Sleep Seeker

Sometimes, I can’t sleep. It’s a big problem, one that’s plagued me for a very long time actually. I’ve found that the problem comes and goes in waves, as it were, but when it’s bad…oh it’s bad.

Wednesday night for instance, I laid in bed for nearly four and a half hours before I finally fell asleep. Then—POOF—my alarm was going off and it was time to go to work. Luckily, thanks to lots of practice—and the invention of energy drinks—I’ve gotten pretty good at functioning with little or no sleep. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I enjoy long periods with no sleep—okay, scratch that. I do; but just a little bit.

I know, I know it’s a little a masochistic. The thing is—as anyone who knows me well can attest to—I’ve got a wee-bit of a competitive streak in me. Thus why I’ve enjoyed countless encounters that transpire something like this:

Random Dreary-Eyed Person: “Oh my God, I am sooooo tired. I stayed up all-night writing that biography paper for the Mass Communications History final.”

Bouncy, Energetic Me: “Do tell…”

Random Dreary-Eyed Person: “Well I woke up yesterday at like 9am and then I stayed up all-night…oh my God…I’ve been up for like 26 hours!!”

Bouncy, Energetic Me: “Wow…twenty-six whole hours, huh?! That’s a mighty long time, don’t you think?!”

Random Dreary-Eyed Person: “I know, right?! So like, what’s the longest you’ve stayed up? Can you top 26 hours?”

Bouncy, Energetic Me: *tranforms into a sleepless version of the Hulk…only blue, not green because it matches my eyes* “QUIET WITH YOUR TALK OF 26 HOURS YOU MERE MORTAL!!! I HAVE BEEN UP FOR MORE THAN TWO DAYS STRAIGHT ON NUMEROUS OCCASSIONS…”

Random Dreary-Eyed Person: *Runs away to go cry…and probably take a nap*

…okay, so not all of the encounters have been exactly like that, but you get the gist. So I am a tad-bit proud of my ability to survive on no sleep and why shouldn’t I be? I’ve earned some mondo-big paychecks thanks to that ability…and as anyone who is an avid reader of my mindless ramblings can tell you I’m become quite the amusing narrator in the wee-hours of the morning. (note: if you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, go back and check out some of my blogs posted during various Finals week overnight shifts—although full of typographical and grammatical error—they are quiet entertaining.)

Anywho, the whole point of this now-rambling soliloquy is that lately, my sleeping problems have returned. As a result I’ve recently taken up the practice of using sleep aids. Now I know what some of you are thinking…SLEEPING PILLS…but no, no, no…NO!

I don’t like the phrase “sleeping pills” and I hate the connotations that come with it. People hear “sleeping pills” and they picture strung-out Hollywood starlets who are two pills away from a body bag. Well that’s not me folks. I’m taking very generic, very light dose sleep aids…S-L-E-E-P A-I-D-S from CVS…not even the good stuff. Essentially they make me a little drowsy and then I can generally fall asleep in under an hour or so, which is a glorious night’s rest and a well-rested morning.

Where am I going with this you ask? Well you’d think that with more than 550 words down I’d have given some sort of clue, but yeah…not so much. That’s why this is a blog and not a school report a newspaper article…freedom to ramble on and on and on…oh shit, you’ve stopped reading. Let me get focused….

Okay, so the whole reason I started writing this thing is to let you all in on what goes through my lil brain on nights where I can’t sleep and as such, here we are, back to Wednesday night—after being moderately sidetracked for roughly the length of a freshman introductory essay.

Wednesday night I decided that I was going to try and catch some shut-eye without the assistance of my little non-prescription, non-habit forming friend. So there I was climbing into bed around 11ish. Grace was already long-since unconscious so it was a nice and quiet, dark room…perfect conditions for sleeping; unless you own my brain.

For the next four and a half hours or so here’s the crap that went running through my head…

“You know, if I ever win the lottery…I think the first thing I’m going to do is pay off my student loans. Then the second thing I’m going to do is getting some t-shirts printed up for everyone who plays in Christmas Bowl. Heck, if I win the lottery I can get personalized red and green jerseys and flags for both teams!!”

“Wow, that car is really loud. He just keeps driving around the block. Does this hooligan have nothing better to do? Holy crap it sounds really close! Is he going to drive into our house? What would I do if he did drive into the side of our house? Die, probably. Well yeah…”

“Man, I could go for another slice of that blueberry pie.”

“No doubt about it…Jennifer Aniston makes the hottest fake pregnant chick ever!!!”

“Am I having a heart-attack? Oh my God…why is my heart pounding so hard?! Am I dying?! Should I wake Grace up?! Oh, no, I guess that’s just a muscle twitch.”

“I had a ridiculously productive day at work today. I love days like that. Granted, I’m a pretty productive mofo when I want to be…or after four energy drinks and a six-pack of Coke. Either way, raise here I come!!”

“I think we should get a cat, but we can’t afford a cat. Plus what if Tom (note: my cat in Iowa) finds out, would he be pissed or what?!”

“I wish more people read my blogs on the other sites and not just on Facebook and MySpace.”

“I hope the Twins make a trade for a solid right-handed third-baseman. Garrett Atkins could work, if he can hit away from Coors Field. Adrian Beltre makes sense, but only if they can get him to sign for at least three more years. Mike Lowell makes a ton of sense if the Sox sign Teixeira.”

“What the hell is Craiggers doing texting me at this hour…holy shit and to tell me about the new Batman movie?! Is he drunk?! He better be drunk.”

“You know I’d expect a drunk middle of the night text from like Johnny or Steven or maybe even Justin…but Craiggers?! Come on now. I’d put him in the same category as Mike, Jay and Travis. I generally assume those cats are in bed by 9:30 with a warm glass of milk and the latest copy of ‘Parade’ magazine.”

“My posture is awful even when I’m in bed. I can feel my shoulders slumping…I’m a freakin’ primate.”

“Family Guy makes me giggle oh so very hard!”

“Damn, I left my iTunes running at work with one song on repeat. That song is going to have like 10,000 plays by tomorrow morning, that could skew my top ten rankings something fierce. Wait, am I really thinking about the top ten ranking that I put on Facebook as some sort of important thing? I suck…”

“How much money did I spend on bills last month?! Man, I am soooooo f’n broke!!”

“Why can’t I fall asleep? I need to get to sleep. I’m going to be so exhausted tomorrow. I should have taken a sleeping pill. Non-habit forming, my ass!! Or maybe I should take one now…wait, it’s like 2:30 in the morning. If take one now there’s no way I’ll be able to pop out of bed in time for work.”

“I should blog about all the random shit that’s going through my head…that could be amusing. Or really stupid and make people stop reading forever.”

“Damn, Grace managed to steal all of the blankets and push me to the edge of the bed despite the fact that I’m wide-awake. Unconscious Grace is freakin’ SuperWoman!”

“I need to get my license renewed soon. It expires in like three weeks. Should I get a haircut first? I want a good picture. My hair is getting pretty long in the back and—seriously—what the hell is going on with my sideburns?! Is it like 1976 or what?! So I guess if I go in, I can ask them to trim up the sides and the back. Just trim the sides and back, please. A little of the sides and bring up the back, please. Hi, I’d like to get just a trim…a little off the sides and clean-up the back, please. Why do I keep repeating this? I’m not actually at the barber shop. Why am I so polite? I don’t need to say please this I his job. No one says, ‘can I have a Big Mac and fries, please.’ No one says, ‘take my money in exchange for the gas I just pumped, please.’ What’s wrong with me? You know…you’re belittling yourself in your own head at like three in the morning…do you really want to wander down the ‘what’s wrong with me’ path right now?”

“Seriously though…how did she get the freakin’ blankets?”

“Yeah, I am pretty much a dead-on real-life knock-off of Chandler Bing. Is that good or bad? Do people—other than Grace—assume that my entire life is just a parody of Chandler Bing? Nah…wait….nah…”

“This is going to be SOOOO stupid to blog about. Maybe I should just blog about baseball some more. Let the generic blog sit for a bit and start pimping the baseball. Nah, no one reads that stuff. Which is a shame, b/c finding pictures that are small enough—yet entertaining as well—is often an issue.”

“Holy crap, I have never wanted Taco John’s more in all my life!!”

“Scratch that, I want it more now!!”

“I really hate the whole Rachel and Joey storyline. It’s just not plausible. She loves Ross and Ross sure as hell loves her…it just doesn’t make sense.”

“No doubt…I’m definitely rocking the sleep aid tomorrow night!”

“My stomach is making a lot of noises. It’s so loud. It’s gurgling. Oh wait…it’s doing that whole big, noisy digestion thing it does when you’re asleep and don’t notice. Why the human body is a mystical, magical thing…wait…seriously?! You’re a mystical and magical thing?! Dude…you’re knees are shot, your back and neck hurt every day.  Mystical and magical my ass…your body blows. Get a new one…or tell your stomach to shut up so that we can get some sleep up here!”

“…wait……….did I just say…er…think we?!”

“Yes, the Royal ‘we’…not we, we.”

“You said/thought wee-wee!!”

“Ha…yeah, yeah I did!! Good one me, yeah, thanks me!”

“HOLY SHIT I NEED TO GO TO SLEEP!!!”

“Honestly, I think if I were to be like someone on Heroes, I’d most want to be like Peter. Mostly because I want the ability to have all of the powers without having to either kill people or leave them powerless. Wow…all the powers, huh?! How selfish are you? Oh come on…what good is the ability to fly if you’re going up against a dude who can move things with his mind. He’ll just rip you in half. Or what if your power is super-hearing.? Big f’n whoop. Try stopping a dude who can throw fire or even that lame chick who could connect to the internet with her mind. How lame was that?! Yeah, seriously…although I could be blogging whenever I wanted. I’d like think it and it’d be blogged. Yeah, that’d be kinda sweet. It’d save all the time I spend typing. I wonder if I’d still have to mentally Google search for all of the pictures I wanted to post with the blog…and crop them?!”

…let’s be honest here folks (those of you who didn’t stop reading about 2,000 words ago), I feel like that’s more than enough examples.

The long and short—nah, pretty much all long—of it is this: If you see me looking super tired and worn-out in the morning and I’m not in the middle of one of my ridiculously long, up-all-night shifts and/or not in the middle of some cross-country flying excursion, well then you can go ahead and assume that I spent anywhere from three to six hours last night with a whole mess of thoughts—just like the ones you’ve just read (for those of you who actually made it)—running through my fragile, sleep-deprived mind.