This post is about nothing because I should be in bed.  I’m writing as a way to vent because I can’t sleep.  We’ve let our daughter have sleepovers pretty much constantly for the past 2 weeks.  We’ve run into some of her friends and figured what a better way to end summer in a fun way than with some sleepovers, especially with these friends we don’t see often.

Problem is, all these girls seem to lose track of the rest of the world when they’re together.  They run up and down the stairs like a herd of elephants (I am SO not going to mention this out loud – what could scar a sensitive pre-teen girl more than comparisons to the largest land mammal??), they giggle incessantly, and they BURST into our bedroom at midnight complaining of a scary noise.  And that’s what led me here.  Having a group of kids burst into my room as I’m trying to relax with some quiet reading time at midnight apparently set off my adrenal glands – big time.  It’s now almost 1 am, and I can’t even think of laying down again for fear of my quiet bubble being burst yet again.  My adrenaline is pumping so hard; I feel like I’ve just ridden a roller coaster or like I’m about to deliver a speech.  The kicker is, with little or no sleep, how I am going to be able to supervise 6 kids tomorrow – with one of them being a VERY exploratory 10-month-old??  I don’t know how it’s going to work.  All because of a scary noise.  Well, unfortunately for this group of self-absorbed ‘tweens, they’re about to find out that a long day with a very tired and grumpy Mom is infinitely more scary than any kind of noise or bump in the night.

Good luck, girls.

I made chicken for dinner and thought that it would taste good with some salsa on it. It did, but I put on a bit much. Now I’m paying for it. Up late at night waiting for antacids to kick in. You can’t put it back in the jar after it hits partially cooked chicken. And it was the good stuff too, lots of heat.

Ahh, the joys of aging. I still like all the spicy stuff, but it doesn’t like me as much as it used to. The cast iron stomach seems to have some rust.

On another note, I miss my laptop. Even though I got the tower up and running again, it was so easy to have the laptop with me wherever I wanted to be. I have an old machine going, but it is very, very, very slow. I think it is slower than my internet connection. I do have it loaded with a full version of Unbuntu Linux at this time, maybe that is pushing it a bit. I wonder if it would work with the netbook version of that OS. I may have to try it and find out. I need to get a list of USB or other wireless cards that work with Unbuntu or Puppy Linux. I have two old laptops that I have installed Linux on and only 1 wireless card that works. The newer of the two laptops has an internal wireless, but Linux doesn’t like that one either. I even tried a backdoor way that was supposed to allow the use of the windows drivers. No go. I guess for now I share. I really can’t use two laptops at once can I?

My body is now telling me it is very tired. I’m going to hope that going to bed now, I will get a full night’s sleep. If I wake up too early, I have the milk and vanilla to heat up. That was it wasn’t it? Nutmeg, cinnamon?

Now I lay me down to sleep, but forgot to wash my dirty feet. If I die before I wake, I pray they Lord my soul to take. Please don’t send me to the pits of hell, because of the way my feet still smell. Good night all, an early Friday night after a long week…

and I was asleep, but I woke to an intense headache. Two aspirin and a glass of milk later, the headache is receding and I’m wide awake. Hmmmm…

Anyway, this reminded me of what I do when sleep eludes me. I like to read and now post in a blog. So why not combine the two.

Just last Sunday, there was a discussion of movies with the main plot being people hunting people. This has occurred in many places, but it always reminds me of a short story I read in my youth. I needed to find that story so I did a quick search of one place I go to find reading material. And I found the story. I’m fairly certain it predates most movies with that theme, if not a lot of other stories. It is on Feedbooks.com so you can read it on your computer or other electronic device. For your pleasure The Most Dangerous Game. Written in 1924, I read this story some time in the late 60’s or early 70’s. I don’t remember what anthology had it, but I do remember reading it more than once. It was a good story then and it holds up well today. I’m going to do more searching to see if this story type had earlier roots.

Speaking of good places to find free books, I found the following sites:
www.feedbooks.com
Project Gutenberg
Google Books

Late night, insomnia hitting? Nothing better than a good story. And now no excuses about cost or making a trip to the library.
Now all I need is a Kindle or some other small electronic reader and I can take them wherever I go. Not as good as a hard copy, but I might be able to get used to it.

I need sleep, but I just saw a story that might be interesting… 😉

Since Sunday my sleep patterns have been severely off kilter. While even in the best of times, my sleep habits are not the best (only around 5 hours per night), this is weird even for me.

I don’t care what time the post says (I haven’t bothered adjusting it to local time), it is now almost 1:00am. I went to bed around 8:30pm. I was just exhausted. I’ve been doing similar things every night this week. And then around 12:30, I wake up. Not just wake up to roll over again. No, I’m wide awake. I’m not sure how long I will stay awake tonight, but on other nights, it was the whole night or most of it.

On Sunday, I’m sure my nerves were getting in the way of any sleep I was going to get. After answering all the questions at the Hospital on Monday, I realized that this was the first time I’ve every been admitted to a Hospital. Any other time I’ve had something wrong, it was done in a clinic or the Doctor’s Office. While I’ve visited many hospitals, this was the first time I was in for me. Good news that, I guess, even this visit was a screening visit. I’ve had no complaints.

I’m very certain the medicine used to put me under has been the main culprit behind my strange sleep habits this week. It put me under quickly, and I remained in a relaxed state of mind for 2 days. Too bad I was very relaxed early in the evening. Now I’m wide awake and I can’t think of anything really quiet to do. I need to hit a library or a book store for some new books to read. I just don’t feel like watching a movie. So here I am writing a blog about being awake. Dang that sounds familiar, just without the kids. Wonder if I can find something a little different to comment on.

In 4.5 hours I need to be up and getting ready for work. For some reason I just couldn’t sleep. Not much new in this, but it is new that I was asleep and then woke up after an hour or so, and I was wide awake. No strange noises in the house, just the usual late night sounds. Dog is softly snoring. No sounds from the girls’ room. Frogs, crickets, and other night time animals are making their voices heard. But I’m used to all this.

I got on the web, hoping that reading the news and such of the day would be boring enough to put me to sleep. No such luck. It was boring, just not enough to make me tired. So maybe I have something in my head that needs to be written. But since I’m writing about not sleeping, could that really be it?

So I’m just going to re-hash some of the news I read this evening. I’m not even going to supply links, you’ll have to look it up yourself…

Experts predicting gas at $7.00 by the end of the summer, this after an announcement that Saudi Arabia found a new oil site. IMHO, panic is driving the current price of gas through the roof. Some of these so called experts should think before they open their mouths.

The Detroit Tigers won today putting them over .500 for the first time this year. The White Sox beat the Cubs, so Detroit didn’t advance any… I had such high hopes at the beginning of the season. Oh well, I survived 2003 as a Tiger fan, I can survive this year too

Spain wins the European Football (Soccer) Championship. I find soccer very boring, why didn’t this put me to sleep?

Wildfires are still burning in California, flooding still happening along the Mississippi. (I can still spell Mississippi without adding too many “S’s” or “P’s” or “I’s”. Not bad from a non-speller, just don’t ask me to spell bananananana 😉

Buffalo are roaming again in Minnesota. And we have some not so far from here in Fremont IN.

The Pixar movie WALL-E made 62.5 million over the weekend. It is a cute little movie.

On a somewhat sad note, Southwick Mall in Toledo Oh closed its doors. Once a wonderful shopping area in South Toledo, this 36 year old mall has been going down hill for years. I remember taking dates to what was called “Old-Towne” where there were a lot of small frontier style shops and novelty stores. This later became a movie theater, that added to the theaters already there. It was a very open mall that at one time held a wide variety of stores. One by one the Anchor stores left, and this area became an eyesore. Not sure what will become of it, but I really wonder what they did or will do with the wonderful Carousel they had in the mall.

Uga VI, the University of Georgia Bulldog mascot, died of heart failure. He was only 9 years old… He started as the mascot at the age of 1.

There was a lot of other news that I don’t think needs repeating. Politics as usual, and other nasty headlines were prevalent.

Down to 4 hours until I need to get ready for work… I’m still not tired, but I guess I should try to relax a bit.

When everyone is asleep, I feel the need to be awake. I really need to get more sleep, I do have to get to work early tomorrow. This has been my method of living for years and years. I tend to stay awake when I should be sleeping.

For the past four years, I’ve been blaming it on the fact that I am a widower. While I admit, that sleeping alone after 20 years of sleeping with someone takes getting used to, (not sure I’m used to it yet), I’ve had this problem most of my adult life. In fact, I would read well into the early morning with my dear wife sleeping next to me. I sure am glad she could sleep with my reading light on. Now I just live with this normal insomnia. I imagine I could get some sleep aids from my doctor, but I really don’t like taking medication. I’ve read where not sleeping can cause all sorts of health problems, so maybe I should look into it.

For me the night is the time my mind is in full motion, I need to read, write and just think of things. The silence of the house seems to push my thoughts faster and faster. I may have to use this time to do something other than read fiction, and type out blogs. It would be nice to get more benefit than just getting a few more trivial pieces of information.

I think my lack of any exercise this winter has caught up to me.  I am having a very hard time sleeping lately.  I will go to bed, usually at a reasonable hour, and I’ll be able to fall asleep, but then throughout the night I will constantly wake up, then lay in a state of semiconsciousness for a bit, finally fall asleep and start dreaming again, then the process will repeat for several times during the night until I finally get up still exhausted.

I found a site that gave some tips and people seem to have had good luck with keeping a window cracked open for fresh air so I will try that tonight along with turning my fan on.  Yes, even though the outside temperature is under 40 degrees.  For the long term I guess I will have to start walking more and see if that keeps things under control.  I’ve already told people in my church small group so they will be praying for me as well.  Between all of these, emphasis on the prayer, I should be back to normal eventually.  I really hope I don’t have sleep apnea- I understand my dad had it.  If I have developed it then these little cures won’t really help.  Except for the prayer of course.  Well, I’m going to keep this short so I can get to bed sooner.  Goodnight…