OK, I am officially tired of this now. It is almost 5 a.m. and I have been awake since 3 a.m. I have been waking up at 3 a.m. now for more than a week, an extremely tiresome situation. This morning I thought I might go back to sleep, and it might have happened, maybe, but Attila snores, and he was making quite a racket. Of course, my inability to drop off to sleep might not be related to the snoring at all, after all, Attila hasn’t been snoring on any of the other 3 a.m. eye openers I’ve been experiencing, and I didn’t fall asleep on those mornings either. By 4 a.m. I grew tired of lying in my bed in the dark, so I arose, came out into the living room and turned on the Christmas tree lights.
I am not napping. I don’t catch up. I don’t feel tired, not at any point in the day, except my usual “down time” around 4 p.m.
So here I sit, looking out the window at blackness, staring into the computer monitor, seeking noiseless amusement until the rest of the world stirs… which in my case is Attila, “nobody here but us chickens” as they say. I don’t mind doing this every so often, but it is getting quite tedious now. This is the longest bout of this form of insomnia that I have had in a long time. The other form of insomnia that visits me, is not being able to fall asleep at bedtime. Of the two forms, I prefer this one, waking up super early.
Attila sleeps, as a rule, three or more hours per night than I do. He seems to need more sleep, and doesn’t seem to have any trouble getting to sleep, or staying asleep.
I think today I will try to think of a change of scene, get out and about somewhere, to break up the energy a bit. Maybe that will help. But where to go! Shopping is the only rock solid choice, always available, no invitation needed, just bring money. But shopping is boring when you don’t need or want anything, and I really don’t need or want anything. I will probably go shopping though, as it is such a readily available activity. I might do my $5 challenge shop, spend hours looking for the perfect $5 purchase… this gets more challenging every year.
The temperature outside has dropped significantly overnight, and it looks like we will be having a cold snap for the rest of 2017. Our oil furnace takes over heating the house when it gets this cold (as low as -26C is predicted), so I’ll be kept busy attempting to keep the humidity above 30% in the house. The humidifier is running 24/7, moistened clothes are draped by every heating register, and laundry is hung to air dry… with all this the humidity hovers and dips around 30% relative humidity.
One of my gifts from Attila this year is a pair of genuine Crocs. I have a dollar store pair, that I have worn for many years, which are more like spongy marshmallows on my feet than shoes. The soles of the cheap knock-offs are so flimsy that I can feel coins on the floor underfoot, and they are not altogether stable. The Crocs are infinitely better shoes! They are more comfortable and more stable to start with, and the soles are sturdy enough to protect my feet, even out of doors. I wear them as slippers in the winter here at Mist Cottage, to keep my feet from losing heat to the unheated floors.
After a big turkey dinner there will be leftover turkey dinners for the rest of the week, which is something we both look forward to.
The card table has been setup in the living room, and a jigsaw puzzle started. We both enjoy jigsaw puzzles. I have many fond memories of doing puzzles at my Granny and Grandpa’s house, during long summer days, and in later years with my Mom and sisters, including just this past visit for our Christmas get together. The puzzle we are working on now, at Mist Cottage, is an image of Van Gogh’s Starry Night, which we purchased at the Van Gogh exhibition in Ottawa, in 2012, at the National Gallery.
It is now 6 a.m. I have been awake for three hours and feel comfortable making a wee bit of noise in the house, so I am off to the kitchen to start brewing the morning coffee!
Worldly Distractions
Weather
-12°C
Date: 5:00 AM EST Tuesday 26 December 2017
Condition: Not observed
Pressure: 102.2 kPa
Tendency: Rising
Temperature: -11.7°C
Dew point: -18.0°C
Humidity: 60%
Wind: W 18 gust 27 km/h
Wind Chill: -20
Quote
“On a lazy Saturday morning when you’re lying in bed, drifting in and out of sleep, there is a space where fantasy and reality become one. Are you awake, or are you dreaming? You see people and things; some are familiar; some are strange. You talk, you feel, but you move without walking; you fly without wings. Your mind and your body exist, but on separate planes. Time stands still. For me, this is the feeling I have when ideas come.”
Lynn Johnston
1947 –
My daughter’s have described something similarly pleasant to this, and Attila has as well. This drifting state has never been a desirable encounter for me. What Ms. Johnston describes sounds like a fairy tale. I envy that people could have this experience.
What different worlds we have lived in, what different exposures colour our realities, and sketch our internal landscapes. The drifting state is a terrain of nightmares and horrors in my universe, a no man’s land where angels, and I, fear to tread. I would not tarry there for all the world. I find my peace and inspiration elsewhere.
One cannot assume that any experience is universal. We, and certain uses of you, and one, are truly royal words.
I hope you soon get better sleep!
Thanks Joan! I am waiting for it, it will happen eventually.
I have to get up at least twice, sometimes more, to go to the loo so I never get a full night’s sleep. 3 a.m. is often the time I make one of those trips. I love just lying back in my bed and thinking for the next few hours. I don’t mind that. Sometimes I put on my headphones and listen to overnight talk radio. Last night/morning, I went into a dream about Sen. John McCain. This is the second night in a row I’ve dreamt of him. I’m thinking that he’s not long for this world. It may be a sign.
So have you stopped taking the Melatonin then?
Bex, when all is well with my sleeping pattern, I get up in the night to go to the loo and then go back to sleep. This insomnia puts me wide awake at 3 a.m., and there is no going back to sleep.
Your quiet times in bed sound so lovely! I don’t dream, at least I don’t remember dreams, they are usually quite distressing, so it is better that way. I got them under control with mathematics and statistics, doing complex problems just before bed, and solving them in my sleep, kept my inner mind busy with innocious issues, and it let me sleep. Also, repetetive activities like mahjong, or picking fruit for hours and hours, will allow my inner mind to focus on the mundane while I sleep.
Your dream about the Senator may be a sign, dreams can be like that!
I only take melatonin for the variation of insomina that involves falling asleep when I first go to bed, it isn’t effective when I’ve just had four or more hours of sleep, my thoughts are just too powerful to let it do its job at that point. Thanks for mentioning it though, because it might have been something I hadn’t thought of!
I have two general sleep patters, either I fall asleep pretty quickly and then wake an hojr or two later or I stay awake for sometimes hours. DH, OTOTH, falls asleep within minutes.
I’ve slowly taught myself to get up if I’ve been awake more than an hour. I won’t use the computer as the screen is too bright, but I will use my tablet with the screen turned way down. That way the light is less likely to cause problems with sleeping. Most of the time I’ll read blogs or the social side of Facebook. I stay away from news as I don’t want my mind taking on the world’s problems in the middle of the night. That would really keep me awake. Eventually, I start to feel sleepy and if I avoid thinking about knotty problems I’ll go to sleep.
As for snoring husbands, when that happens I either give DH a loud Shhh! or actually ask him to turn over so he won’t snore. He falls asleep so easily the interruption doesn’t bother him at all and he goes right baxk to sleep.
BTW, I’ve read that sleeping problems for women are – unfortunately – often an affliction of menopause. No wonder these men have no problems sleeping!
The one good thing about having trouble sleeping at Christmastime is that the tree lights can be soothing. I find if I turn them on and just look at them for a while that they’ll eventually make me sleepy, too.
Hope your sleep pattern gives you more rest soon!
Have you tried melatonin? Sometimes when I wake up in the middle of the night I just take a 3 mg. sublingual and I almost always fall back to sleep.
Birdie, melatonin is a good suggestion! I find it works for me when I go to bed at night, but seldom has any effect when I wake up, wide awake, gears turning at warp speed, at 3 a.m. Worth giving it anothter go though, you just never know!
I also find that if I drink milk in the evening, I sleep better. Not non-fat milk either, whole milk. It’s the fat in the milk that makes a person sleep.
Bex, good suggestion, I have some Horlicks here, I will have a nice hot mug of Horlicks with milk before turning in tongith! Maybe I’ll add a wee dollop of butter to it, the milk I have is 1%.
Teri, your strategies to minimize wakefulness are helpfull. My computer has a feature that dims the screen at night, automatically, which is a bonus. I too avoid the news, but not just during bouts of wakefulness, I avoid it almost all the time, and can do so because if there is anything that actually impacts directly on my life, the local area, or a particular action or decision I might be able to make, Attila brings it up, and I research the issue.
When I wake at 3 am I do not become sleepy again at any point, not even bedtime the next night. I seem to be going through a phase where I need only around four hours of sleep each night. I don’t like it at all. When I have trouble falling asleep it is as you describe, and I do find keeping myself peacefully occupied until I come to the cliff of sleep gets me through the experience. I call it a cliff because that is what it feels like, I am occupied reading something, in an instant I become aware of a weariness, and if I lie down when I feel this I will fall asleep. There is no use even trying to sleep unless I come to the cliff.
The snoring is an interesting thing. Most of the time I am not aware of it. But if there is something on my mind, or I have awakened early as I am doing at the moment, the snoring is significant. If I am kept from falling asleep by extremely loud snoring, even for a second, I will not be able to sleep, it is the strangest thing. We work around it by my retiring slightly earlier than Attila, so that I am already asleep when he starts snoring.
I love Christmas lights!