Wondering how much sleep will be enough

How many nights of better sleep will be 

enough to make up for eleven years of 

not enough?  How many nights will my 

brain take to reset and my body to heal 

and finally 

feel rested?

reasons for the quest

to sleep, perchance to dream

and to remember dreams,

to remember anything at all

really, to clear out some of this

fog, to be able to choose to live

in the moment instead of being

reduced to it, to see more clearly

and be present more fully, to

be able to cope and not cry all

the time over nothing and every

thing, to be part of community

to serve instead of being served

or hiding or running and stumbling

to be more fully awake to the

world as the seasons turn and I

grow older with the world because

even though it's scary and possibly

dangerous, maybe this time it will

work, and I can begin to heal if

I do not give up and lose all hope

the wrong foot

I hate
how an accidentally
too-long hike can destroy
my health for half a year and
already be eating
into this year,
too.

fractured prose

The shameless self-promotion 

from the Facebook group read, 

'Looking for the perfect 

CHRISTMAS PRESENT for that friend 

or relative who loves poetry 

and laments the fact that modern 

"poets" have abandoned it 

for fractured prose?' I was

inexplicably delighted by

this accurate characterization 

of what I write, as if it had

no value or purpose or reason

for existing when, for me, 

it represents how I think

with my bent toward narrative

prose combined with my fractured 

concentration and attention 

span because of the pain 

and the sleeplessness

it causes, so thank you,

disparaging and dismissive

and self-righteous poet busy

flogging your own obviously 

superior form of writing, for

unintentionally presenting me 

with the gift of words 

to accurately describe 

my own.  : )

When I am not sleeping (much at all)

It's like every bit 

of progress and forward 

momentum disappears into 

the brain fog, and I am 

left with only 

the weariness and 

the grimly-held 

hope that the switch 

will flip again 

soon, so I can 

get the normal 

inadequate amount 

of sleep and 

recapture my 

scattered wits 

and will and 

write on.

another sleepless night

a moon so bright 

the shadows 

of the tree 

thrown on my 

white curtains 

at night were 

visible to me even 

in my blindness

nightmare dogs of sleeplessness

At night

the light

from 

unevenly

spaced poles

can make 

even Tiny

Adorable

Dog into a

terrifying

creature of

nightmare

moving too

low to the 

ground with 

far too 

many 

legs and

its usual

silence so

endearing

in daylight

leaving me

jolted

breathless

with fear

clutching

my mail

and frayed

self-possession.

small victories? a (terrifying) glimpse into my head on a bad day but at least not on a pike or anything

Missing a deadline because you are not sleeping well and thus are terrible at adulting is really irksome.  I felt like I was a plastic bag on a windy day getting blown around from one thing I needed to do to another and then all of a sudden there were no more days left.  (However, I did manage to exercise enough self-restraint to keep myself from replying with a number of mean things to a guy being a(n incorrect) grammar/writing jerk to one of my friends on Facebook.  That was a heroic effort today.)  These are the times I think I will never really be an "author" instead of a writer.  (This is not actually an awful thing because I'd rather be a writer even when I am not sleep deprived and scattered to the four winds.)  I already have no desire or motivation to get my work out there like one is supposed to do, but when a call for entries that seems tailor-made for my work comes, and I am a space cadet due to sleep deprivation for a couple weeks and miss it, it's frustrating, and I want to wallow in self-recrimination (which would be easier if I didn't keep getting distracted by everything in the world), but I also know that melodramatic wailing and stressing out is something I need to avoid (it's really bad for me because it kicks up the pain that leeches the sleep that scatters my brain all over the walls of the house that Jack built).  Did you know that sleep deprivation by itself causes symptoms that look almost exactly like fibromyalgia?  They did studies (that are totally illegal now) once upon a time.  (Seriously, Blogger, I promise fibromyalgia is a real word.  You and certain members of the medical community who also don't believe in it are not helping.)  I'd love to promise to do better next time, but if I'm honest with myself, I'll probably be sleep deprived next time because I am always sleep-deprived to a varying degree, and I just want to throw up my hands and give up, but that's not good either.  All of this thrashing makes me more tired, but the pain makes me not sleep.  I LOSE NO MATTER WHAT I DO OR DO NOT DO.  Therefore, I am going to go read a book, so the day is not a total loss.  Here's hoping I have the self-control to stop reading book at a reasonable time in order to not make things even worse . . .

TAI and Bujold's new story

When I staggered out of bed this morning like a tremendously clumsy yeti, TinyAdorableIllegal Dog (TAI for short from henceforth) was whimpering fit to break your heart.  He was so loud that I could clearly hear him from my second floor condo with two doors in between us.  The sound was so pitiful that I nearly flung open the door to see if it was dying.  Then I remembered that I was not clothed for company and that I can't see a darned thing without corrective lenses.  I lumbered away from the sound and into the bathroom.  I have no idea what caused TAI to make that sound, but I hope it never happens again because I will cry.

The day ended sort of better.  I was donating plasma to get money to pay for my allergy meds, and I was reading the new novella by Lois McMaster Bujold, and I was just having a grand time.  (Not with the donating because DudeBro put the needle in kind of wrong, so it hurt a bit more than usual and was kind of bleeding.)  I was just giggling and occasionally snorting and grinning my face off because LOIS MCMASTER BUJOLD NEW STORY YAAAAAAYYYYY!!!!!!!  It's in the 5 Gods world, and it's great, and I've barely started it, really.

Actually, I have no idea how close I am to the end.  I want it to go on and on and on and never end as I often do when I read Bujold's stuff.  I hope it at least gets me through one more donation.  Two more to go before I can afford both allergy meds!  Wish me luck!  (And health and copious plasma.)

All I wanted to do today

All I wanted to do today
was lie on the deck
reading a book.  When
I am very sleep-deprived,
I do not adult well at all.

Sleep deprivation and spiders: definitely an awesome combination

It is not as if I imagine that the second the door shuts when I leave in the morning that all the spiders descend from the ceilings, raise a tiny cheer, and then start licking my toothbrush or peeing on my pillow.  Really.  

It's just that I hate the way they only seem to come out when I don't have my glasses on, and all I can see is this fuzzy moving blobby blur like the mosaics they use in Japanese comedies to show you where a cockroach is.  (I know they're not cockroaches because they are too small and because spiders move differently from insects, so I can tell even mostly blind.)   They just seem much larger than they actually are because of my lack of ability to focus on anything further than two inches away from my nose.   I know this, truly, I do.

I'm fairly certain they're not making faces at me.  But again, I can't really KNOW this without my glasses on.  I am not going to set up tiny hidden spider cams around my house.  That would just be silly.  

(I blame all this on Allie fordrawing pictures of scary spiders.)  

Also, it's not like I want to destroy all spiders.  I just want them to be sneaky and not get caught by me.  Because if I catch them, I have to acknowledge their existences, and if they flaunt their existences, I have to end them.  (Why don't they LISTEN when I tell them to go away, or I will kill them?) 

I am trying to be reasonable here, spiders.  We can coexist as long as you live lives of fear and secrecy.  Why is that so hard for you?!  Don't you want to live?!

It may be that I am not being fair or reasonable about this.  Maybe they are starving because there is a lack of bugs for food in my house.  Maybe they are crazed by hunger and can't help staggering around in a daze the one time a day I am in the master bathroom.  Maybe I should have more compassionate thoughts toward them.  

I just can't.  And I'm okay with that.

when the magic happens

Why must it always snow only
when I cannot look properly?  It's
only when I'm driving or at work
or lying in bed calmly despairing
of sleep (and sometimes even
sleeping) that the magic happens.

Today's Goal

Today's Goal:

Get the tuna

in the fridge.

one of those weeks (2)

the kind of week
when chances are high
that I will accidentally
walk into a men's restroom
again

one of those weeks

one of those weeks
when you can get
the tuna to the
kitchen but can't
quite
concentrate long enough
to get it into the fridge

another weekend

Now ends another weekend
when I didn't catch up on email,
didn't write enough, didn't read
enough, didn't sleep enough,
didn't make it to church, didn't
do enough research, didn't
cross enough things off the list,
did spend time with loved ones,
did get a bit sunburned, did have
ice cream, did the dishes AND
the laundry, did exercise and
watch clouds and play with kids
and think too hard about things
while reading a book that didn't
have the depressing ending I
was expecting

how to change a mind

I have decided to try
to see the alarms as the bell
that signals recess, freedom
from my nightly confinement.
I hope this is a wise change
that will help me get out of
bed tomorrow morning

allergies + insomnia

so tired I'm dizzy
sitting down, scratchy throat
even PancakeSheep is limp

folk wisdom fail

Starve a fever.  Don't exercise
with a fever.  This is what they
say.  But what if you don't know
if the fever is a side effect of the
steroid or related to the cold/flu
you're coming down with now
that you can't get any sleep at all?

side effects math

side effects math says
insomnia + med-insomnia
= insomnia squared