Drama update

They came and laid new carpet last Friday. Poor Capri had to spend her first full day back in the house locked in the bathroom, this time with the window shut (the damaged screen she escaped through was finally replaced, only a little over a year after I reported it). Needless to say, she was displeased when I got home and let her out. But she was still here, so I was not sympathetic to her grumpy mood.

The carpet is a nice shade of neutral, and it's in. Well, all except for the small patch in the hallway in front of the door and extending to the bottom of the stairs. They cut a small square off of what they took out to try and match the color. So when the hall carpet gets patched is all dependent on when they can find something to match. So right outside my bedroom door is the plywood sub-floor for now. I need to find a small area rug...

Anyway, so about my bedroom furniture. It was offered for them to come move it back into my room on Saturday, but unfortunately my plans weren't working with their schedule. And I'll be damned if I was going to sit around and wait for most of the day for them to show up. Sunday didn't work either (they weren't available). Or Monday after work. Today, Tuesday, my furniture is finally back in my bedroom. My bed (and mattress!) is back where it belongs. And I can't wait to put fresh sheets on the bed and sleep in there tonight instead of my living room.

My bedroom is pretty simple. All I have in there is my bed and my clothing (in dressers). That's it. No radio besides my clock-radio-alarm, no TV, no electronics beyond a phone. And I did that on purpose. I've had a really hard time sleeping this past week. Partially because I was sleeping on a mattress on the floor, and partially because there was just too many distractions upstairs in my living room. I had a very hard time quieting my mind so I could sleep. Blinking lights, electronics, stuff. Too much stuff.

The drama is nearly over. There's been no more leaking when it rains. Believe you me, I've been freaked out with each thunderstorm we get. The new carpet is still dry. And I am overdue for a good night's sleep.

Two cups of coffee today, please

I did not sleep well last night. First, I had a hard time falling asleep. Just one of those nights where I couldn't get comfortable. It took a long time for me to relax. I know I was still awake past midnight. I had just fallen asleep and was still in that early "light-sleep" stage when the phone rang.

The phone ringing in the middle of the night means one of two things in my world:
1. My parents are calling from Australia and counted the change in hours the wrong way. Although, in all honesty, this hasn't happened for years. When they first moved there we were always calling each other in the middle of the night because we had calculated the time difference wrong. Now that they've been there for 10 years we pretty much have gotten in down.

2. Something bad has happened. Seriously, when do you get middle of the night calls that are good things?! The phone ringing in the middle of the night usually means someone is either dead or really sick or there's an emergency of some kind.

So when the phone rang at 1:40am last night, I went flying out of bed to answer it. Adrenaline kicked in, the whole nine yards. And since I was half awake and didn't have my glasses on, I couldn't really read the caller ID. I just picked up the phone and answered.

Me: Hello?
Caller: Hello? Hello?
Me: HELLO.
Caller: Who is this?
Me: Um, you're the one calling me. Who were you calling? Who are you?
Caller: Well, it's a perfectly natural question to ask who I'm talking to. So to who am I speaking?
Me: Dude, it's ONE F**KING FORTY in the morning. What do you want?
Caller: Well, if you're going to be like that... [with the gall to sound all offended that I was pissed that he woke me up in the middle of the night for no good reason]

And he hangs up. Dude, are you friggin' kidding me?!? You MOFO!

Naturally, it took me a good amount of time to calm down and have the adrenaline rush leave my system so I could fall back asleep.

It's so going to be a two cup of coffee day. Maybe even three.

Rude awakening

At 4am this morning I was awakened by a crash. Specifically the crash of glass breaking. As I lay there, I heard another crash. Now, Monday is trash day, so my first thought was "what s.o.b. is throwing out glass at 4am!?". So I got up to take a look and possibly yell at them (it's 4am!). But I was wrong. It was nothing so benign as trash being tossed out, rather, it was drama.

Apparently one of my neighbors across the street and his girlfriend(?) had a fight. As I looked out my window, I watched her, in a black coat with the hood up, carrying two white plastic bags, pace briefly in front of his house, muttering about how he's wrong and she'll get him back. She then put down her bags, walked up onto the porch, kicked the front door, and smashed in the front window! She then left the porch, picked up her bags, and walked up the street, all the while muttering to herself about how he'll be sorry and how she'll be back and a bunch of other stuff I couldn't hear. Well then. I think it's safe to assume that she's quite pissed off.

Now, given that it was 4am, I honestly thought I had dreamed the entire thing. I did manage to fall back asleep until my alarm went off a little over an hour later. It wasn't until I left the house this morning to go to work and saw that instead of a front window my neighbor now had a piece of plywood that I realized it really happened.

This is the most drama my neighborhood has seen in a good long while. Why the drama always has to happen in the middle of the night when I have to get up early for work is anyone's guess. Next time, do you think we can schedule it for the afternoon?

Grumble

Are some people just oblivious to the fact that they share the planet with other people? Seriously. How can you not realize that what you do has an impact?

Case in point. Last night I had trouble falling asleep. This is not unusual. Especially when I have lots of stuff on my mind. I tossed and turned, listening to my dog snore and cursing her ability to sleep at the drop of a hat, for a good hour after I crawled into bed. I finally fell asleep.

Less than an hour later, I was woken up by the sound of a car horn. My first thought was damn car alarms. Shortly, however, I realized that this car horn was not coupled with an alarm. This was someone intentionally honking their horn repeatedly at 1:00 AM. No sh*t. 1:00 AM. Honking their horn, then hanging their head out the window and screaming for someone, then back to honking the horn. This went on for 20 minutes. I had just gotten up to find my shoes (I was past the point of rationality and was about to take my dog for a walk and sic her on the jacka**) when I heard one of my neighbors yelling at the idiot. Informing him that this was a neighborhood, with KIDS, and it was a school night, so stop laying on the horn like an idiot and get your lazy a** out of the car and go knock on the door.

A brief moment went by, then I heard the car drive away. I don't know if the person they were honking for ever came out or not. And frankly, I don't care. I was just glad they left.

Of course, it took me another hour to fall asleep again. I think today is going to be a two cup of coffee day...

Insomnia

I haven't been able to sleep the past two nights. I don't know why. I get to bed by 10:00pm and then lie awake. I'm tired, but I just can't seem to fall asleep and if I do fall asleep, I'm not staying asleep. I have a chiming clock downstairs, and for the past few nights I've counted out the 12 chimes at midnight. And the single chime at 1am. And the three chimes at 3am. I finally fall asleep, only to be woken up by my alarm around 5:30am. This just isn't cutting it for me. I haven't changed my schedule or habits (still no caffeine after 3pm, and yes, Mom, I'm eating a good dinner). I just don't get why I can't sleep.

There are a myriad of possible reasons that I can think of, none of which satisfy me as "the" reason for my insomnia. A combination of the possible reasons doesn't particularly satisfy me either. [And no, the wedding R.S.V.P. is not a possible reason, I'm not that stressed about it. Really.]

The past few weeks I've been trying to catch up from being gone for NASIG while simultaneously trying to prepare for ALA Annual which begins this coming Friday. This was a lost battle from the beginning. It may have finally caught up with me. And then there's the various projects I'm heading up, trying to nail jello to a tree/wall (otherwise known as getting a group to focus on a task for longer than 30 seconds), reports to write, my normal work, etc. But I'm not any busier than anyone else I know. Yes, work is stressful, but I'm not thinking about it lying there in the dark. I'm not thinking about much of anything at 3am besides the fact that I'm tired.

It could be because I'm traveling. Travel usually stresses me out quite a bit, I admit. Especially flying. I have very bad luck with security. For the vast majority (80 percent or more) of flights I've taken since 2001, I been wanded in security or had my bag looked through. Even when I don't set anything off magically I'm "randomly selected" for extra screening (random my ass!). So flying stresses me out because I know in advance I have to allow extra time for that "selected" extra screening in security. But ALA Annual is in Washington, D.C. So I'm not flying this time. I can take the train, a relatively painless experience. My friends, this option of taking the train instead of flying is one of the joys of living on the East Coast for me. I'm actually looking forward to it.

But then there's the unavoidable "mother guilt" of having to leave my dog at a kennel while I'm gone. I know she does fine (fortunately not much fazes my dog), and I know she has a good time, but I still hate having to leave her. Frankly, I hate being separated from her, period. But it usually doesn't keep me from sleeping, especially with her snoring quietly beside me. I find her snoring comforting and it usually lulls me to sleep.

It could be ALA Annual. I leave on Thursday. My schedule is, per usual, packed. I have committee meetings, informational sessions, operations meetings for groups I belong to, etc., and somehow I'm trying to squeeze in time to see colleagues and friends from across the U.S. I have several days in a row that begin at 8am and don't end until 8pm. Multiple 12 hour days. Over a weekend. Which means I come back from the insanity and go immediately back to work without a break. So yes, I'm a bit stressed about it. This conference stress is the most likely culprit keeping me awake, but again, I'm not consciously thinking about it at 3am, and conference stress hasn't caused insomnia in the past for me.

It could be the weather. It's finally behaving like summer, which means it's a bit warm. But not uncomfortably so. I have a fan in my bedroom window. No, I haven't put in my window A/C unit yet, but it hasn't really been uncomfortably hot. Once the sun goes down the temperature drops and my bedroom comfortably cools down into somewhere in the upper 60s or low 70s Fahrenheit. Perfect for sleeping in my world. I'm not doing anything different than I have previous years and it's never affected my sleep before. Really, I have no problem sleeping in the middle of summer in Australia with no A/C when it's in the upper 30s/low 40s Celsius (that's upper 90s/low 100s Fahrenheit). Heat just doesn't faze me all that much. Must be those southern roots from my grandmother. So I don't think it's the weather.

Sigh...Ultimately I don't care why I can't sleep. I just want to get some sleep, dammit!

The joys of city living

There are lots of things I like about living in the city. The proximity of the things I like to do. The ease of getting around. The diversity of the residents.

There are, however, things I could do without. Most notably: CAR ALARMS. Specifically between the hours of 1AM and 6AM.

Last night a car alarm went off and woke me up around 4:35AM. This was not one of those whistle and bell alarms that stops after a couple of cycles. No, this was the kind that is the incessantly honking horn of the car. The kind that keeps going and going until someone actually turns the bloody thing off or the car battery dies.

What's more irritating, this is the second time in less than a month that this particular alarm has gone off between 3 and 5AM. Last time, it took the owner over 30 minutes to turn the damn thing off. Last time I couldn't get back to sleep. This time I finally got back to sleep after 20 minutes with several pillows over my head to muffle the sound of the horn. The problem with this approach: I almost slept through my alarm this morning because I couldn't hear it through the pillows!

This defies logic to me. Isn't the point of a car alarm to notify you if someone tries to break into your car? And if you ignore it in the middle of the night or don't hear the alarm, or worse yet have no intention of responding to it in the first place (which is what I suspect with this particular vehicle's owner), then why torture the rest of us with the noise? Doesn't this fall under "noise pollution" statues in the city? I'm going to have to look into/research this and see if next time I can call the police and have the person/car ticketed for disturbing the peace (and my night's sleep)!