Thinking about sheep

I have insomnia, have had it my whole life. As far back as middle school I was taking Benadryl every night, otherwise I would stay up until at least 3:00am, no matter how tired I was.

These days I take melatonin, because most other things will make me too sleepy the next day and if I'm going to be sleepy from drugs I might just as well be sleepy from not sleeping, I suppose. Okay, I'm not entirely sure that logic is sound, but whatever. Sometimes I take xanax. I'm kind of afraid of those prescription sleep things that make you get up and make bacon in your neighbor's house at 4:00am, so I've never tried them. Plus, I can't really take something that will absolutely definitely knock me out because the truth is I'm never really sure if a child is going to come in and need something at any point during the night. Then we might both find ourselves making bacon in the neighbor's house. Child 2 would love that.

Anyway, melatonin loses its effectiveness for me after a long period of taking it, so sometimes, even when I do take it, I still can't sleep. And that's when I lie there, trying to figure out how to occupy my mind so that I will doze off.

Sometimes I try to do math problems in my head, but the sad truth is that I've completely forgotten my multiplication tables so that's just more frustrating than anything else. Or I'll try to count in some strange way, but then I always end up forgetting where I was or what my next number is supposed to be, and that makes me frustrated.

And then, of course, I turn to the old standby: Counting sheep. But I get confused about the mechanics of the sheep counting. Are they supposed to be jumping over a fence? I'm pretty sure they are, but... can sheep even do that? CAN sheep jump over fences? So I get caught up in trying to make my sheep (who have names, and are rude to each other) jump over the fence and I forget all about trying to count them. I imagine their struggle, with their short little legs (I don't even know if they have short little legs, actually) and how their sheep friends would tease them for it.

Okay, so maybe I'm supposed to number them, like cattle or something, and count them that way?

Ultimately, my mind gets tired of these questions; after all, I'm trying to distract myself so that I can stop thinking about the days' events and go to sleep... and so I always... always... end up just... thinking about sheep. Lots of sheep, just standing there. I don't even try to count them. I just think about them.

For some reason that works.

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You know what pisses me off?

If you have any kind of ailment, or issue, or problem of any sort... the answer to it is always that you need to get more sleep.

Have a cold? Get some sleep. Stressed? Try to get some sleep. Painful carpal tunnel syndrome? Some rest might help. Bells Palsy? Are you getting enough sleep at night?

WTF is Bells Palsy, anyway? Do I have it?

I was watching this show last night and the main character is Bipolar. Her father reminds her that the best thing she can do for herself, to get better, is to get enough sleep. And she agrees, so she goes home to sleep. And I was thinking... Well aren't YOU just so fucking lucky?? A single woman who lives alone with no kids? She should be the healthiest fucking person in the world; she can sleep whenever she wants!!!

See, I don't get to sleep whenever I want, or enough. Last night Child 2 was up until midnight because he's afraid of zombies. He watched something called The Zombie Apocalypse, which I think was on the Discovery Channel (I wasn't home when it happened) and ever since he's been totally freaked out by it. So last night he's bawling and saying "I don't want to be like this anymore; I want to be normal again" and, god, I felt so bad for him. But I can totally relate to what he's going through because when I was about 9 my parents let me watch the Exorcist, and that shit fucked me up for weeks. I'm not sure I was ever normal again after that (explains SOOOO much) but I understood completely what he was feeling. It's a shitty feeling, it really is, but trust me when I tell you that Zombie Apocalypse ain't got nothing on the fucking Exorcist. He's actually rather lucky. I didn't tell him that, though.

Anyway, he was up until midnight, and then his brother came into my bed around 1:30 and stayed for the night, which he does every night, and I can't sleep when he's there, which means I don't sleep any night.

So FUCK YOU, medical establishment and your goddamn "get some sleep" advice. Why can't "take up smoking" ever be your answer to something?? I could totally do that.

I think my Bells Palsy is acting up again, I'd better go lie down.

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Why doesn't anybody want chocolate for breakfast?????

Oh, god, you guys.... I am so tired.

So, so tired.....

Child 1 has bad sleeping habits. It's my fault. I know. He starts in his own bed but comes into mine every night, which is usually the point when I stop sleeping. You can read about it here. I've been unsuccessfully and not even really very enthusiastically trying to change this for a while now, because at this point I figure I'm just fucked and I have to wait for him to decide it's time to stay in his bed all night.

That doesn't stop me from trying, though, and I've been attempting to come up with things that would be awesome incentives for him to want to stay in his bed all night.

And what's a better incentive than chocolate, right?? What kid doesn't love chocolate? I know this kid sure does. So, last week I told him he could have chocolate for breakfast if he stayed in his bed all night long.

His response? "Naahhhh, I don't want chocolate for breakfast."

LIES!!!!!!!! He wants chocolate for breakfast, he just wants to come into my bed more.

Goddammit.

But the latest trend in night time antics? Child 2 has now started coming into the bed with me. He usually comes first, and then Child 1 appears a few hours later.

I get no sleep when this happens. See? LOOK AT MY EYES!!!

It's been happening every night for the last 4 nights now, so last night I told Child 2 that he could have chocolate for breakfast if he stayed in his bed all night. He was very excited about that, and readily agreed to the plan. I was very optimistic.

But then at around 1:00 this morning, in he climbs, and before I even have a chance to say a word, he says "Mama, I decided I don't want chocolate for breakfast, after all" and then immediately passes out.

Goddammit!!!

I guess I'll be having the chocolate for breakfast. To ease the pain.

UPDATE: I sat Child 2 down earlier so we could discuss BedGate, and he started crying because he's been having bad dreams about being attacked by a giant ladybug and the only thing that helps him is to come sleep with me. sigh. So... I guess we'll be doing that for a while....

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Some kind of Wednesday

You know, it's like Some Kind of Wonderful, except without the awesome John Hughes music. And with more despair. But fewer acid washed jeans.

I was originally going to make this a Wordless Wednesday, except I realized there were too many words I actually wanted to include, which would make the title completely useless, so I guess, instead, I'll call it Wordy Wednesday. Or Chatty Wednesday. Or I'm Over Explaining Things Again Wednesday. Or Shut The Fuck Up Already Wednesday.

Any of those will do.

This post is dedicated to Scott, who blogs at Dads Who Change Diapers, because on Tuesday morning when I was tweeting about how nauseous I felt because I was so goddamn tired, he was the first person to mention schadenfreude. He was also the only person to mention schadenfreude. And then he didn't judge me for probably spelling nauseous wrong, which I really appreciate. (Have you voted for him yet, in the whatever thing it is that he wants votes for? You totally should; it's really important.) Also because I told him I would dedicate this post to him, and then something again about schadenfreude. I don't know, I was really tired that morning.....

This is how my Monday night went, while hubs slept blissfully alone on the couch downstairs because he had to be up at 6:00am and he didn't want to bother me (you'll see the irony of that as you get to the end).

I took the blanket off of us by the 5th picture here so that you could see the body positioning we had going on, so just pretend the blanket is still there. Use your imagination, dammit.

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Sleeping with the enemy

We have this ginormous and awesomely comfy California King bed. And some days hubs works until really stupid hours, because he has a sucky job that sucks, and when he gets home he goes downstairs to watch TV so that I can go to sleep; and when he does he always passes out on the couch. So on those nights, I get the ginormous and awesomely comfy bed all to my fucking self. It's a beautiful thing, it really is, I gotta say.

You would think that a ginormous California King size bed would be plenty of room for me to sleep with a couple of cats, but.... yeah, no. If you have cats, or dogs, probably, or kids, even..... you know what I'm talking about. Observe......

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So tired. So very very tired.

Before I begin this post, please go read this and then come back.

I'll wait.



Okay, you're back? Great.

So, I've been trying to figure out a way out of this horrible sleep cycle I've gotten myself into. It must end. I've started by talking to Child 1 about it. Have to start somewhere, why not start there. At bedtime we've been discussing the issue of "what happens when you wake up in the night" and "how you should stay in your bed and not come into mine" and "Mama just might die of fatigue one of these days." Okay, not that last part. Anyway, tonight we were discussing it again and I was being very clear that you should stay in the bed that you fell asleep in until it's morning, and this is what he tells me:

"No. I go to sleep in my bed and then I wake up when it's still not morning yet and I come into your bed. That's how it works."

"Why?" I ask.

"Because that's just how it works," he says.

He's right, you know. That IS how it works. I couldn't do anything but agree with him. And I only have myself to blame for this being the way it works in this house. And, again, I have no idea how to make this better.

Gotta love how well he explained that, though, right? He was very clear, very concise, and, of course, very correct.

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Oh, boy, SLEEP! That's where I'm a viking!!

It's such a cliche, the tired mom thing. We never get enough sleep, we're always on the move, the kids wake us up wanting stupid things like water and blankets and love; I feel silly sometimes, complaining about how tired I am, but MAN am I tired. I remember when I was pregnant with Child 1, I read the book Operating Instructions, and it started this three month long panic attack about how tired I was going to be and what a nightmare that would be, because I'm one of those people who need a lot of sleep, and I used to get it, before the children, and the image of this exhausted new mom in this book just completely put me over the edge.

So, how it works here is that we all go to bed in our own beds, and then during the night Child 1 will come in and climb into bed with us. But I can't sleep when he's there, so then I get up and go into his bed. This doesn't sound really all that bad, because I always go right back to sleep, except he always 1. LANDS really hard on the back of my legs or something thus jolting me awake in a total fucking panic and 2. always seems to come in the middle of a deep REM cycle, which is the worst time you could get woken up. This has been happening every night for 5 1/2 years now.

In the beginning, I was a total sleep nazi and he was the best sleeper EVER. He slept through the night at 3 weeks old, he was that good a sleeper. And I wish so much that I could play the autism card here, because kids with autism are notoriously bad sleepers, and even though I sometimes do when I explain this to people, the real problem here is bad parenting. Yeah, I pretty much did this to myself. So, he was the greatest sleeper ever, and my fears about being like whatsherface in the book never actually happened ... until we moved him out of the crib and into the big bed, when he was 3 and I was pregnant with Child 2. I was already not getting enough sleep, being ginormously pregnant, but once he got into the big bed, and realized he didn't actually have to stay in his bed if he didn't want to, is when he started coming into the room with us. At this point is where I should have taken control of the situation and trained him to go back into his room, but... no. I fucked that up, I guess, because now he's conditioned to climb out of his bed and come into ours the minute he first stirs. And I have no idea how to make this better, except just wait until he's older and doesn't want to come in anymore. I figure I only have about another 1 1/2 years, maybe 2, right? I mean, I've "lasted" this long, what's another couple of years....

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