~Sleepless
2004-10-02 - 11:10 a.m.

10:59 PM 1/10/2004

Ah bleh. Today is the last day of the school holidays. Well, there's still the weekend, but that never feels like the real holidays to me, because I always get a weekend before I have to go back to work - and I've done absolutely no planning so far this holidays. To be honest, I was waiting to go to Landmark to buy the Nelson Maths Teacher Resource Book level 2, so I could plan for the beginning of division this term, but I never got there. For the first week, that was OK. I was determined not to feel so obliged to Get Stuff Done this holidays that I never enjoyed the time when I Didn't Have To Do Anything. Unfortunately, I genuinely wanted to get a few things done these holidays, and that was one of them.

The last week, however, has not been so good. On Saturday night I went out with Maree, Emma, EmmaH and Lidia (Alysha and Alana couldn't make it). I drove to Lidia's, then she drove us to Maree and Emma's together, intending to follow them to the restaurant, but Maree suggested we all go together, since Lacchie had dropped EmmaH off at their place too, and that seemed like a sensible idea, considering the lack of parking there usually is on a Saturday night.

What a big mistake.

It turned out that the place we went to was also a salsa dance place, which would have been lots of fun if I were a Fun Person, but I'm not. I'm a chronically injured homebody who wanted to be home by 11:30 (which is an hour past my bed time). All of the first week I'd been in bed by about 11 or 11:30, often earlier, slept through the night and awoke around 7 or 8am, getting up then or by 9:30. I felt refreshed and happy.

On Saturday night, Emma and Maree said they had been to this restaurant the previous week and the band arrived at 10 or 10:30. Bleh, that meant that they would want to spend time after that dancing, and then I'd have to tack another 40 minutes (or more, considering a stop at Maree & Emma's and a stop at Lidia's to pick up my car) before I got home. The restaurant was niceish, but had minimal choice of food - I ended up with wedges, which I could've got at a food court in a shopping centre, because I liked nothing else - and not really much space. We also felt a lack of Alysha, I think, who's normally so bubbly, because we were chatty but not over talkative. Actually, I was feeling a little like my self-conscious social self, which I usually don't with my best uni friends.

The band didn't arrive til 10:30 and didn't start playing til 11:00. I was sooo bored. Emma and Maree danced a lot, and Lidia a little. I was glad EmmaH was too shy of her abilities and so stayed at the table with me, but it didn't really make me any less bored and fretty about being late. I almost suggested EmmaH and I catch a taxi to Maree & Emma's. But I didn't coz that would've been rude. At about 11:30 Maree picked up that I was tired and so called it a night, which relieved me but also made be feel bad. I think Emma and Maree had hoped that they would have more people to share their fun dancing place with, but in the end they possibly felt more like they had dragged us out and made us sit around while they danced.

Ahem. Which was true, because we had no warning of this. But I would never want them to feel bad about it!

Of course, this is all a long way of saying that I didn't get home til around 12:30, with around 40 minutes after that to unwind, I then lay in bed reading til about 2am. Woke up earlyish still, but stayed in bed late, and created a pattern. All week, I've found it hard to sleep before about 12:30, I've slept badly and then spent a lot of the morning dozing/resting/reading. A few days I've stayed in bed til after midday reading, which is fine because it's my holidays, but actually I think was really bad for my whole sleeping patterns. My sleep has become disrupted and is beginning to show that insomniac pattern I used to have and still dread. Because I spent over two hours lying awake tossing and fretting the previous night, last night I took three valerian tablets. If they helped at all, it was to help me get back to sleep again the many, many times I woke up during the night - and that was after lying awake for an hour and a half to get to sleep in the first place. Then I woke up at 5am and didn't sleep again til around 7am, when I had an hour of frustrating and unrefreshing dreams.

This weather doesn't help, either. If it would just be warm, then I would have light bedclothes, or cold and I could have my quilt, but it's all in between and I can't sleep one moment because I'm cold, but then wake up and begin to stress about not sleeping, which makes me hot - and it's impossible to sleep when I'm hot like that.

Obviously, if I exercised more and ate more healthily I would cope with a little disruption better, but I think I've always really been like this: I have a sleep pattern and if I worry about being out "late", when it's only 10:30, it's because I know how long it takes me to unwind and sleep, and how that affects me for so many days afterwards. I just don't cope. Even if they were tired the next day, I'm sure Emma and Maree pretty much bounced back the day afterwards. I just don't, so really, I shouldn't have trusted to sharing the car with the others, and I'll know better next time.

The funny thing is, it's often different if I have a late night at home. I don't mean I'm fine the next day, I just mean that if I stay up til midnight, I don't then have to tack another two hours on before I get to sleep (although it may be another hour, after stretches and reading to unwind) and I somehow feel less thrown out by it all.

Today I feel all achey because I did a lot of shopping and I haven't been doing enough of my stretches. Also, I don't think my massage was very good today. My upper back and neck have been really tight, but I just feel like the massage did nothing to change that, while provoking my back more, which has been feeling much better. Grrr. I HATE MY BACK PROBLEM. It makes me feel like sobbing, I feel so helpless about it all - and just when I feel like I'm getting better. I've been so headachey and tired and have felt sick in my tummy half the time, and now my legs are aching from the unusual walking, and my shoes rub because the orthotics raise my feet higher in my shoes, and I can't fit them and my feet into any of my nice black ones so I'm still stuck with wearing my sneakers everywhere and I'm just soo sick of it all!

Next term is so potentially stressful I feel like it's an infected boil in my brain that needs to be treated, but I'm too scared to examine because of all the ickness that will pour out and maybe overwhelm me to no good purpose - I'll do enough stressing this term without stressing before anything worth stressing about has actually happened!