Tuesday, May 22, 2012

My Brain is an Insomniac. And a Total Dick.

You know how sometimes, when you're under lots of pressure or feel anxious, all you want to do is close your eyes and drift off into some wonderful la-la land where it's all fluffy clouds, rainbows and naked Robert Pattinson?

You know, go to my happy trail place...

Well, that's how I've been feeling lately. Work is kind of sucky and super stressful and wah wah wah, so all I want to do when it's time for bed is just, well, sleep. Escape.

My brain, on the other hand, has a different idea. It's decided that the best way to handle my stress is to jerk me awake every fucking forty five minutes or so all night long. Every goddamn night for the past week. Then, the second my alarm goes off, my brain is all, "oh, I'm hitting the sack, I'm totally fucking beat, see you around midnight" and checks out and I spend the rest of the day slurping massive amounts of caffeine and almost forgetting to pull down my panties when I have to pee.

My brain is such a fucking dickhead.


While I can't remember (thankfully, I'm sure) all the reasons I bolted awake, here is more or less how my night went last night. Or maybe it was the night before. Things are a little muddled. I am almost always in bed before midnight in the desperate attempt that I might get more than hour of uninterrupted sleep...

And that's when my brain starts up. 

12:34 am - Psssst, Jenny, are you awake? Hello? HELLLLOOOOOO??? Hey, I was just wondering if you were awake... Oh! There you are! Just wanted to say hi!! You can try to go back to sleep now.

1:20 am - Hey, Jenny, did you ever send that report to Joe Blow this morning? You know, that one that was super duper important and you're probably going to get fired if you didn't send it? Let's think about whether or not you sent it for the next ten minutes, okay? And if you didn't... YOU'RE TOTALLY FUCKED FOR LIFE.

2:01 am - Jenny, did you lock the doors before you went to bed? Because if you didn't, then some crazy Freddy Krueger mass murderer is going to break into your house and kill you and skin you and that would really suck. Maybe you should go downstairs and check. Sure hope no one is down there waiting for you.

2:30 am - HOLY FUCKING SHIT, FREDDY KRUEGER IS HIDING IN THE BATHTUB. DO NOT GO IN THERE OR HE WILL KILL YOU. PAINFULLY.


2: 40 am - Pssst, Jenny, I think you have to pee. Like, bad. You should totally go to the bathroom. I would pee as fast as you can because, you know, Freddy.

3:30 am -OH MAH GAHD, Just came up with the BEST storyline EVER. Okay, so here's the plot, but you need to get up and grab a pen first. Jenny? HEY!! This is going to make you famous, WAKE THE FUCK UP. Okay, good. Got a pen? Wait, what were we talking about again? I forget. Go back to sleep.

4:00 am - So, Jenny, I was thinking... What if the train explodes tomorrow while you're on it? Did you make out a will yet? Who will take your clothes? Do you think people would come to your funeral???

4:30 am - Holiday RoooAAAdddd, roooAAAAddd... Holiday ROOaaaDDDD, rrrOOOOaaaaDDDD... ... ... HOLIDAY RoooAAAddddddd, ROOOaaaaaaDDDDD...

5:00 am - WHAT IS THAT NOISE??? It's a goddamn abomination. Oh, it's ML snoring. Anyway, now that you're awake, you should just get up because this is the PERFECT time to be up. Right the fuck now. Get up. Stop laying there, Jenny!!! Get up!! No, fine?

5:45 am - DUDE IT'S SATURDAY!!!! YAY!!! You can sleep in, Jenny!! How fuckawesome is that!!!

6:00 am - Oops, that's your alarm. Just kidding about it being Saturday!! Get up and go to work, you poor bastard. I'll see you later on tonight. I'm totally wiped and need a nap.


Yeah, my brain is a fucking asshole.

What are some of things that your mind does to fuck with you when all you want is just to get some goddamn shut-eye???

Oh, and if you've never heard of the song that my brain was singing at 4:30 this morning, here it is. You're welcome. I'll fully expect hate email within the next 24 hours when it's stuck in your head.

35 comments:

  1. I am the worst sleeper ever so I feel your pain. I have at least a week a month that I wake up constantly. It's very distressing. We just (almost) finished renovating our kitchen and I bet you I didn't get a full nights sleep in the 5 or 6 weeks I had to pick things out. Even the smallest amount of stress and I'm up.

    I usually just get up if I can't sleep, plus I run a lot really early in he morning so I just hope to tire myself out for the next night. Not really any help to you but at least you're not alone.

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    1. I'm terrified that if I get up I'll end up cleaning the house the entire night and then be exhausted and ENRAGED the next day, lol.

      I feel your pain.

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  2. I feel your pain. I've been struck by insomnia the last bit. I even take an anti-crazy pill to sleep but apparently my brain doesn't give a fuck about that anymore.

    The last month of pregnanct blows for shit like this. I'm awake at least 3 times where I have to get up to pee. Otherwise I'm awake every few hours to move my fat arse around in bed. I'm like a fucking beached whale flopping around on a beach in an attempt to change sides. I'm surprised greenpeace hasn't shown up and attempted to help me turn over in bed.

    My only suggestion is to have some booze. Mainly because that's what I'd like to have at the moment to help with the whole sleeping thing.

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    1. It can't last forever, before you know it you'll be belly-free and stumbling around in the dark trying to breastfeed a lamp. Maybe that just happened to me.

      Delete
    2. This made me LOL... because it's true. Oh, and once when I was as pregnant as you are now, CC, I was woken up by a leg cramp, then fell out of bed trying to fix it. Picture that. Beached whale, clutching leg, falls out of bed, taking covers with her and resulting in freaking out husband.

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    3. If it makes you feel better, CC, I flop around too. And I'm NOT pregnant.

      Nifer - the mental image you painted with your comment made me laugh so hard. Unfortunately, I was in a meeting. I'll never learn.

      After Car - I may have laughed at your predicament. But it was a sympathetic chuckle, I swear. :)

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  3. Why wait 24 hours for an email when I can leave you a comment immediately? I HATE YOU FOR PUTTING THAT SONG INTO MY SOON-TO-BE SLEEPLESS HEAD!!!

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  4. Sleep when we're dead right? I work 3 overnights a week(7-7), so I have horrible habits of napping throughout the day and sometimes in the on-call room if no vag is being obliterated. I jerk awake check my phone for facebook/twitter/email/texts, go to the bathroom, get water, and start over.
    On my four off days I skip the caffeine and take a melatonin capsule and get the best sleep ever.
    It just gets worse as we get older(That's for the fucking song, but it's true)

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    1. I might have to revisit this melatonin. I took it once many years ago and slept for about two days straight. I might have just taken too much (what? I was twenty when I took it. There was no such thing as "too much" back then).

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  5. Oh, Jenny - this might be my favorite post yet!

    I was TERRIFIED of Freddy when I was little (and still a little now) so I was SUPER surprised when my laptop decided to auto scroll while I looked up for a second at Dance Moms and when I looked back down a big Freddy F-ing Krueger was staring at me. With those teeth. I refused to take a bath alone and insisted on peeing with the door open from 1st grade until the 5th grade.

    The Holiday Road song is exactly the right song to sing at 4:30am. There is no other option.

    I have a hard time sleeping - a lot of the on and off too - but it is made much worse by my husband. He is a sleep humper. Luckily, I am a sleep elbow thrower.

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    1. I was forbidden to watch Nightmare on Elm St. because my mom said it would give me nightmares. Naturally, I watched it and was totally fucking traumatized FOREVER. Even now, when I hear that creepy children's rhyme (one, two, Freddy's coming for you...) I get freaked out.

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    2. Oh yay! There is a Nightmare on Elm Street marathon on SyFy right now! Tell your boss you are sick and get home quick, they are only on #2! The 80's cheese music is almost as scary as Freddy himself...

      Delete
  6. When I can't sleep, I open my laptop and read fanfiction. If reading doesn't make me sleepy, then at least I get to enjoy reading about sexy times! (To me, that is never time wasted.) Then, the next evening, I come home from work and immediately take a nap. I figure that puts me ahead, in case I have trouble sleeping again. Sometimes, I can sleep right trough to the next morning. Woot! WINNING!

    @Cullenary Curser - hope you know that having to get up all hours of the night to pee doesn't go away after the baby arrives!

    Holiday ro-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oad! I think I'll sing that at work tomorrow and get it stuck in everyone else's head!

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    1. Yes yes, I do know that. I pretty used to it now. What cheeses me off is the inability to roll over in bed without major effort. I miss being able to change positions and not even wake.

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  7. I really should know better by now...secure the laptop safely before reading Twitarded...but here I am lying in bed with it (the laptop) on my ample belly (just big enough to provide a laptop desk)...then I read & the chortling begins. My belly tends to bounce when I laugh and guess what bounced off my belly? yeah, the lt. So at least it bounced onto the bed. hmmm, I never have trouble sleeping but I DO have the "I have to pee but someone is surely waiting for me behind the shower curtain, soo, what to do? what to do?" problem-I need a bedpan...btw, you are hilarious when you are sleep-deprived. Also, all the rest of the time.

    @cullenary curser, love your advice...a little Bailey's always puts me in a sleepy state...add my Twilight bedtime playlist, pop in my awesome earbuds, & I'm happy even when not asleep!

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    1. One time I put the FSE in the shower for a photo op and forgot about it. Later on, when I had had a few drinks and really had to pee, I damn near gave myself a fucking stroke. ;)

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  8. Take right now for instance. It's 3:53 AM and I can't sleep!!!!! I lay in my bed at night and try to shut my brain off... But Nooooo. Motherfuckingasshat!!!! Between kids jumping from bed to bed at night and my husband falling through the front door at four in the morning after a 14 hour shift, I'm a tad fucking tired! But does my brain understand this? No. Not at all. Insensitive bastard.

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  9. what keeps me up is when the characters of whatever book I'm writing start telling me what to write. Don't they understand I'M SLEEPING???? When I feel stressed and just KNOW I'm not gonna get any sleep, I pop a sleeping aid. Sounds like you could use a few nights with their help.

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    1. HATE THAT. My characters come alive when I'm sleeping!! By the morning, I have zero memory of what happened but I always know it was amazing.

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  10. I wish I could say I feel your pain, but I don't. Once I hit the bed I'm pretty much comatose. Thank goodness my son is like that too :) My darling hubby on the other hand is a terrible sleeper. In fact he's going on three days with about 6 hours of sleep. He usually just tosses and turns and grunts a lot. Doesn't help but sometimes it wakes me up and then he's not miserable alone :) I hope you get some sleep soon!

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  11. I have had the same problem for the last week. Every 30 minutes... are the kids still in bed?? You should check. Why didn't you put that report together? Maybe you can do that now while the baby (aka my husband) and your offspring aren't nagging you. .....Turn on the laptop.... OH, that's right you can't do that until your boss gets of the procrastination wagon to give you the information you need to complete it. Go back to bed....30 minutes later....are the kids still in bed??? You need to clean the kitchen, like right now....and so on.....FML.

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  12. @JJ - That song is SO RANDOM!! OMG! LOL!

    I can't really remember what I think about when I wake up like that. Probably that I just want to go back to SLEEP! :-) Next time it happens I might have to write stuff down.

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  13. I'm usually a dead-to-the-world sleeper (thank you, parenting the world's most active baby), which makes it even more annoying when I can't sleep.

    One piece of advice: get a sleep mask if it is even the slightest bit brighter than the depths of a cave in your room. It takes some getting used to but now, if it's too bright (like last night, when I left all of the downstairs lights on because hubs was out of town), pop that thing on and boom, instant sleep. Works great for naps, too, assuming you have ten minutes to take one :)

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  14. If I start singing that song at 230am, I'm going to killz you. But on a serious note, I'm such a light sleeper anyone and anything wake me up espicially those 4am peeping birds i'd like to murder. I have to sleep with a window open so I get woken up by those fucking birds all the time. I usually fall asleep watching tv. I know they say this is over-stimulating, but for me it works. Occasionally I take a tylenol pm. It works if you take it early on. And caffeinate the shit out of the next day. Good luck Jenny, and sweet dreams.

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  15. I heard once that there is this guy who never sleeps and instead he just crawls into peoples bedrooms and watches them do it (because it fascinates him). Of course, this kind of life gets pretty lonely so his only course of action was to knock up the girl he watches and now SHE never sleeps either (oops, spoiler alert).
    Now he has sex in limos with his shirt on. With the lady that makes chocolate for Johnny Depp. Her daughter has a kangaroo as an imaginary friend and probably has trouble sleeping as well. I would if my mother kept me hopped on chocolate.

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    1. This is a fucking hilarious comment. I want to keep it in my pocket and giggle at it all day long.

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    2. I have to agree with Lindsay Rae on this one... oh and what the fuck are you smoking today? Please give me some...

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    3. Brilliant comment!!! Flove it :) And don't forget the brief stint in the circus getting drinks for elephants.

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    4. I'm framing this fucking comment. That was just... I'm speechless.

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  16. JJ....You're on the top of my list for getting that fucking awful and awesome song in my head.

    Take some ambian and jameson and call it a night!

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  17. JJ, have had lots of nights like that. Various triggers - work stress, life stress, sick kids, snoring husband, darling (not) starling chicks cheeping in their nest from 4.30 am right outside my fecking window.... but thank you thank you thank you for posting the link to Holiday Road, I loves me a bit of Lyndsey (even if he has a girl's name) and is now over 60....

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  18. I'm still laughing at the hilarious part about that song....Perfect!!!

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  19. I am the same fucking way. I must say have a Xanax works wonders for my anxious brain. It allows me to sleep great and I don't feel like dead weight in the morning like when I take a Sleep Aid. Get on it. Everyone is doing it.

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  20. Ever since I dyed my hair 2 months ago I haven't slept well since. I have horrible nightmares or just crazy realistic dreams. I wake up more tired than I started (if that is possible).

    Just today I tweeted/facebooked for some non-narcotic, non-alcoholic ideas for a good nights sleep. I got some great ideas and of course, sex came in number 1 for the ideas ;)
    I think I will try to melatonin and using lavender.

    Sleep well.

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  21. I am still here for long time.. i am so late?
    Hylands Calms Forte

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