Sleep Suddenly Bad

Thursday night was the first time in my life that I can remember where I failed to fall asleep the entire night. Sure, there were some occasions where I needed to stay up all night like that job at the State Fair. But as far as attempting and failing to fall asleep for an entire night, I think this was the first.

I went to bed at 11 and tossed and turned for a while. I couldn’t get comfortable so I got up and took 5mg of melatonin. Normally 1mg would lull me to sleep, and 2 would knock me out. But my body was just SURGING with energy. The melatonin did absolutely nothing. I went and laid on the couch for a while to no avail. Around 1:30 I took a hot shower. Still, my body was primed to sprint a marathon. I don’t think I’ve ever been so full of energy before in my life. And this after a long day of being up early, work, solo parenting, taking the kids to Disney on Ice with the Plumpes! I should have been out cold in seconds!

At 3:30am, I finally gave up and thought “What difference does it make, I’ll just get up and start my day, and guess what… if I get tired, I work from home and can just take a nap!” So I basically did that. I went out to the shed and got a lot of work done. My eyes started to feel a little strain from staring at the computer screens, so I came back in the house and laid down. Nope! False alarm, still wired. So I did a VR Supernatural workout and got all sweaty. My eyes really were starting to get tired staring at orbs flying by as I swatted at them.

5:45 came around and the sun started to creep up. I was downstairs on the couch just counting the final minutes. Edie awoke and came downstairs and laid next to me thrashing about, complaining that I was taking up too much couch. I might have actually dozed off for 30 seconds at one point, but soon the alarm was going off and it was morning.

After the kids and Lauren were out the door, I took a big gulp of NyQuil and went to bed and slept hard from 7:30-11:30 and then woke up in a total daze, trying to remember what day and time it was and why I was waking up so late. So, that was fun.

This had happened just a few nights earlier before I was scheduled to fly to San Francisco. I was up until 2, and then I finally fell asleep just before my 3:00 alarm went off for a 6:00 flight. I managed to doze off on the plane. And then it happened again last night! This time, I did get to sleep right away but after just a couple minutes I had a horrible dream about being in a school shooting and snapped wide awake in a panic.

I was up for quite a while, and just as I started to drift back to sleep, “scratch scratch scratch” went the beagle at the side of the bed. From a lying position and I grabbed him by whatever means I could and body slammed him into the bed. Then he scratched around til I lifted him and placed him under the blankets.

With Baxter taking up 2/3 of the bed lying horizontally, I couldn’t get back to sleep. I got up and took more melatonin and even a swig of NyQuil. Just as I was about to doze off again, in came Edie to take up what precious little slice of bed remained. I rolled over and saw 3:43 on my watch. Ugh, it was happening again.

I went downstairs and somehow got comfy on the couch and went to sleep around 4. Soon, the alarm was blaring at 6:30 to get up for the day. I managed to find little pockets of the day to take tiny naps.

I usually have one or two nights like this per month. The other nights I’m out cold the second my head hits the pillow. I know it’s mostly mental. Like, if I can’t get to sleep within a couple minutes I start getting anxious and panicky that it will turn into an all-nighter, and with every second that passes things spiral further out of control.

Summer Plans

We’re forced to sit down and come up with an entire summer schedule well in advance each year because John is camp-age now, and summer camps fill up very fast around here. It took a couple hours of staring at a calendar, but we have things squared away.

We won’t be doing that full month up north again this year due to Lauren’s new work policies forbidding that length of remote work. But we’ll still get in plenty of family time.

Minnesotans can expect us to visit for a full 8-9 days in June. Unlike in the past, we’re just parking it in Minneapolis for this visit and not trekking out to South Dakota.

South Dakotans will want to block off 8-9 days in mid-July for our visit to the farm and to meet the new Glanzer-Shaifullah twins! We’ll fly into Sioux Falls or Watertown and just do SD on its own.

Those visits back up north are fun, but not really a true vacation. We’ll likely be working at least half-days on those trips. So, we’ll also squeeze in a real family vacation.

Lauren came up with the idea of a New England-Canada sort of trip in August before school starts back up. We’re talking about flying into Boston and then driving up to New Hampshire to visit our friends who have a summer cabin there. Then we’ll drive into Maine, and up into New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia. It’s all just an elaborate idea for now, but August will be here before we know it.