Saturday, May 5, 2007

Sleep, Blessed Sleep

I like being on first shift, but my sleep has been poor, to say the least. Part of the problem is that my only alarm is the feeble beeping of my wristwatch alarm. While this usually wakes me up, there's no guarantee. (I pulled an alarm clock out of my stored gear when I returned to Bl@ck Horse, but evidently, it's set up for US current, because it's dead as Jan-Michael Vincent's career now.) So, I typically wake up throughout my sleep period as other shifts wander in. I also wake up periodically to check my watch. Between the two, I probably wake up twenty times or more in a seven hour period.

Last night, I took two Tylenol PM and two melatonin tablets. I also asked a coworker to wake me up if I wasn't moving by 0500. I waited in the MWR computer/phone room for the phone booths to clear, waking up every two or three minutes to check. I couldn't reach Jordy, so I stumbled to bed, tucking in before 2100. I only woke perhaps four times last night, and Parnum knocked on my wall at 0505.

Ah. Sleep...Like air, one of those things you don't think about, until you're not getting nearly enough.

1 comment:

Matt G said...

Mirrors my experience, probably at the same time. Yesterday I got home, having been up for 25 hours. I'd had a rough shift that night.

I tended to some honey-dos, and took a melatonin and an antihistimine (alergies have been killing me). I hooked a thick comforter over the curtain rod and found-- ah. Darkness. Empty house. Silence. I slept for 10.5 hours, and could have gone further.

Next shift felt like I'd been fueled up, compared to running on empty.


HallowE09