Corner of Bourbon & Division

I need to stop complaining about being tired, because the universe takes it as a dare every time. I agreed to get up early today to drive KK to work so that A) she doesn't have to walk as far when she parks her car, and B) we were going to visit another house.  So naturally my brain decided I needed to wake up at 1:30 and not be able to go back to sleep. I very rarely have insomnia these days (usually once every three or four months), but it fucks me up so hard every time it strikes, even if it's just for a single night, which so far it always has been, thank goodness.

I struggled with really severe insomnia in the very early 2000s for about a year or two, and I have extremely unfond memories of that time. I once went about 60 days averaging less than an hour's sleep every night, just enough sleep to prevent me from dying or going completely insane (I wasn't completely sane, either, which long-time readers will remember), and I have no desire to ever repeat that experience.

These days, the insomnia is very mild by comparison, so it doesn't bother me all that much. That being said, I have NO idea how twenty-year-old me managed to function at all. A half-night of sleep now puts me on my ass for days. I am basically a zombie right now, although I did get a few things done today, at least. Surprisingly more than yesterday, maybe because I had no choice but to be up and about a fair bit.

I bought a bunch of meat from Costco last week (pork chops and tilapia filets) and planned to freeze it yesterday, but the vacuum sealer KK got me a year and a half ago abruptly gave up the ghost. I decided to replace it today because the meat will absolutely go bad if it stays in the fridge must longer. I went to the Costco Business Centre and picked up a brand-name Food Saver along with a bunch of bags and plastic rolls. I've got the pork chops done and will be attending to the tilapia after I finish writing this, and so far I'm quite pleased with the performance.

We went to see another house today, and while it's not quite as charming as the friend-shaped house from last week, it looks like it could be a really good fit. It has plenty of room both inside and out, and is half an hour outside of the city, which will make for an easier commute than any of the previous houses we've put offers on. I put in what I hope is an acceptable offer tonight, to be presented tomorrow evening, and we shall see what happens. Once again it's likely that there will be multiple offers on the house, and it's likel we'll get outbid. My agent has suggested that I write a heartfelt letter to the seller, in the hopes that this will move them to accept my offer rather than anyone else's. So that's the plan for tomorrow morning when I get up, preferably with a cup of tea to inspire me. 

I really hope this one is it. I am so, so tired of househunting. It's so time-consuming and exhausting, and I just want to have a place that I can call my own and not worry about landlords anymore for the forseeable future.

Yesterday went by in a blur of sleeping, mostly. The lack of sleep for the better part of a week caught up to me, and I slept for a blissful ten and a half hours. Of course, I'd planned to be up early in order to do my shopping and prep for my monthly cooking day with ai731 , but that was not meant to be. It was 17:00 by the time I awoke, so there was a bit of a mad scramble to get up and dressed and out the door in a reasonable amount of time.

I pulled off the shopping ad prep in pretty good time, overall, though I couldn't find any cilantro for the life of me. Everywhere I went, it was all mislabelled parsley. Sheesh. Still, I was able to get everything else done, and I even left on time this morning, which was a nice accomplishment by my standards. Usually when I have any kind of sleep issues/not enough sleep, it makes it really hard to drag myself out of bed in the morning, which then makes me late for everything.

Cooking Day was, as usual, a resounding success. ai731 had a vet appointment in the afternoon, and we packed it in shortly before 16:00 so I could drive her there. Unfortunately that means she got stuck with a lot of the dishes. :/ Still, the good news is that her doggie is fine, which is the main thing, and I left with a bagful of noms for the rest of the month.  We chatted about fandom and politics, the good, the bad, and the ugly, as is our wont on cooking day. Really, it's one of my favourite days of the month for the conversation alone. :)

I got home without incident and unpacked the food into the freezer. Tonight I'm heading to bed as early as possible, and tomorrow will be spent cleaning the house until about 15:00, when I have signed up for a write-in with a local meet-up group (the same overall group that held the writing "workshop" the Saturday before last). The goal is to get a leg up on my Capricornucopia script this year, maybe not the night before the event. Ahem. I have to say that I'm not really feeling it this year. Last year barely any of my personal friends showed up—it was mostly my friends' friends, and this year is looking to be much the same. If it's gotten to the point where my friends have come to view this as an event they can easily skip, well, why am I doing it? I'm not doing this for my health—I run it so I can spend my birthday celebration with my friends.

I know it's a little unfair to expect any of my friends to come, but I do anyway, and it's been several years in a row that I've had five or fewer of them turn up. It's not that no one turns up, don't get me wrong, but the number of people coming for me and not one of the other organizers (we're four in total) has been dwindling steadily. I keep threatening to stop every year, and then every year I sort of let myself be talked back into it, but at this point I'm not sure it's worth my energy anymore. I could more easily stay home with Netflix and a slice of ice cream cake and not set myself up to be disappointed year in and year out.

It'll be sad to go out with a whimper rather than a bang, but them's the breaks, I guess.

 ... and yet, it hasn't been that long. Insomnia posts will do that to you. ;)

I survived going to work on one hour of sleep by breaking every rule I know is good for me and buying an energy drink (I KNOW), but so far it doesn't appear to have killed me, regardless of the caffeine content or any of the other content. Everything in moderation, energy drinks once a year, etc.

Last night I increased the amount of sleep I got by 400%! It was very exciting, I must say. On a more serious note, the lack of sleep can stop ANY TIME. It's been a good thirteen years or so since I last had chronic insomnia, and with the passage of time I forgot just how much it sucked. I mean, I remembered it, but in that intellectual way that probably makes women forget about the pain of childbirth, too. :P Tonight I plan on sleeping even if it kills me.

*record scratch* Wait. 

Okay, so I'm clearly a little loopy, but I'm in a remarkably good mood in spite of it all. I got a little frustrated with people at work, but not my coworkers, just the faceless people on the other side of Computerland™ who don't understand how to do their job properly so that I, in turn, can do my job. Overall, the past two days at work have been okay, although parts of them dragged considerably due to my being super tired.

I started trying my hand at learning Romanian on Duolingo, and while the new course is still in beta and not always super clear or helpful, I'm enjoying it quite a bit so far. My lack of brainpower is hindering me considerably, however. I have to revise the same basic things over and over and over in order to be able to assimilate them even a little bit. I finally finished Basics 1 (after revising it five times), and am feeling confident enough to move onto Basics 2. I got myself a notebook, and am trying to help myself by taking my own notes instead of relying entirely on the website. My main frustration is that so far there has been very little explanation about when or how to use pronouns, and when and how declensions come into play. So when an exercise asks you to write a sentence and the program hasn't actually taught you the dative form yet, you get it wrong automatically. They also have a distressing tendency to add new words randomly in exercises that were not part of the lesson. Still, it's in beta, so I'm willing to give them some leeway, here.

Apart from that, there's not much to report. I worked, I played some D&D (a mini-campaign being run by an Internet friend), I slept poorly, I worked again. Somewhere in there I bought pet-friendly de-icer and put it all over my steps and driveway, because Canada is drunk and doesn't know what weather to have, and thus turned my steps into a death trap. Is my life exciting, or what?

Tonight is Critical Role night! I'm excited, but also conflicted, because it starts very late and ends even later, and I should go to bed early. I may compromise and try to nap first, we shall see. I don't want to truly mess up my sleep cycle, but I'm starting a night shift tomorrow anyway, so I don't know how much of a difference it would make. Decisions, decisions!

That's it! Stay tuned for more thrilling adventures in the life of Phnee.

Last night my brain decided that I should stay up and Worry About All The Things™. So I was up until at least after 2:30, which was the last time I remember looking at the clock before falling asleep. The good side to that was that I was awake at midnight when Bean woke up screaming bloody murder because he had to go to the bathroom. He's been getting up almost every night now to pee, and that has resulted in dry diapers in the morning. So we're well on our way to having him be completely diaper-free at this rate. It's very exciting!

Bean was also up promptly at 6:20, and since he came into our room to ask his mother if he could watch television, that was loud enough to wake me as well (mostly because he started whining and then screaming when she said no), although I had set my alarm for 6:30. So I got up then too, much to Bean's befuddlement. He's not used to my getting up at the same time as him and Mama.

We got Bean fed, dressed and out the door on time (three tantrums, four instances of whining and fussing, and two instances of running away and giggling instead of doing what he was told, all in the space of an hour and fifteen minutes), and I set about trying to be productive for the rest of the day.

My first stop was at the bank (though I did call to make an appointment to get my car tires changed, finally). I took the dog with me because he needed the exercise and because he was so excited when he saw me put on my running shoes to go to the bank that I didn't have the heart to tell him that I hadn't planned on taking him with me. So, happy dog was happy. I managed to straighten out the problem of the daycare check that the bank bounced, and was very pleased with the prompt, efficient service I received from the teller. They apologised (sort of), reversed all the charges and covered the fee the daycare will charge for a returned check, no muss, no fuss. If only all my problems were so easily solved.

I got home and cleaned the bathroom, and was about to start on the kitchen when pdaughter came back from school to wait for the Avon ladies to show up for their 14:30 meeting. As an aside, pdaughter is starting up her own Avon business again, so if anyone local wants the flyers for the current or future campaigns, by all means look us up! Avon has some really neat stuff, not just makeup and skin care products. You can look it up specifically on Facebook, where I encourage you to at least "like" her page, just in case. Father's Day is just around the corner, and there are all sorts of fun products and swag you can get for a very reasonable price!

Anyway, back to the exciting recounting of my day. :P I did a pretty thorough cleaning of the kitchen while we waited for the Avon ladies (they were well over an hour late due to traffic), including scrubbing down the cabinet under the kitchen sink, which had grown super scungy over the winter. We've been having trouble with ants for a few weeks, and I figured that cleaning things out down there certainly couldn't hurt. We have ant traps set up strategically, but we can't work out where they're coming from, cheeky little buggers. So right now we're mostly engaged in guerrilla warfare against the little formicidae foot soldiers. Ugh. If we knew where they were coming from we'd be able to put down corn starch and have done, but not dice. It's rather frustrating.

I headed out to do some last-minute grocery shopping before the Avon ladies arrived, but everyone was gone by the time I got home again. Despite getting caught in some pretty gnarly traffic I was still able to get dinner in the oven in a timely fashion. I don't think I've ever cleaned and chopped vegetables that fast in my whole life. I made chicken with roasted vegetables and made baked tomatoes as a side dish. Very paleo, I'm sure fearsclave would approve. ;)

Predictably, Bean's first reaction was: "But me not like that!" He demanded to have macaroni, then demanded "leftover pizza," and was upset when he was not presented with either of those options. I hadn't bothered giving him one of the baked tomatoes, figuring it would be met with shrieks of horror, but when he saw the one I'd given pdaughter he immediately insisted on having some, spurning the chicken, potatoes, carrots and green pepper already on his plate. After two small servings of tomato he then threw himself on the floor and wailed about being thirsty, and then whined and fussed and kicked at the nearest piece of furniture when he was instructed to eat a bit more before he'd be given more milk. It took some doing, but eventually we got him back into his chair, and after a bit more fussing he ate all his carrots, then tried the chicken and promptly finished that, and even managed a good number of his potatoes.

A pyrrhic victory, but one I'll take nonetheless.

Bean took a bath while I loaded the dishes into the dishwasher and put away the rest of dinner into Tupperware containers. We have enough for at least one other meal, which is nice. The food turned out delicious, if I do say so myself. The chicken was moist, the veggies crisp and savoury (though the carrots were a tad too crunchy for my liking—I'll try cutting them thinner the next time I make this dish).

Although he was wound tighter than a spring factory, Bean actually settled relatively quickly once he was properly in bed (there were a lot of false starts to that), and so we were actually able to start Game of Thrones at a decent hour, and now we're going crazy and watching CSI as well. Two TV shows in the same evening! Unheard of!

Tomorrow it's meant to rain, which will put a damper on my plans to do yard work. I may try to organise my paperwork instead, depending on the weather. I have been very bad about keeping my papers in any kind of semblance of order, and it's my newest May project, to get it all sorted out properly into my filing cabinet. That will definitely help when it comes time to sell the house/do my taxes/that sort of thing. If I have time I'm also going to head to Home Depot. I am determined to get the garden ship-shape this weekend and next weekend so that we can take advantage of it during the summer months.

And now, to finish CSI and pray that I'll actually be able to sleep tonight. Obviously when I mentioned almost wishing for insomnia the other day, I should have been more careful about what I wished for. :P

Dear body,

First with the oversleeping. Then the migraine. Now insomnia?

I have to be at work in five and a half hours. You cost me my day of cleaning.

Fuck you.

No love,

Me

:::ETA:::

Dear Migraine Fairy,

That last post was NOT an invitation to come back.

No love,

Me

Sleep was an elusive beast last night. I think that I may have discovered my limit of caffeine intake at work if I want to get a good night's sleep. Oops.

Many thanks to everyone who responded to my request for writing prompts yesterday. I have several lovely ideas percolating now. I expect that there will be at least one new story by the end of the week (give or take). For those of you who missed the post, it's not too late! There is no deadline for submissions. ;)

Today I have breakfast with the Parenal Units, and then I shall be helping kino_kid to move into her new digs. Much excitement there. I've been told that there's a possibility an ex of mine might be showing up (the one really acrimonious break-up I had about five years ago), so it'll be interesting to see if I can live up to my own expectations about acting like a grown-up. Supposing the ex even turns up, which I'm not sure about. I'm not particularly worried, but I do hope that I can rise to the occasion.

I'm also going to try to head by Canadian Tire and do some pricing on vacuum cleaners. My Shark vacuum has proved unequal to the task of dealing with four cats and all the attendant cat hair. I hear from some of my coworkers that even industrial-strength vacuums can be obtained at decent prices, and are more than equal to cat hair, as they are designed to pick up gyproc dust. w00t!

Tomorrow I'm heading back to Meeting after nearly three months of absence, due to work and scheduling-related problems. I've missed it more than I thought I would. After that I plan on taking a very long walk on Mount Royal, weather permitting. I haven't spent nearly as much time outside as I would have liked over the past few weeks, so I plan on taking advantage of any fine weather that comes my way.

And now, off I go to reboot the laundry. The one advantage of insomnia is that it allows one to get a headstart on the day.

Funny how a bout of insomnia can screw up the best-laid plans. Gah.

So here's how last night went:

Me: "Oh, look. 11:30. I should go to bed." *proceeds to do so*

Brain: "HEY! WAKE UP! I'M NOT DONE YET!"

Body: "Shut up. Sleeping." *keeps eyes closed*

Brain: "NO YOU'RE NOT! I'M AWAKE, WHICH MEANS YOU'RE AWAKE! YAY!"

Body: "Shut up. Sleeping." *keeps eyes closed*

Brain: "YOU CAN'T FOOL ME! I KNOW YOU'RE AWAKE! C'MON!"

Body: "Shut up. Sleeping." *keeps eyes closed*

Brain: "HEY! DON'T IGNORE ME! I HAVE IMPORTANT THINGS TO SAY! WAKE UP!"

Body: "Can't hear you. Shut up. Trying to sleep."

Brain: "WAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUPWAKEUP!"

Body: "Can't hear you! La la la la!" *sticks fingers in ears*


Etc. It was really weird. I wasn't sleeping, but I couldn't get my body to do anything except lie there with my eyes closed. I've never had that happen before. I think I got to sleep a little past 3am, but I'm not sure. Now I have a blinding headache and no energy to do anything except drag my sorry self around the apartment a bit.

*sigh*

Meh.

:::Backdated:::

There were ducks behind the Séminaire when I walked up from Atwater to my parents' place on Dr. Penfield. Mallards, I think. A mother duck and nine almost fully-grown ducklings bopping around in that long stretch of stagnant water which isn't a basin and isn't a pond and isn't a fountain. They have two duck decoys in there, so I assume they want to attract the ducks, who were having a great time and eating what I assume were bugs living in the massive amounts of scungy brown algae growing in the water.

I have a soft spot for ducks. Always have. There's something very joyful about the way they bop around on the water's surface.

That is all.

Anytime you want to let me sleep would be good. Seriously, anytime now...

Insomnia sucks.

Bouncing randomly off walls all day and into the night. Overslept this morning, although I only got about three hours' sleep. Maybe less. Broken sleep. Yay.

It's three o'clock in the morning. Do you know where your sleep patterns are?

Can't blame it on the coffee. Had that this morning. Three cups. Three cups of coffee. Three hours of sleep. Balance. Or lack thereof. Whee! Definitely not the coffee. Can't possibly last that long in one's system, can it? Last cup was at ten o'clock. Seventeen hours ago. Definitely not the coffee.

Hey, stream-of-consciousness posting! Whee! Should that be hyphenated? Don't know. I ought to know. Don't recall. Not important right now. It's my LJ and I'll hyphenate random words if I want to.

Been watching Dead Like Me. Note to self: watching shows about death and the afterlife (or lack thereof) when dealing with insomnia is baaaaad. Too much thinking involved. Funny that. Thinking about stuff just because you watch a tv show. Most people don't. Think, that is. Thinking about stuff/things/whatever/insert generic word here/yay just because they watched a random program on television.

Not that I've been watching it on television, mind. It's on at stupidass o'clock on Sundays, along with Slings & Arrows which comes right afterward, which means I'm never near a tv with cable in order to watch it. But I found it at my local Videotron place where I can rent three old DVDs (and by old I mean not all that old but not a new release) for somewhere along the lines of five dollars, and who am I to say no to something like twelve straight hours of television for five bucks? Beats cable any day.

No commercials, for one thing. Commercials are fucking stupid. People who come up with commercials think viewers are idiots, and treat them accordingly. Makes me want to scream at the television. Do enough screaming at the television during the programs, for different reasons. So, no shouting during commercials. I turn off the sound.

I ought to go to bed. I mean, try to sleep, that is. Technically I'm already in bed. Laptops are teh awesome. Thing is, I'm halfway tempted to just say "Fuck it" and stay awake the remaining three or so hours before I have to get up again to go to work. Three and a half? Maybe four. I can usually get away with sleeping until seven, even if it means I have to run like a running thing.

If I go to sleep now (all very theoretical at this point), I'll very likely oversleep. Same as yesterday. Sleeping patterns fucked all to hell. I have to stop watching that show: it's making my language foul. Gotta watch it, or I'll start swearing at work, and where will that get me? Don't want to oversleep: I have to wash my hair in the morning, and I can't do that if I'm asleep. Hair stays disgusting if I oversleep.

On the other hand, band practice in the evening. The question is, if I'm sleep-deprived, what happens? Either I'll be a zombie, or I'll be a spastic mess. Either way, badness.

Forgot to buy applesauce for my lunches at work. Not the end of the world, but still annoying. Lots of other stuff to talk about, too. Work stuff, cat stuff, band stuff, even television and movie stuff. Not tonight, though. Another time. Maybe never, knowing me. Flakey!Phnee is the name of the game right now. At least when it comes to my own affairs. Been trying to stay on top of my phone messages, but that's not really happening. Not on top of my emails, either. I've read them all, am behind on answering them. Bad, bad Phnee.

Work on the other hand is going swimmingly. L should totally develop tendonitis more often. I kicked the ass of the filing and took names. I now officially have no filing left until someone dumps more on my desk tomorrow, which I'm sure will happen. I've put out more fires and dealt with new and emergency situations, and I still have three days left all on my own. In short, I rock like a rocking thing. Or file like a filing thing. Can one file like a rocking thing? Why the hell not? I am The Rocking Thing, and since I file, I assume anyone could file like me and thus file like a rockin thing.

Should definitely be going to bed. Sleep, bed, whatever. Something involving not being awake.


The girl who plays Kaylee had a guest role on Dead Like Me playing a punk girl in a music store. It felt almost wrong to hear her say "Fuck." I was amused, randomly.


Started writing that story that's been rattling around in my head today, finally. Been meaning to get to it since November. Finding it hard to get the voice of the narrator just right. He sounds too old: he's supposed to be eleven and he sounds like he's, well, my age. Not good. It'll come. I figured out his name, though, after all this time, and his brother's. He had no name for the longest time until I finally figured out that his parents were Steinbeck fans. And suddenly this huge facet of character motivation fell into place. I love it when that happens.

Lots of writing projects to work on. Beyond the Pale is coming along nicely. I have to rewrite Into Temptation, which I really don't want to do, having put in all that effort in November, but it needs to be done. *sigh*

Fuck it. Bed. Sleep. Lack of sleep. Whatever. Tossing and turning in the dark at least gets points for effort, right? Right. Going now. Ta!