Archive for the ‘sleep’ Tag
Who knew I’d have such a handy new example of onomatopoeia before the day was done. So here’s what happened. Sometime after 8:00 p.m. yesterday evening I was happily dressed for bed, warm and cozy in my white plush bathrobe, my bed pulled back and ready, as I was enjoying my daily phone conversation with Harriet in Maine. In case you wonder who that is, she was with me in 1951 typing on the SS Volendam as reported in the previous entry posted in the wee hours of this morning — my college roommate.
As we proceeded with our reports of daily activities I was distracted by an occasional chirp. She could hear it too. Chirp, chirp. No, not a bird in the apartment – but a signal that the smoke alarm wanted a new battery. Not a good thing on a Friday night when the weekend was upon us and all who might help would have gone home. But I was lucky. A call to the Concierge put me through to a guy working in the special care area. “I’ll have to charge you,” he said. “I’m willing to pay,” I replied, “if you’ll just charge the smoke alarm and stop the chirp– anything, anything!” Fortunately he was tall enough to reach the high ceiling with the help of my step stool. He changed the battery and started to leave when I heard it – chirp, chirp. He went back and touched some magical spot. The chirping stopped.
The next two hours were peaceful and I called to assure Harriet that all was well. – until I began to hear it – chirp, chirp. No, I wasn’t hallucinating. But all I got when I called the Concierge number was an offer to leave a message. Now my nervous system was going ping, ping as I scrambled through my travel stuff looking in vain for ear plugs. There could be no sleeping with that chirp, chirp, so I real quick threw on some clothes, grabbed a warm blanket, let my door bang quietly closed, clicked the lock fob in the door, and headed for the sofa recently placed in a corner of the atrium.
Not good for my back, and too much light slapped at my eyes, so I tried a darker area of wall seats in the café. No room for my left arm, and besides, some resident I didn’t recognize came by and chatted a bit. I don’t think either of us understood what the other was saying, but he commented to one of the special care nurses as she passed by on her way home, “I’m just chatting with my friend.”
One last thing to try – a deep squishy pink puffy lounge chair in the darkened community room that was really quite out of place with the other furnishings, but maybe I could sink into those cushions and get comfy somehow. First, though, one last try. I instructed my Siri, a nice guy in my phone who sometimes says things like, “You’re welcome,” to call the Concierge. My hero answered, Kelsey the head nurse, apparently on night duty. “I’ll meet you in the apartment,” she said, and she did, as my lock fob was producing an opening ping.
Also very tall, she released and lowered the chirping alarm and declared it needed to be replaced. “I’ll take it with me,” she said, “and Nate will replace it on Monday.” “Just so it stops chirping,” I pleaded. “It won’t stop chirping,” she grinned, “but you won’t hear it.”
“Now I can sleep,” I thought. “A cup of unsweetened warm chocolate almond milk with a fistful of raw cashews will help.” Maybe the big mistake was slipping a bit of bourbon into the cup. Whatever, my ears armed themselves with invisible guards just in case the chirp should start up again. It didn’t, but I did get a lot done, along with the preceding blog entry, when I finally gave up on the hope for sleep and did a bunch of stuff at the computer.
And there you have it – what my daughter would call a “first world problem.” One way to avoid eyes snapping open with concern for so many suffering real problems. Next time someone asks me to think of something I’m grateful for, I’ll remember the removal of the “chirp, chirp.”
And there you have it. A nice, meaningless entry with no important message to convey.
2:30 a.m.
I’m awake after my first two dream cycles – a wonderful deep sleep. But now I’m lying there, hoping in vain to get back into that deep-into-the mattress feeling. And I’m imagining what life might be like these days if humanity had taken it upon ourselves to pour all our strength into saving the health of the earth. I imagine the way it was during WWII when we pulled together as a community for a common cause. There was eager energy in the life-saving effort. Not like today when we ignore the devastating weather phenomena that continue to cost so much in lives and property lost.
I try to stop myself and move into my next dream (Maybe really a dream) of children all over the world getting up every day from their pallets or beds, rising into a clean environment, enjoying a nourishing breakfast, confident they will return to their beds at night. Pouring energy into a day of play, work, learning, joyfully celebrating their little and big bits of mastery. There’s nothing I like more than joy on a child’s face, whether over receipt of a new toothbrush or box of crayons or the realization of a source of pride in something they’ve done. I even like that look on grownups.
And then my thoughts slip into what’s happening to my beloved academia. What I once taught and encouraged so freely leads now to punishment and expulsion for some. Who knows, maybe even my forgiveness work would be seen as tainted.
Best I stop all this thinking before I plunge into grief. I pull some of my survival tools out of my psychological belt – especially thinking of getting back to work on my newly labeled book-to-be, I hope: How Could These Lovely People Have Let it Happen?: a Psychologist’s Intimate Journal. Doing something does give a sense of some control … Maybe it should be How Are We Letting it Happen?
No, not seriously ill, but miserable enough to render me basically good for nothing. So I’m writing this now to explain why none of you wonderful people have heard from me. My intentions were good. I had promised my house sitter to post regular accounts of this trip. Instead I was exhausted from coughing myself out of sleep for at least a week and a half. Closest thing I can remember is whooping cough as a child, tho’ not officially that. Then followed a period of sleeping constantly and feeling lousy in between. My nutritionist won’t like it, but I finally saw the ship’s doctor for an anti-biotic.
I have managed to squeeze in some excursions which I hope to blog about later. (But both my cameras needed a battery recharge, so no great videos to offer.) I think I’m recovering. Planning later today to participate in a walk on the Rock of Gibralter. Pushing it.
So I just finished going through almost a thousand e-mails. Presumably every room on the Koningsdam has WiFi access, but our cabin is the last one in the rear of the ship, and it doesn’t quite reach us, so I have to travel to other parts of the ship to log on (to my very expensive package.)
By the way, with all the wonderful food, my appetite has gone underground. Oh well, I expect things will pick up, and I’m glad I’m here.
My real purpose is to tell all you who have tweeted and re-tweeted things about me and “Figs & Pomegranates & Special Cheeses” that I greatly appreciate it and would, under ordinary circumstances, be thanking you. So please accept this as my thanks.
And thanks, too, to you who have commented on my blog who haven’t yet received a reply. And the newsy folks who have sent me interesting e-mails to which I may never get to respond.
Life is good. I have to be grateful that being sick is such a rarity for me. I think the last time I felt this awful (except, maybe, for the accident) was when my daughter was two and I taught through a bout of viral pneumonia until my Doctor finally ordered me home and to bed. What a relief!
Anyway, thanks. I hope this reaches you, and the next blog will be much more joyful.
My latest health move. I’m cutting myself off the news once noon arrives. It’s just too sleep-disturbing any closer to bedtime. So much horror!
Of course I’m sickened by the awful things happening in other countries – human greed and cruelty. The awful beheading of a dedicated American journalist. The killing and isolating of communities of Christians – and other religions and groups unacceptable to ISIS.
But what keeps me awake is what’s going on right here in the United States. A majority of our citizens wanting to send refugee children back to misery and death. (Not the first time we’ve been so cruel. Check out the refugee ship SS Saint Louis in May-June 1939. And the innocents still imprisoned at Guantanamo. Just for starters.) But this is today. Militarized police becoming judge and jury.
I was naïve as a child and youth – even into adulthood. I really thought the function of the police was to serve the public. I believed “arrest” meant “arrest,” i.e. to stop or prevent crime. Truth be told, I know police for whom that is the mission. But I fear they are out-noised by the killers among us. I honestly thought that when a police officer shot it was intentionally a non-lethal injury intended to prevent further crime/assault. I didn’t understand that the first duty of a cop is to kill and beat folks after they had surrendered – even after they were handcuffed – or locked in a cell.
I didn’t understand that the first duty was to treat protestors as the enemy – to confront them with guns drawn.
I didn’t understand the right of civilians to kill someone because they were scared – that just ringing the doorbell to ask for help is so scary that killing is legitimate. I thought the idea was to retreat to a safe place and call 911. Or worse yet, I didn’t know it’s OK to be scared that maybe the person turning away from a confrontation might be getting a gun out of a car, making it legitimate to shoot him.
I didn’t appreciate the depth of racism that makes someone scary– and therefore the potential object of beating/killing — because he’s black, and blacks are scary. (I try to imagine from my white advantage what it would have been like to love and raise a black son.)
I didn’t understand the apparent right to beat and/or kill a man for being homeless and acting crazy – which no doubt he was.
I didn’t “get” that it’s OK to beat an autistic young man because he has a bulge in his pocket – his colostomy bag.
In fact, I just don’t get the right to beat anyone who is already subdued.
I wonder if those same cops go home at night and complain about people who want to establish sharia law.
I could go on, but I’ve got to read my disturbing e-mail before noon so I can focus on peace and quiet and classical music and my projects for the rest of the day.
Maybe that will help my sleep.
monagustafsonaffinito 