8.5.00

I Shouldn't Be This Awake

I've never really experienced insomnia before. During the latter years of high school I learnt how to drink coffee in order to force myself to stay conscious during many an all-nighter. I've barely survived church youth group sleepovers which should really have been called wake-and-get-sleepy-overs; I've tried to prevent the force of sleep from crushing me whilst on the phone to Nathan in the early a.m hours, sometimes unsuccessfully ("Hrmlph. What?" "You fell asleep for about five minutes." "Shit! I'm so sorry... I'm so sorry." "It's okay. You make cute noises when you're asleep."). I've gone without sleep as needed - say, the twentyfour hours before I left for the airport to come to America, and the total combined time of travel (including connecting flights, and even then I managed to get a few naps in here and there). But never have I battled an onslaught of wakefulness so cruel and unrelenting. Okay, I'm probably whining - it's only been a few days, so it's not chronic insomnia, merely temporary. Yes, I'm a wimp.

It is, nonetheless, unsettling and slightly annoying. And boring! I mentioned that I've taken up reading again - mostly out of boredom, to be honest. The state of television today is awful - it's tolerable during the day and alright in the evening up until midnight, but then it all goes to hell. I have to wait until 4am for an episode of "Frasier", for God's sake. Couldn't they put together a cable channel purely for high-brow sitcoms, and actually show them around the clock? (Oh yes, that's right; after every season of "Frasier", they'd have nothing to go on. Except maybe "Seinfeld". But is "Seinfeld" high-brow or merely clever? Bueller? Bueller? Bueller..?) Or how about actually showing the promised content of a channel during the wee hours - none of this pussy infomercial crap. If VH1 promises "music first", then give me some damn music. They have something called "Insomniac Music Theater" from around 12am - 6am; first of all, it's their usual timetable of the same ten music videos over and over, with long stretches of commercials in between. Hey. Yeah, you at the programming controls - how about giving us some freaking videos? We're not awake to be bored out of our heads here. Even "Pop-Up Video" would be better than the endless stream of mail-order companies trying to hock such trash as "The Best Polka Album Ever!" or the "Boogie Bass".

So. Reading.

Yet I haven't read "properly" in such a long time that it's taking me forever to finish a mid-sized novel. It must have taken me a week to finish "The Glass Lake" - in the sixth grade I was chewing through books that length in a couple of days. Slightly longer for anything by Virginia Andrews; and I do believe it took me about three weeks to a month to get through "The Thorn Birds" in the ninth grade. Also, my book choices are limited; Nathan's mom is an Ireland-enthusiast, so most of the fictional works on the bookshelf are by Irish/English authors. There's also a lot of textbooks, manuals, non-fiction hobby related materials, religious-themed volumes, and biographies, but nothing that really appeals to me at the moment.

Perhaps another trip to the bookstore or a mission to find the town library is in order.

Last night the non-sleeping and the boredom and the dervish of thoughts racing around my head finally began to take their toll, though. Not in a nice soothing going-to-bed way, but in a "mental" sort of way (as in, "She is completely mental"). I'll spare you the details of my somewhat manic moodswings and behaviour, but let's just say that Nathan ended up driving me around town at 4am in the morning just so I wouldn't have to be in the one place for more than a second. We even ended up going out of town for a little while - well, it wasn't intentional, it was more like, "Hey, so this is where Verona is. Cool. Let's turn back now."

By 5:30am I was laying in bed with the special double issue of "People" magazine, mulling over who is actually beautiful of the 50 most beautiful people in the world (Sarah did a much better job), coming to the realisation that most of the people featured are the children of divorcees. I thought that was sad - but it did make it that much clearer why books like "Divorce For Dummies" actually exist.

At 7:48am I was on the phone to the one and only Jo (I have to fix up that link so you'll actually have an idea of who all these people are), our first phone conversation in about a month. It was slightly odd; it didn't feel like we were seperated by land and oceans, more like how it usually was - not seeing her for weeks because of her committments to university and concert band and lord knows what else, and having a short phone conversation during that time. It feels as though I could get in my car and drive a short distance to go and see her - though this definitely is not the case.

Afterwards I sat at the computer and worked in Photoshop for a little while, weaving a little html in between saves. I had some music playing quite loudly during this time, so the appearance of Nathan's mom at the door looking for her car keys almost made me jump out of my skin (almost all of his family have this quiet way of walking up behind you - it's unnerving). Tried to go back to bed; had an idea of what I could do with the graphics and the frames and the pesky popup window that wasn't working properly and came back to the computer. A little bit later the problems were fixed, so I decided to try and go to sleep. Ending up bouncing out of bed and spending some more time at the computer. Tried sleeping again. Decided to watch television. It was a frustrating process.

I did manage to get about five hours worth of sleep this afternoon; at around noon I think my mind decided to assert itself and I ended up crashing on the bed fully-dressed, being woken up every half an hour by Nathan (this was by my request; "Wake me in half an hour," I kept saying, apparently. I think I hurt his feelings when he crawled on top of me affectionately to give me a cuddle and I growled, "Get off me - just go! Grrr."). At around 5pm or so I couldn't stand being in bed any longer so I just got up and within ten minutes I was back in the land of the wide awake. Considering that it usually takes me anywhere from half an hour to an hour to get past the "I wanna go back to sleep" stage, I found this quite bizarre.

And now, at 12:47am, I'm still not a bit sleepy. I think I'm going to go and watch "Being John Malkovich" and see if I can't manage a little rest. Maybe I'll even try warm milk. If, in the meantime, there's some sleep-inducing suggestions, I'd love to read them.

Goodnight...?