Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Medical Moron

Gah. All my projects are catching up with me and there's not enough time in the day to do them all. I think I did pretty well today at looking not-insane and not messing up my experiments. It was a near thing. I did pipe up during our core team meeting with the helpful "Ok, I get it: Blue like Water, Red like Stop, Green like Go" to help remember the facilities shutdown chart legend. I was probably the only one who needed the mnemonic. I was speaking like a retarded Dr. Seuss because I got about an hour of sleep last night. Yep, I'm moron. Normally I don't sleep that well, but I've been back to the acupuncturist and taking herbs and the last week has been filled with more energy and less sleep. (18 hours on sunday is too much.) But even I know that I need more than 1 hour of sleep. I even know that 7 hours tends to do really well for me. Knowing isn't doing.

What I did do... I did oversleep a bit over the weekend again, but yesterday was going ok. I wasn't very hungry for lunch so I went and got a small smoothie and I tried their new "energy" booster. As I was walking out the door, I read the fine print saying the new booster had caffeine. However, I didn't file that away properly because berry fruit smoothie doesn't read as "caffeine source" in my brain. I finished work and still had energy. After frenetically drafting a couple versions of my new kitchen I was still not getting "you are sleepy" signals at midnight. So I mocked up an upper cabinet with brown paper and taped it to the wall to get a sense of how imposing it will be. Not bad. It will do good things for the storage spaces.

1am, still no signal, but I know I should go to bed. Do I? Nope, I check my email and mock the lame Discovery offerings on TV. The Bermuda Triangle show was actually really good and had science. The "Loch Ness Monster" of Lake Champlain however was full of quacks, hacks, and whackos! Their programming was really scraping the bottom of the barrel this week. I finally got fed up and turned off the computer and TV and moseyed on to bed. Where I felt tired, but my eyes wouldn't stay still or shut. So I turned on the light and started reading a book (Allison Kent), figuring I'd drop off in a bit.

By the time I realized I wasn't about to drop off, and [smacks head] oh, yeah, I'd sucked down caffeine after 1pm, it was too late to take my emergency chlortrimeton (8mg overrides caffeine upper and helps me sleep) because I didn't want to oversleep my alarm in 3.5 hours. And I still couldn't sleep. I maybe got an hour, all told (and still hit the snooze for 20 minutes). Somehow I functioned today, but it was a medical miracle. Hopefully I can get home ok and sack out for the next 11 hours or so. I'm craving the zuchhini sticks from Claim Jumper though so I might have to make a pit stop on the way home from my 11 hour day at work after 1 hour of sleep.

Oh, and maybe stop at borders and see if they're selling Ed Gaffney's new book and Grimspace by Ann A-something, which came recommended.

Updated to Add: Did find Ed's book, and Suz's re-release, a book that has been recommended, a few more to round out the get the 5th romance free, and 4 things on the $1 clearance shelf: 2 of which I will probably keep, one of which I almost bought at full price back in the day. Started Ed's book at dinner and got sucked in while I ate fried zucchini and ribs one handed and got BBQ sauce wedged firmly under every fingernail on that hand but kept the book clean. And I remembered I took a picture at lunch. Here's your moment of zen.

dog in sunglasses with chew toy in truck
Happy dog in sunglasses.

Yes, yes, I know, bedtime. Now!

2 comments:

Angel Junior, Orion and Sammy said...

Meowms hours of sleep on the weekend are all wonky...but hse manages to get enough rest during the week.

Hope you get back to a regular schedule soon!

Anonymous said...

you know you've lived in Southern California too long when....

you look at a pic of a dog and wonder is that Erika's co-worker's dog or a friend's dog?...but it completely escapes your notice that the dog is sporting sunglasses until you read the caption! What's the opposite of jaded?

QL