Holy Smokies

Talk about a whirlwind.

After that last post - I ended up being up for 25 hours straight. I made it through work reasonably well, and at the end of my shift I was chatting with a co-worker and told him how bizarre it was that I still just did not feel tired. It actually was worrying me a bit. That night, still just could not sleep. I tired every trick I knew of for myself - crocheting in bed, eating a little chocolate, watching shows on the laptop while laying down. Nothing was working. I finally got four hours of sleep, from 3:30am to almost, 7:30am, and it was blissful. Thursday night, same type of thing. About five hours of sleep. Barely eleven hours in three days. I felt like crap, I was starting to walking into things and get klutzy. Friday morning, a friend woke me up to video chat online, and he told me how rested I looked. From barely five hours of sleep. Which should tell you how bad I looked before that.

Then, something finally clicked into place.

That afternoon, I picked Agent M up from school. Fridays are our "switch" days, and the start of his week with me. We dropped a friend of his off at their house, and I suggested going and getting a take-and-bake pizza for lunch/dinner. Agent M suggested that he was hungry and din't want to wait for take-and-bake. So, we went to a little pizza place and just ate there. For me, that was the first time all week I had eaten a real lunch. I'd been living off of tea and cottage cheese for the most part - trying to lose some weight and besides, I figured with Agent M not home, why cook? We ran a few errands after that (totally got some amazing thrift scores, but that is for another post) and went home. Again, for the first time all week, I actually cooked, and ate, dinner.

After dinner and showers, there was enough time to play a little of Agent M's zombie game on my laptop. Snuggled under the blanket, propped up with pillows, we sat there chatting as he played the game and I crocheted. And...I started to fall asleep. It was barely 8:30pm.

So, Agent M wrapped up his game, I put away the crocheting. I got him settled into bed and felt so tired that I just went to my room and laid down. I was asleep by 9:45pm, woke up the next morning at 6am. Eight hours of bliss. Pure heaven. The icing on the cake? A little after waking up, Agent M woke up also, climbed into bed with me and helped me look for my Halloween costume online while we snuggled more. Insomnia curse broken and a great start to the day.

No idea what was the real cause of the problem - I don't think it was just one thing, such as missing Agent M or stress about going back to work. I also had not been exercising or eating right for a couple weeks. I had been staying up late each night and painting for hours, and when I would get caught up in the painting and cleaning during the day, I was forgetting to eat then too. I think I might have just gotten myself out of routine, and having Agent M home again pushed me back into it. Maybe having to keep a routine for him reminds me to take better care of myself also, and not just push and push myself until I collapse. Or, rather in this case, not collapse. No matter the reason though - this mama is darn happy to be able to sleep again.