19. My Favorite Day

Sleep is very, very valuable to me. Insomnia came in my genetic gift basket along with The Kind Of Stress That Kills You, heart problems, dying in your fifties, hypothyroidism, and an allergic reaction to black currants. I get so stressed out and occupied with tasks that I often forget to sleep and try to stash all my sleepy time into one day.

One of the ways I trick myself into sleeping is with the noise of a fan. I have a ridiculously old metal fan in my room. I have no idea where it came from. I just remember that one day, it was here, and the noise it made was horrible. When it rotates, it grinds away in agony. It took me a while to get used to it, but now I love it. I cannot sleep unless I'm listening to my noisy fan.

Last night I went to bed relatively early (anything pre-2am is early for me) after taking some NyQuil for this heinous cold. I didn't sleep that well; I dreamed for a while that I was at work, then I dreamed I edited a book and was thanked as "shannonmariecole" and received an entire nearly-blank page as thanks, and finally woke up when my dog started barking at 7am. I drifted in and out of sleep for the next few hours until my alarm went off and I tried to get ready to go over the hill to church. That didn't happen. I sat up and the room spun, and I felt like my entire body was made of fire. The thermometer indicated that my temperature was nearly 102, so I made the decision to spare Highway 17 of my incompetence and lay in for a few more hours, listening to the groan of my fan as it turned from side to side.

Usually my Sundays consist of something like this: sleep, lunch (because Sundays do not need breakfast), drive to Santa Cruz, church, coffee, reading, sometimes beach, sometimes church again, Red Room, food, home. It is the one day I Do Not Work and for the most part, it's the only day of the week I get to relax and do things I want to do.

Now, I am going to sleep the rest of my cold away.
This might take a while.