If you are ever lonely, just bring a sharpie marker to the post office. Suddenly you’re every package mailer’s best friend.
Took Z to school today because Monica had an early meeting. He was not into this change in his routine, so I pretended that I had no idea how to drop him off. He walked me through everything and I think he had a good time.
I just fell asleep on the couch. What a mistake. I await an hour of lying awake in bed for a few hours.
Started using Trello today to organize my personal time. It’s a great web app.
For my first project of 2019, I made a sleep mask. I’ve been waking up with gritty eyes, and I blame it on the dry air of our home. It’s been a surprise to me that the air in our house is so dry even though the winters are so damp. That’s the motivation for a future project I’m devising in which I build a humidity tent for the head of our bed.
For now though, I can address the eye problem with a sleeping mask. Monica and I both sleep with our eyelids partially cracked, and I hope that covering them with a mask will shield our eyes and help maintain their moisture.
From the front, you can only admire my deft sewing. This is some left-over green felt from my Frog Mario Halloween costume a few years back. Also, it’s not apparent from this picture, but it’s actually a bit larger than a regular sleep mask to accommodate my industrial-sized head.
It’s kinda hard to see what’s going on back here as well, so I’ll explain it. There wasn’t enough felt to make two identical pieces for the front and back of the mask. Instead, I sewed together two halves for the back portion, and it created something of a pocket within the mask. Right now I’m storing an extra piece of felt in there to further block out ambient light, but I could see me storing some emergency cash in there for when I travel. The bottom portion also contains a semi-loose loop of felt that will surround my nose. After I put the mask on, I slip a finger in that loop on both sides of my nose to afford a closer fit and prevent light seepage.
I’m satisfied overall, and I’ll let you know tomorrow if my eyes are better moisturized in the morning.
My hope was that Zavian would learn to stay in his newly transformed bed, but he fell out two more times last night. When I asked him about it this morning, he only remembered falling out and crying once. The funny thing is that he’s slept without issue on multiple hotel couches—couches thinner than this bed—so who knows what’s at play here.
Together he and I whipped up this scrap wood railing. I provided the scrap wood, screws, and DIY ingenuity. He provided the ball point pen detailing.
Not too much to update today except that I was exhausted. I spent the evening sleeping on the living room rug instead of studying for the AWS solutions architect exam or working more on my laptop harness.
I get so many telemarketing calls, they frequently wake me up in the morning before my 6:30 alarm. I’d sleep through them, but when you have a 97 year old grand father who’s recently taken some nasty falls, every call is a literal alarm. My phone autocorrected a typo on grandfather to peas father.
Evening walks on 50 degree days are truly divine. Take that, Chicago winter.
Waiting until before I go to bed to write these posts is not ideal. I’m doing my best to try to stay awake and write this. Ideally I’d write these when I’m wide awake, but I’m busy doing other things then, like thinking about napping. I have a long and intimate relationship with sleep. And in that sleep, what dreams may come? Often anxiety dreams, usually a recurring one (or variation of one) in which I awake in the dream realizing that I have little time to submit an important assignment. Completing that assignment is impossible in dream land, extending that anxiety into the night. I also regularly have a dream where I realize that I’ve missed courses in high school, and I need to go back and retake them. The idea that I’ve already graduated college makes no difference as I resign myself to being a 35 year old high school student. No real conclusion here, just stating my love of sleep.
Ok. I actually wrote this blog post in the middle of the night on a scrap of paper. I think it still counts even if I didn’t post it until now.
I go through phases of poor sleep hygiene, and I’m in the middle of a nasty one now. To me the phrase means disrespecting my bedtime and instead falling asleep on that wonderful mistress, the couch. I’ll wake up some four hours later and stumble upstairs, where I’ll brush and floss and retire to my actual bed. Now fully awake, I’ll lie in bed with my mind wandering among subjects, a return to sleep at least an hour down the line. The next morning I’ll awake more tired than usual, as the night before I split my REM sleep in half and probably cut an hour out of the full duration. This inevitably leads me to another sleepy evening at the sweet bosom of the couch, the act of walking upstairs and brushing my teeth too onerous to give honest thought, thus continuing the cycle. To break this cycle and return to a good night’s sleep takes will power or some other external force like a townie cat fight outside that’s too riotous to ignore. And so I lie here in bed tonight, praying to the god of my life, the couch, begging it to release my soul from its coffers and return me to the land of the restful sleeping.
