Sleep Deprivation

I have spent most of my life, like most people, being sleep deprived. I am a night person living in a morning world. Until the last 12 years of my working life, I always worked days. I have always put off going to bed. I knew I needed more sleep but I hated wasting all that time getting it when there was so much I wanted to do.

Over the years I have done about every type of needlework there is, I have taken classes in everything from blacksmithing to electronics to sign language. I have volunteered at church and in the community. Sleep and work cut into that time. Since I had to work, sleep was where I cut back to gain more time. We only have so many hours on this earth, why waste them sleeping.

There are consequences though. I have started nodding off in class and ended up with scribbles instead of notes. You know that feeling that you have heard everything that was said and you have been writing the whole time? Well I really was writing the whole time. The problem was that it was all in one spot. I had one spot where I had piled letter after letter on top of each other. If I had been in a cartoon I could have grabbed the tail of it and pulled it out to make sentences of it. But, I just lost all those notes.

When I was working, there were nights that I would fight sleep all night. Most of the time I was OK as long as I didn't sit down . There was one night that I was so tired and running a line that ran continuously so you didn't sit down to do paperwork, you stood at a table designed for that. I was standing at the table writing and the next thing I knew I was flat on my back on the floor and the guy from the next line was hanging over me saying, "How did you do that?" Fortunately, the floor at that place had one of those heavy rubber mats on it. I had dropped off to sleep in an instant and one knee buckled and I just dropped down and rolled out flat on the mat. He wanted me to demonstrate it again! Apparently, it was pretty funny to see.

I learned the hard way to put down my knitting when I start to nod. I didn't at first and I would wake up with a jerk and still having a needle in each hand, I would jerk them out. It wouldn't have been so bad if that is all that I had done but I had pulled the knitting so hard that I started a run in it and sometimes I had to rip back to bottom of that and start again.

I also have a tendency to think I know what I am doing in a pattern when I am tired and I will check it to make sure it is right. The next day when I look at it I wonder what I was thinking when I did. It sometimes is so far off that I could swear someone messed with it after I quit.

Now that I am older and wiser(?) I still put off going to sleep. I can't change a lifetime habit but I found that when you retire and don't have to get up early every day I can finally enjoy being an owl.

Housework? Me?

I hate housework. There are so many other things I could be doing. Fun things. And you have to keep doing it over and over. I have organized drawers, cabinets and closets trying to avoid getting the vacuum cleaner out and running it.

And I have a mother that loves to clean! To me that is just crazy. She always told Dad that she saved him a fortune in psychiatry bills when he bought her "the Kirby". It was huge, heavy and loud. When she couldn't stand the noise any more and the stress level shot up, she hauled out the vacuum cleaner and went over the whole house. By the time she was done, she was calm, the house (which was already spotless) was clean and she was ready to deal with anything else. When the vacuum came out, the rest of us would make ourselves scarce until she was done.

By the time I am done vacuuming, shoving and jerking the thing back and forth muttering, "I hate this, I hate this," I am so irritated and sweaty that I can't find much satisfaction in it. I know I need an attitude adjustment, but it would probably take some heavy duty hypnosis or drugs or something to do that.

My mother always said, "Now don't you feel good having a clean house?" Ok, after I take a shower and sit down and relax after doing all that, I do feel good. But, I would feel so much better coming home to a house that was already clean without having to go through all that to get to that point. Unfortunately, I could never justify spending the money to do that so I never got to experience that particular pleasure.

I have spent my life living in piles. The mail is piled on the kitchen table, books are piled next to my recliner, knitting is piled next to my rocking chair, ironing is piled on the daybed. As long as I live like that I know exactly where everything is. But the minute I start cleaning, I lose everything.

I have a file cabinet that I have tried to keep paperwork in and up-to-date. When I go through and file it, I lable the files with perfectly obvious words that will trigger my memory the next time I look for that info. I don't understand why, down the road a few months or years when I am trying to locate that info, I can't find it anywhere. I try every logical word I can think of that would relate to the info. Much later, when I do locate it, I wonder why I ever thought that the word I used would ever trigger anything, let alone the memory of that info.

Part of the house cleaning problem resolved itself when the rest of the family moved away from here. Hum, I wonder if they are trying to tell me something? Anyway, with them all three hours away, I only have to "mother clean" when Mother is coming. Otherwise it is a lick and a promise and low lights to hide the dust. After making a surprise visit once, my folks now tell me two weeks in advance when they are coming. They learned what dust bunnies are and I'm not talking the little bit of lint you might find in their house. I still don't know how those dust bunnies got in the bathtub.

Daily Routine? What's That?

I was raised by parents that adhered to a daily routine just like their parents did. You would think that 18 years of living that way would influence me somehow. They say it only takes 2 months to form a habit. Eighteen years wasn't enough for me.


And somebody in this family (I'm talking ancestors) had a big-time procrastination gene that I obviously inherited. I don't have a problem putting off till tomorrow what I could do today. Especially when it comes to housework.


But the problem with routine is that you can't have any fun until the work is done. That seems to be neverending though. For some reason, since I retired I feel like I should have more fun time.


When I first retired, I tried the routine thing. I got up early every day and worked all morning so I could take the rest of the day off. That only lasted a couple of months. I'm a night person and I lost so much sleep I ended up napping the rest of the day. Morning people don't understand this and think you are just lazy because you don't leap out of bed at the crack of dawn ready to start the morning routine.


I see the value in routine. You can get so much done. But who wants to do the same thing at the same time all the time? That's like eating the same thing every day. Variety is the spice of life.



So, that leads to excuses for not doing the routine things. My current favorite is, "I don't want to get sweaty." I spent the last 12 years of my working life in a factory job sweating all night. I swore that when I retired I would never sweat again. OK, living in Nebraska that is not possible unless you never leave the house between March and October but it sounded good. Of course that really limits your life. Even with AC in the car you still have to get out in those 90 degree days.



I love to knit which leads to, "I'm knitting for charity (or a birthday or Christmas, etc.) so I should make that my priority and work on it whenever I can. I don't have time for a routine. I have to get this done. Which is fine till you realize that it isn't foggy in the living room, that is a layer of dust on the TV screen that you are trying to see through. I realized this when the sunlight hit the screen. That is why you watch TV in low light. Thank goodness I don't have anyone aroung writing, "DUST ME" on everything.


Routine would also help with the memory. Monday is wash day, Tuesday is ironing day, etc. At least then I would remember what day it is and get places on the right day. You aren't left sitting in front of a dark library swearing that it is always open on Friday, when it is Thursday.

So I have realized that having a daily routine is a great thing. But you have to be predisposed to it or it doesn't mean anything except a guilt trip when you don't have one and company is expected any time. Then you really work up a sweat trying to do everything you should have done already!