Every once in a while I have a night that I can't sleep one bit. No matter what I try, I just can't get the brain to shut down enough to go into snooze mode. I've got some sleeping pills, but I can't take them in the middle of the night, unless I don't have to do anything at all the next day. This wasn't the case last night, as I have a lot of work to do today before I go to work tonight. I can already tell it's going to be a "yippee-ki-yo" kind of day, as my old friend Lee used to say. A full pot of coffee, maybe more, this morning, for sure.
A lot of the time, these nights are because I can't get the pain to subside enough to sleep. Knees, back, and neck conspire against me to either keep me from drifting off or snapping me back to reality just after dozing. Sometimes an extra dose of Ibuprofen or Naproxen will let me get a few hours of sleep to work on, but sometimes it's just enough to make me comfortable while watching tv. When I get like that, the only option is to work myself to the point of exhaustion the next day. That almost always works.
Some of those nights are from that old familiar boogeyman, Mr. Unknown Future. I'm sure you've all had visits from UF, and his infernal sidekick, "Only three hours until I have to get up, better get some sleep" Boy. The only thing I've found that helps when they visit is to just get up, start slamming the coffee down, and pull an old-fashioned all niter.
Mr. UF's evil twin, Regrets from the Past, is one that I haven't had a visit from in a long time, thank God. The only thing I found that would fight that one on a nightly basis was the prescription medicine Owlkeyhaul. The good thing is that you can prescribe Owlkeyhaul yourself. The bad thing is that is has a lot of side-effects and after-effects, but you'll never hear them mentioned on a tv commercial. Side-effects include, but are not limited to: nausea, vomiting, dry heaves, eating bad food at late-night diners of questionable sanitation, more vomiting, various delusions, including thinking that you're a stand-up comedian, a good dancer, or that your hairline and waistline have been restored to what they were in your 20's. After effects include, but are not limited to: nausea, vomiting, dry heaves, headache, moaning, bargaining with God to cure you, placing your forehead in places that foreheads don't belong, namely, against the cool, soothing porcelain of the toilet, injuries of unknown origin including bruises, missing teeth and painful urination, looking next to you in bed and thinking, "can I commit suicide without waking him/her/it up?", being asked by your friends, "Do you know what you did last night?!?!"...The list of after-effects could be expanded indefinitely. Poo-ee-yi, as the cajuns would say.
None of those apply to me last night, though. The only way I can describe how I felt last night was a profound state of confusion. Confusion doesn't happen often to me; most of the time I have plenty of information to make a proper decision, or I'll have plenty of information, yet make a completely arbitrary choice and run hard with it. (Might not be the right choice, but, hey, at least I'm not confused!) I'm really not sure what to do about this now; the easy thing would be to cut and run, but my gut knows that isn't the right choice. So I'm just going to follow the instructions coming from the imaginary, authoritative PA system in my soul; "Take a number, stand by, await further instructions. Shop as usual, but avoid panic buying." That's always a good course of action in confusing times, and it helps keep the economy going. On the shopping list for today are a new battery for the car (I sure hope it starts so I can make it to the parts shop) and more coffee. I'm going to go through a lot of that this morning and tonight.
The upside to my sleep deprivation is that at some point today, I'm going to get punchy and start coming off with a bunch of great one-liners. The downside is that I'll probably be by myself when that happens, thereby wasting a lot of good material.
Today's random, helpful tip: When you smash your fingertip and it starts turning black under the nail, take two aspirin immediately. Aspirin, not ibuprofen or tylenol. The aspirin will thin your blood and help it to reabsorb into your system, possibly avoiding having to lance the nail to relieve pressure. It's always worked for me.
As always, try to keep the shiny side up and the greasy side down, Y'all.
E
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