when the anxious part is playing and smacks it down. Last night as a semi drifted off into a dream the anxious part decided to imagine “what if Havoc got hit by a truck while riding his bike?” but as soon as it happened in the dream the not yet asleep sensible conscious part of my brain flipped a switch and yelled KNOCK IT OFF at the anxious part before any emotions could kick in and panic me.

It’s not always that fast off the mark but it does fairly well at heading off panic attacks. I had a horrible night of anxiety last week. The dog kept whining & barking because she wanted out & then when she wanted back in she’d bang on the French doors. I’m in a semi drowse with anxiety hovering around looking for a way in and whining was it.

THERE MUST BE A HOMICIDAL AXE WIELDING MANIC IN THE LIVING ROOM

anxiety shouts. And before consciousness could get in “or the dog has to pee” the adrenaline kicked in and I spent the next hour laying there with this bi polar dialogue in my head while the sensible part tries to talk the anxious part down.

It’s just the dog

No it’s a maniac

Dog

Maniac, why else would I be panicking? I *know* it’s a maniac, that’s why I feel this way

It’s a dog and your imagination is causing you to feel this way

Oh my god there are two of them

The dog just wants in

What if he has a gun!!!!

Dog's can’t fire guns, they don’t have thumbs

The maniac!!!

You have a gun. Wake DH up & tell him what you think

No I can’t wake him up

*sigh* yes, much better to freak out alone

I’m doing yoga at night now and crocheting as a form of mindful meditation. I’m taking a Kava extract to relax me. I know I should just get up when I can’t sleep but I’m rarely actually awake. What I end up in is a sort of half awake doze, not quite asleep, but enough to be hopeful that if I just lay there I might sleep. But I never do and it is not at all restful.

My doctor suggested a sleep clinic if I can’t get the insomnia under control on my own. I’m not sure what my insurance thinks about it but as soon as my doc gets back from maternity leave I am going to ask her too look into it.