Friday, April 07, 2006

Eyes wide open

Gah, the insomnia. It seems like a cruel trick to play on a woman who will learn to deal with sleep deprivation soon enough. This is the third night -- or, rather, very early morning -- I've dealt with it this week. And the culprit is always the 4 or 5 am bathroom trip, when I wake up just a bit too much. Monday night I finally gave up at about 4:45, came downstairs with my glasses and pillow, had a bowl of cereal and read Sense & Sensibility until I fell asleep on the couch with Jelly snoring next to me.

Two nights ago, I managed to use my yoga breathing and relaxation practice to calmly get myself back to sleep in my own bed at about 5 am.

Last night -- this morning -- I just gave up. Went to the bathroom at 5:15, ended up back in bed with heart and mind racing. Tried the yoga breathing, tried recounting the plot of last night's episdoe of The OC, tried counting backwards from 100 by threes. And then, at 5:45, I got up, put the dog out, had some cereal and sat down at the computer.

The stupid thing is that we are driving to New Jersey with my sister and brother-in-law late this afternoon. Typically on these trips, D takes the first half -- which tonight will end at Rein's Deli, a fantastic spot just off I-84 outside Hartford, where you get a dish of half-sour pickles when you sit down, as well as very fast service -- and I take the second half, which involves all the driving around New York as well as the Garden State Parkway. Usually I don't mind it at all; masochistically, I actually enjoy driving on the parkway. But not at the end of a long day in which I've gotten only six hours of sleep. Perhaps I can nap while D drives -- my day is too busy to squeeze a nap in before that -- or maybe I can get someone else to drive that leg. Either way, it's not going to be fun, especially since we won't get to my parents' house until 11 or 12.

Which brings up a somewhat related point: Would any of you object if we just got rid of Connecticut? We could keep the UConn basketball teams, and Rein's, and maybe one or two other places. But the rest of the state would get pushed out to sea, and New York and Massachusetts would get mashed together, cutting 1.5 hours of misery out of the trip to my parents' and eliminating some of the most irritating driving in the Northeast. Think about it, and let's see what we can do.