I'm tired this week. Good, relaxing, tuned out weekend - dinner with friends, a couple of small special exhibitions, sleeping in til 11 Saturday and Sunday. Woke refreshed on Monday morning. 8pm Monday, dead person impression. What?
Tuesday. Non-stop. Good, satisfying non-stop. Colleague became absolute favourite colleague of all time by putting a counter-coma cup of tea in front of me at 7pm so I could go celebrate my husband's sensational pie-making. Very very nice evening chatting with interesting people I rarely get to talk to.Bed just after 11.
So tonight - Wednesday - long, tricky day, complicated stuff ending in work emails from home, prepping tomorrow's 8am class. Staggered off to bed towards 11. Goodnight.
1am - awake.
One important omission remembered - go brain, contingency plan, details.
One brainwave - go brain, big picture, details.
And it's 1.45....... 1.55...... alarm set for 6.45.
Dog tired. Why am I awake?!
Sheesh!
And it's 2.04.....5.....
Showing posts with label sleep/sueño. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sleep/sueño. Show all posts
Thursday, January 27, 2011
Friday, November 16, 2007
Big Zeds.
Habibi snores. He always has. It's the way he's built. In any position, and without a trace of alcohol in him, he snores gently, or breathes peacefully, occasionally snuffling like a newborn baby. Adorable. But with a late night glass of wine or beer inside him, he snores like a good-un, like a tractor in a field down the road. Anything more, and we get road works, a digger, a combine harvester, an ancient central heating boiler that rattles, roars and shudders with terrible force................... and intermittent silences of almost eerie intensity. Give this man spirits, and I could sell tickets.
When we stay with friends or family, they look at me with sympathy, and him with something approaching awe. Overnight camps are a real community experience.
Over the years, he has tried pillows, throat/nosedrops and snorestrips; while I have tried pillows, muttered requests, sharp commands, nudges, earplugs, cotton wool, headphones (with cotton wool), headphones (soft background music), ear-protectors (yellow ones), separate beds, separate rooms and over-the-counter sleeping pills. Also lie-ins, afternoon naps and early nights. Vitamin B compound. Deep breathing. Visualisation.
Over the years, at 3 and 4 and 5 o'clock in the morning, I have considered divorce, murder and suicide. Made tea. Made sandwiches. Read. Blogged. Written miserable diary entries and farcical rhymes. Gone for walks. Cleaned out the fridge. Ironed.
I have lain next to my darling husband and trembled with cumulative fatigue, distress, self-pity, fury and loathing.
What I want to know is: how the hell does he sleep through it?
I really wish the alarm wasn't set for an hour and a half hence.
Help? Anyone?
P.S. Sorry honey.
When we stay with friends or family, they look at me with sympathy, and him with something approaching awe. Overnight camps are a real community experience.
Over the years, he has tried pillows, throat/nosedrops and snorestrips; while I have tried pillows, muttered requests, sharp commands, nudges, earplugs, cotton wool, headphones (with cotton wool), headphones (soft background music), ear-protectors (yellow ones), separate beds, separate rooms and over-the-counter sleeping pills. Also lie-ins, afternoon naps and early nights. Vitamin B compound. Deep breathing. Visualisation.
Over the years, at 3 and 4 and 5 o'clock in the morning, I have considered divorce, murder and suicide. Made tea. Made sandwiches. Read. Blogged. Written miserable diary entries and farcical rhymes. Gone for walks. Cleaned out the fridge. Ironed.
I have lain next to my darling husband and trembled with cumulative fatigue, distress, self-pity, fury and loathing.
What I want to know is: how the hell does he sleep through it?
I really wish the alarm wasn't set for an hour and a half hence.
Help? Anyone?
P.S. Sorry honey.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Friday, September 29, 2006
Morning Thoughts
I've been waking up at 5 or 5.30 all this week.
Given that the alarm is set for 6.30 because we're on Ramadan hours, this is disappointing.
Given that I'm ready to go back to bed by 8.30 and consequently spend my entire working day in overdrive to compensate, this is dispiriting.
Given that I'm a physical wreck by the time I reach home - at 4 p.m. - and crash on the sofa for two hours with no apparent benefit, and then cannot sleep before 11 this is frustrating.
Given that I was almost incoherent with fatigue and nervous energy by yesterday morning, this is embarrassing.
Given that today is Friday and I was going to have a lie-in before going into work to do the preparation for next week that I've been too tired to do this week, and I still woke up at 5.30, I could spit!
And this is just the first week.
I always find Ramadan hours a killer, as do several of my colleagues, and I'm not fasting. In fact, it's the colleagues who are fasting who seem to handle it best. They may droop a little, and have permanent shadows under their eyes, but they do their jobs without getting stressed or crabby. I have no idea how they do it.
The irony is that I know it's counter-productive to operate this way, but every year I do exactly the same thing.
Out of bed- into school - Go! ................
Come home. Stop...... and how...
Pathetic really.
So I'm going to get a grip this coming week and the rest of the month. I'm going to pace myself. The signs are good for some serious grip-getting!
;)
Given that the alarm is set for 6.30 because we're on Ramadan hours, this is disappointing.
Given that I'm ready to go back to bed by 8.30 and consequently spend my entire working day in overdrive to compensate, this is dispiriting.
Given that I'm a physical wreck by the time I reach home - at 4 p.m. - and crash on the sofa for two hours with no apparent benefit, and then cannot sleep before 11 this is frustrating.
Given that I was almost incoherent with fatigue and nervous energy by yesterday morning, this is embarrassing.
Given that today is Friday and I was going to have a lie-in before going into work to do the preparation for next week that I've been too tired to do this week, and I still woke up at 5.30, I could spit!
And this is just the first week.
I always find Ramadan hours a killer, as do several of my colleagues, and I'm not fasting. In fact, it's the colleagues who are fasting who seem to handle it best. They may droop a little, and have permanent shadows under their eyes, but they do their jobs without getting stressed or crabby. I have no idea how they do it.
The irony is that I know it's counter-productive to operate this way, but every year I do exactly the same thing.
Out of bed- into school - Go! ................
Come home. Stop...... and how...
Pathetic really.
So I'm going to get a grip this coming week and the rest of the month. I'm going to pace myself. The signs are good for some serious grip-getting!
;)
Sunday, September 03, 2006
Picasso, Salsa & WWF (pointless title - Pozuuuurrr)
It's been a good day.
Back to school, starting in the heaving staffroom before transferring to the canteen for coffee and hot croissants. The croissants arrived fashionably late, just as the babble of dozens of catch-up conversations was reaching the point where no-one could actually hear what anyone else was saying. Relief all round, and yes, I had two soft and steamy zaatar croissants - this was breakfast after all, since I couldn't face food when the alarm went off at seven. Next week it will be going off at six, so I've got a week to get my act together. Urk.
Meetings, timetables, all the usual first day stuff. Heavy on the admin, but that's part of what what this week is for, so I have no complaints. I stayed a couple of hours extra to tie in with Habibi driving back from a meeting. My husband looks after me. He was well impressed with the wild new colours in our corridor. The Arts building is the most vivid I've seen so far - citrus green walls with lilac doors and purple door-frames. We grown-ups are not quite sure about this yet, but the kids are going to love it. I've heard that the Maths & Science corridors are something to behold, but I'm saving them as a pick-me-up for later in the week, when I've had one meeting too many. I shall let you know.
So what did I do when I got home? The usual. Crashed on the sofa for an hour or so, undisturbed by Habibi working on. He's resigned to this by now. When we were young and beautiful and falling in loooooooove, I used to get to his place at the end of a day and crash out in any available space. He called me 'the incredible sleeping woman' and has photos to prove his point. At least it also confirmed that sometimes I do go quiet, and a man needs to know that about the woman in his life. Oh okay! - this man, this woman....
But what can I do? I never sleep properly the night before we go back; I'm too full of anticipation. Last night was so hopeless that I got up some time after two, made myself a sandwich and a cup of tea, and watched 'Surviving Picasso' on ONE. Natascha McElhone and Anthony Hopkins. That woman is ravishing.
I have a theory that great artists are more likely than those of us in the middle of the graph to be bloody-minded, self-absorbed gits, just because they only perceive normal stuff like food, sleep, relationships and personal hygiene as a waste of precious time, and of hard-earned cash that ought to be be spent on the really important stuff like oil paints, manuscript paper and The Violin. Or because the unsung genius goes gaga from malnutrition (ok, drink!) while the critics' darling starts believing his own publicity. Picasso appears to have matched at least some of that particular sweeping generalisation!
(I think I may have said this before. If so, I promise not to say it again.)
So what on earth am I blogging after midnight for again? Well I've been to the gym again, haven't I? Sooooo I am floating along on my own salsa-induced endorphin cushion, and good for another half hour and a glass of red wine. (You have to get your anti-oxidants, don't you?)
I went down yesterday for the first time since June, and did a circuit that took in the treadmill and the cross-trainer (I still don't get it, but at least I don't fall off anymore.) plus assorted instruments of sit-down designer-torture. Great! After an hour and a half, I was thinking about heading home when they announced a Bodybalance class in half an hour. Ooh yeah. I liiiiike the gym. (And toniiiiiiiiight I liiiiiiiike playing with vooooooooooooowels. Don't worry. It will pass.)
And on the way out I picked up the new timetable, and saw that Salsa was due to start tonight. Yay! A very dear and vivacious friend has been doing salsa for a couple of years now, and loves it. I love the idea, but not enough to cross town around bedtime(!)
SO..... Salsa at 8.30 tonight, with Seif: an engaging teacher who got all umpty-twelve of us stepping and swaying through the basic forward, back and side movements, right and left turns, and fifth position (I've just cut my attempt to explain fifth - easier just to do it.), plus a good demo from a couple who teach elsewhere. I have to say, though, that I found the woman very mechanical.
(Tangent Alert) I think some dancers pay a price for years of ballet training through the grade exams. I've known devoted dancers who work so hard at their technique, that they are never fully 'there' in the simple joy of dancing. Tthe conscious exercising of technique, the demonstration of a 'routine', always shows. Of course, for others, graded classes and exams represent those hours when they are most supremely alive, a framework that enables them to dance, and dance their whole lives. (Have you seen Billy Elliott? Think of his audition, when he has to articulate what dance means to him. There.) Systems and individuals.
Still, to return to the demonstration dance, a bunch of strangers in sweats and trainers, in a brightly lit studio that has just emptied of dozens of sweaty Bodypumpers is hardly the ultimate 'invitation to the dance'. It's hardly surprising if the 'moment' you're in is that one an hour hence, when you're all meeting for a drink and a laugh after class. Still, these guys showed us some serious moves. Fun!
I had a really good time wiggling my ample tush in a humanely baggy teeshirt, and as long as I didn't pay too much attention to that woman in the mirror (who follows me into lifts and bathrooms all over Dubai - no consideration) I was completely in my dancing moment!
Bonus (FYI Mme. Cyn) Reggie was there, looking good, too! Of course, he always did...
Reggie played the alternative hero in a panto I wrote and directed for Dubai Drama Group some five years ago. In my version it was a WWF wrestler who woke Sleeping Beauty with a kiss, though he was much more interested in the pantomime dame, Signora Peperoni, than in some well-preserved nymphette. (It's got my prints all over it, hasn't it?) Anyway, Reggie was absolutely fab as
the Monarch of the Mat,
the Khan of the Canvas,
the Sultan of Slam,
Montezumaaaaaaahhh!
(cue song)
He's got the muscles of the desert puma.
We love the big guy. Give him a satsuma!
Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey, Montezuma!
I shall be emailing cyber-lollies to anyone who can Name That Tune.
(Not you Mme. Cyn! Though you will always be The Most Fabulous Fairy of Them All.)
G'night!
Bloody hell, it's 1.27! Crepe.Crepe.Crepe!
Plenty of link opportunities on this one, but you know about Billy Elliott, Salsa and Fitness First. If you don't know about Dubai Drama Group, they're doing one of my favourite farces, Run For Your Wife, at Dubai Community Theatre, very soon. I'll check and get back to you. (Mme Cyn? Grumpy Old Goat? Adventures in Dubai? Any other thespians in the know? When are DDG doing Run For Your Wife?)
Back to school, starting in the heaving staffroom before transferring to the canteen for coffee and hot croissants. The croissants arrived fashionably late, just as the babble of dozens of catch-up conversations was reaching the point where no-one could actually hear what anyone else was saying. Relief all round, and yes, I had two soft and steamy zaatar croissants - this was breakfast after all, since I couldn't face food when the alarm went off at seven. Next week it will be going off at six, so I've got a week to get my act together. Urk.
Meetings, timetables, all the usual first day stuff. Heavy on the admin, but that's part of what what this week is for, so I have no complaints. I stayed a couple of hours extra to tie in with Habibi driving back from a meeting. My husband looks after me. He was well impressed with the wild new colours in our corridor. The Arts building is the most vivid I've seen so far - citrus green walls with lilac doors and purple door-frames. We grown-ups are not quite sure about this yet, but the kids are going to love it. I've heard that the Maths & Science corridors are something to behold, but I'm saving them as a pick-me-up for later in the week, when I've had one meeting too many. I shall let you know.
So what did I do when I got home? The usual. Crashed on the sofa for an hour or so, undisturbed by Habibi working on. He's resigned to this by now. When we were young and beautiful and falling in loooooooove, I used to get to his place at the end of a day and crash out in any available space. He called me 'the incredible sleeping woman' and has photos to prove his point. At least it also confirmed that sometimes I do go quiet, and a man needs to know that about the woman in his life. Oh okay! - this man, this woman....
But what can I do? I never sleep properly the night before we go back; I'm too full of anticipation. Last night was so hopeless that I got up some time after two, made myself a sandwich and a cup of tea, and watched 'Surviving Picasso' on ONE. Natascha McElhone and Anthony Hopkins. That woman is ravishing.
I have a theory that great artists are more likely than those of us in the middle of the graph to be bloody-minded, self-absorbed gits, just because they only perceive normal stuff like food, sleep, relationships and personal hygiene as a waste of precious time, and of hard-earned cash that ought to be be spent on the really important stuff like oil paints, manuscript paper and The Violin. Or because the unsung genius goes gaga from malnutrition (ok, drink!) while the critics' darling starts believing his own publicity. Picasso appears to have matched at least some of that particular sweeping generalisation!
(I think I may have said this before. If so, I promise not to say it again.)
So what on earth am I blogging after midnight for again? Well I've been to the gym again, haven't I? Sooooo I am floating along on my own salsa-induced endorphin cushion, and good for another half hour and a glass of red wine. (You have to get your anti-oxidants, don't you?)
I went down yesterday for the first time since June, and did a circuit that took in the treadmill and the cross-trainer (I still don't get it, but at least I don't fall off anymore.) plus assorted instruments of sit-down designer-torture. Great! After an hour and a half, I was thinking about heading home when they announced a Bodybalance class in half an hour. Ooh yeah. I liiiiike the gym. (And toniiiiiiiiight I liiiiiiiike playing with vooooooooooooowels. Don't worry. It will pass.)
And on the way out I picked up the new timetable, and saw that Salsa was due to start tonight. Yay! A very dear and vivacious friend has been doing salsa for a couple of years now, and loves it. I love the idea, but not enough to cross town around bedtime(!)
SO..... Salsa at 8.30 tonight, with Seif: an engaging teacher who got all umpty-twelve of us stepping and swaying through the basic forward, back and side movements, right and left turns, and fifth position (I've just cut my attempt to explain fifth - easier just to do it.), plus a good demo from a couple who teach elsewhere. I have to say, though, that I found the woman very mechanical.
(Tangent Alert) I think some dancers pay a price for years of ballet training through the grade exams. I've known devoted dancers who work so hard at their technique, that they are never fully 'there' in the simple joy of dancing. Tthe conscious exercising of technique, the demonstration of a 'routine', always shows. Of course, for others, graded classes and exams represent those hours when they are most supremely alive, a framework that enables them to dance, and dance their whole lives. (Have you seen Billy Elliott? Think of his audition, when he has to articulate what dance means to him. There.) Systems and individuals.
Still, to return to the demonstration dance, a bunch of strangers in sweats and trainers, in a brightly lit studio that has just emptied of dozens of sweaty Bodypumpers is hardly the ultimate 'invitation to the dance'. It's hardly surprising if the 'moment' you're in is that one an hour hence, when you're all meeting for a drink and a laugh after class. Still, these guys showed us some serious moves. Fun!
I had a really good time wiggling my ample tush in a humanely baggy teeshirt, and as long as I didn't pay too much attention to that woman in the mirror (who follows me into lifts and bathrooms all over Dubai - no consideration) I was completely in my dancing moment!
Bonus (FYI Mme. Cyn) Reggie was there, looking good, too! Of course, he always did...
Reggie played the alternative hero in a panto I wrote and directed for Dubai Drama Group some five years ago. In my version it was a WWF wrestler who woke Sleeping Beauty with a kiss, though he was much more interested in the pantomime dame, Signora Peperoni, than in some well-preserved nymphette. (It's got my prints all over it, hasn't it?) Anyway, Reggie was absolutely fab as
the Monarch of the Mat,
the Khan of the Canvas,
the Sultan of Slam,
Montezumaaaaaaahhh!
(cue song)
He's got the muscles of the desert puma.
We love the big guy. Give him a satsuma!
Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey, Montezuma!
I shall be emailing cyber-lollies to anyone who can Name That Tune.
(Not you Mme. Cyn! Though you will always be The Most Fabulous Fairy of Them All.)
G'night!
Bloody hell, it's 1.27! Crepe.Crepe.Crepe!
Plenty of link opportunities on this one, but you know about Billy Elliott, Salsa and Fitness First. If you don't know about Dubai Drama Group, they're doing one of my favourite farces, Run For Your Wife, at Dubai Community Theatre, very soon. I'll check and get back to you. (Mme Cyn? Grumpy Old Goat? Adventures in Dubai? Any other thespians in the know? When are DDG doing Run For Your Wife?)
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