Spaceman.

What do you think of when you’re lying in bed at night trying to sleep? Counting sheep is the cliché but it’s just not my style. Instead I take a trip around the world. I have Wander Lust… it really troubles me how little travel I’ve been able to accomplish in the past few years. I grew up as an expat – a Brit living abroad – and oddly I actually feel more comfortable in that position than I do living back at “home” in the UK. The opportunities I had to be immersed in other cultures, even languages, is something I am so grateful to have expirenced in my childhood, but it has resulted in an endless curiosity about foreign places and people who think and live there lives differently than myself. I want to experience everything, to see and try to understand the world. I guess the downside is I find it hard to settle and stay someplace and nowhere really feels like my “home”.  I’d almost snatch your arm off if you were offering me a plane ticket. So, at night, I try to figure out the places I would refuse to go to if you offered me the chance right now. There’s not many of them.  I think of all the places on my travel wish list and what I would love to do when I got there.

Just tonight, Gadget Guy forced me through his sheer enthusiasm when recounting the history of the space program to add “space” on my list of possible travel destinations. Something I had never really done before…

Isn’t it cool listening to someone talk about something they really care about – the thing they have a real passion for – that place where they feel comfortable… where they realize that they know what they are talking about  and they know they have things to teach you  if you would only listen. Being in their element makes people come alive somehow. Perhaps it’s just confidence that has this effect. Space does this to my friend. He’s the one who had me reading from the Adult Space Camp website at stoopid o’clock in the morning… and actually wanting to go… you can wear heels with a flight suit right? LMAO.  He’s rolling his eyes at that comment for sure

Ali xX

Hot hot hot.

I am not coping well with the heat at all.  We have had a few really wonderful days that you could actually classify as summer and by God it’s killing me. It all started with the crazy amount of sunburn that turned my neck and arms the most embarrassing shade of “Brit on holiday lobster red” when we were at the beach all because someone was too busy making sure KM actually wore a hat so that he didn’t get the sun on his… aherm… less that well covered pale skinned scalp and therefore avoided sun stroke and a few days of lying on the sofa in a “man who’s sick and wanting sympathy daze”. Success in this area for the first time since I have known the guy (8 years now). He actually went out in the sunshine all day without keeling over from heat stroke or puking his guts up at the end of it. Do I hear a “woot woot”? I think so! Only in this process of nagging, bribing, cajoling, bla bla muggings here forgot her own sun cream. D’oh! Now my bra straps are reminding me of my stoopidity every time I move. It stings it burns uugh!  I feel a fool and KM has far too much “that will teach you to stop nagging” ammunition.

On a short walk into a local village today to run some errands, the air was so close and sticky. I’m really struggling to breathe. Now don’t get me wrong: I’m unfit. I know it, but this was worse than usual. I actually thought I was going to pass out a couple of times on the way back. I was hit with horrid horrid pelvic pain. So much so, that KM is pushing me into a local pub just so I can sit down. This walk usually takes me about 20 minutes and here I am dying in the local bar. It’s not period pain, I know that much.  It doesn’t feel the same but dam hurts and always suddenly takes me by surprise. Very puzzling. Let’s step back from how melodramatic this sounds for a second and tell you that it did, in fact, pass after about ten minutes. Then I was walking the rest of the way home like nothing happened. I’m totally fine today. In fact, if I didn’t know better, I would say I imagined it.

Sleep is hard for me at the best of times, but in this overheated exhausted frustrated mess I can tell you I am no fun to be around. Tossing and turning like a mad woman just trying to find some way to be somewhat comfortable so I can catch up on the sleep I so desperately needed. And this leads me to another pondering. You see, I am prone to dreaming and usually I remember such things, be they harmless stupid things or full out nightmarish style flashbacks, but I have noticed this trend recently that when I can’t sleep because of the heat for some reason the dreams seem to get a lot more off the wall screwed up. Yesterday is a prime example: I woke up from some nightmare involving Avenue Q, Michael Jackson’s Thriller and some weird alien that gave birth to *my* child but presented me with a half formed fetus… all very bizarre and quite horrifying… till I woke up, that is. Anyway, the actual dream is beside the point. I’m left wondering is there some reason that I seem to be more affected by the heat? It is less deep sleep. Or was I just exhausted and that made things worse…or am i just weird?

Anyways, it all got sorted out last night by the most wonderfully loud thunderstorm and torrential rain that passed right over our house in under an hour… but it sure cleared the air! That and, well, I love storms and always find it easier to fall asleep listening to the heavy rain and thunder. I did get my sleep in the end. I shouldn’t complain too much. It’s not like we see a lot of summer round these parts. You know what the most confusing part of it all is?  It’s not like its even THAT hot over here. I’ve been exposed to MUCH MUCH higher temperatures across the pond and never had so much trouble. It’s all very puzzling.

Ali xX

The “E” thing ..its a nightmare.

It’s a pretty obvious thing to say, but I really do need food and sleep to make me happy. I’m struggling with both right now, so I’ve been kind of a mess for the last two nights. I’ve been having the most horrifying and vivid nightmares. I wake up suddenly, usually I’m shaking and this morning I almost threw up. They bother me the rest of the day almost as if the images are haunting me – making me restless and on edge and to be truthful, frightened to go back to sleep. Sometimes these things are so real I’m just left kind of dazed and confused. Crazy, I know.

The dentist past off without too much problem. The young girl dentist looked so young. I felt old. I feel awful, but I kind of thought she was the nurse – not because she’s female she just looked YOUNG. Some people have all the luck hehehe. She was real gentle and very nice – a much more pleasant experience than I has EVER had before. Yes, I have to go back to have some work done. Its not gonna be nice. I’m a total wuss in that dentist chair. The nerves make my fingers tingle and I flinch at any movement, even if nobody is touching my mouth. Hate the dentist. HATE.  Dentist Round Two at the end of May now. I just have an eye test to book, a doctor’s appointment to arrange, to get my hair cut… the list goes on.  Taking responsibility feels great!

Kayak Man and I are now the proud owners of a Wii and Wii Fit. I’m hoping to build up a daily exercise routine right at home in my front room. Yeah, I found out my Wii fit age and my BMI today.  Nope I’m not telling…yet. I did my first 30 min workout today and really broke a sweat, but I felt so proud of myself – after all it was a little boost. Don’t they say it takes 21 days for a new activity to become a habit? Hmm I wonder if that’s true? Because I just have got to find a way to make this “e” thing more of a habit.

Ali xX

K.S: Exercise and Fun… maybe two words that DO go together after all.

Missing : “ZZZ’s”

I didn’t sleep last night… in fact I didn’t sleep at all today so everything I tell you is coming from the brain of a woman surrounded by the fog of not being able to think straight because her internal monologue is stuck on I need sleep… must sleep… why can’t I sleep… with various shades of groaning in-between. I have known the difference between “tired” and “sleepy” since my teens and I can assure you it’s perfectly possible to be completely wiped out, exhausted, knackered, and yet sleepiness seems miles away….as if the very act of my head touching the pillow sets off the alarm clock in my brain – WAKE UP !!!  Suddenly I’m thinking about anything and everything. I’d love to be more specific here but my thoughts race, jumping from subject to subject faster than your average speed dater while my brain seems to be running behind like the chick wobbling in high heels desperately trying to catch the bus. Thoughts are half formed, images not quite there, pieces missing.  This is not logical thought…and all it ever leads to is me tangled in the sheets from all the tossing and turning wondering WHYY  I’m still awake when  the rest of the world apparently has this sleep thing down. Even the shadows on my walls don’t move. I know. I’ve watched them for long enough.

The insomnia thing has been getting better. I do sleep most days now, anywhere between 3 and 8 hours… which is a vast improvement on where I was a year ago when I could go without sleeping three whole days regularly. After three days, just talking is a struggle and your brain makes you believe some VERY strange things, I’ve had actual fights with people before I realize the conversation I think we had was IN MY HEAD!  It feels so real to me, so vivid, I’ll swear to you it actually happened till I’m blue in the face.

Sleeping more now is a great thing! But… somehow its like my body has readjusted and whereas before I could go without for 24 hours and not bat and eyelid, today I’m totally crashing.  My brain is stalling and thoughts just don’t go together.  They all seem to be bouncing of this wall graffiti’ed with the words GO TO SLEEP in letters 6 foot high!

As a result of this, I actually achieved very little today. I did not progress with the clear out, I did not take the photo’s I said I would be posting today (coming soon honest) and I failed to get in touch with the job center today too though this wasn’t for lack of trying.  Expecting a call back tomorrow, fingers crossed .

I do have a couple of shining specks of good news in all this gloom… I have managed to actually get hold of the registration papers for my new doctor.  I actually filled them out too, ready to go back tomorrow, appointment to follow. I’m so pleased to have movement on the doctor issue even if it is just a small step. Also managed to register with an NHS dentist today – yes they DO exist and I got one. Yaaay!  Have my first appointment April 17th but let’s not think about that now otherwise I’ll be a shaking wreck.  Not sleeping again tonight. I guess that’s another of my cliché’s. I HATE the dentist and seen as we have been unable to find NHS service; my budget had a hissy fit and imploded at the mere thought of going private. I haven’t seen one in over a year so you just know this is going to be painful. Anyone wanna come hold my hand  ……..no?

I have resolved… if I don’t sleep tonight I will refuse to stare at the walls, going quietly mad tomorrow and instead I will attempt to bore myself to dreamland  by researching tips on how to get a good nights worth of zzz’s,..  Any tips or suggestions most welcome.

Ali xX

K.S.: I’m a step closer tonight to getting some of my medical questions answered.