Awake once more. Last night was my first reduced sleeping tablets dose and I did not enjoy it very much. I’d hoped that the combination of having been up super-late the night before and thus being rather ready for bed from about six o’clock onwards would combine well with the reduced pills but it hasn’t worked out as well as I’d hoped. I did fall asleep quite quickly, and that was a good feeling because the anxiety/anger about not vanishing into slumber can be intense, and obviously only makes things much worse. I hadn’t counted on it being lighter sleep though, and being constantly woken up again by noises from downstairs began to weigh on me. Mostly I managed to shake it off and clung to whatever fragment of dream I’d been holding when I woke up helped me to fall back to sleep again.
What went awry was my screwing in earplugs to diminish all the sounds, especially late in the early morning when our Pixie decided to start yowling about not yet being outside. Just to shut that out meant shoving the earplugs in deeper, which led to me not hearing my alarm go off, thus shattering my well-devised and practiced routine. Very annoying, plus it feels like someone’s been pouring sand in my eyes. I really don’t like earplugs, they make my ears horribly sticky inside and I’ve been doomed to ear infections since I was a wee young un (apparently there’s close correlation between kids receiving antibiotics for ear infections and their later development of asthma, which is irrelevant here but somewhat interesting), so I am not keen. Plus I like my fairly gentle white noise alarm – I don’t want to be woken again by a loud anything. Much inner rage and grumping now.
I have options though: I can move further up the house away from excess sounds while I get used to the lower dose, or I can sulk through it and become intensely angry as my sleep is disrupted. Solid options, right. In retrospect, I should have checked the time when Pixie started bellowing, because it might just have been around when I was planning to get up anyway. She did get fairly unceremoniously hoofed out of the bathroom window when I finally rose properly (it’s OK, that’s a ground floor bathroom).
Meanwhile I’ve had time to do my workout with super-trembly hands which is always alarming when swinging kettle bells around in a space which has glass cupboards mere feet away on all sides. And I’ve had time to write this, which has at least exercised some frustration. And it looks like the lilac tree outside might come into bloom this week – I am seeking the upside! All round I have had more sleep than I feared, and I can catch up on some creative writing after work, and then try this all again tonight.
