Sleep Cycle

I went to bed early last night—I think. I went to bed at 7:30 PM. At 8 PM I was still awake, so I got out of bed and watched Young Sheldon. My intent was to go to bed when the show ended, and indeed, I turned off the TV at that time. I may have watched some YouTube, but in any event I was in bed by 9 PM.

It was one of those increasingly frequent nights: sleep ninety minutes, awake ninety minutes, repeat. Around 2 AM I awoke and heard a small, single-engine airplane flying overhead. The sound faded, grew louder, faded again, grew louder again, repeatedly. I wondered if the pilot was lost. There is a general aviation airport nearby, and I thought perhaps he was looking for it. The plane sounded as if it might be circling. If he was, the pilot could certainly see the headlights on I-95 a half mile east of me. When clouds are hanging low, I am able to hear the constant rumble of tires on the interstate. Sometimes I hear a trucker applying his truck’s Jake brake. But not tonight. We have a cloudless sky. There is nothing to reflect sound back to the ground.

I often rise at 4 AM or 5 AM, but not today. I stayed in bed until 7:30 AM, by which time my full bladder was signaling that a bathroom trip was needed. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and tried to stand. Before my body was erect, an intense pain in my lower back pulled me into a bowed position. I sat down on the bed. My bladder still required a bathroom trip. I stood again, but this time in a bent-over position and hobbled awkwardly to the bathroom. I was able to slowly get my body more erect, little by little, until I was standing normally. But it lasted only until I sat down again. When I tried to stand up, my back pain grabbed me and bent me over. I had to repeat the procedure of getting to a standing position little by little. It’s a nuisance, but it happens. It has happened before, and likely will happen again.

When I reached my computer, the outside temperature was 24°F. I turned on the TV and spent a few minutes watching impeachment shenanigans on the morning news, then I turned off the TV. I finished off a family-size bag of potato chips that I had bought just yesterday. I decided it was time for breakfast, so I warmed a burger patty I had cooked yesterday. I added mayo and ketchup to the bun, salted and peppered the beef patty, and put a slice of onion on it. I was going for the BK taste, but it wasn’t even close. I recalled the spatula incident that happened last night. I was cooking beef patties, and I pressed down on one with my plastic spatula (that I’ve used for years) and apparently I pressed down too hard. With a loud snap, the spatula exploded into three pieces. Two pieces sailed away, leaving me holding one short piece of handle. I grabbed my backup spatula and finished cooking the patties.

After I had consumed my so-so breakfast hamburger, I fired up my blogging software and set about pretending I was doing something useful. The time is 9 AM. The morning’s local weather is now on the TV. The weather guy says we have a 30% chance of rain today. (Until 9 AM we have a weather gal, and a traffic gal as well.)

The outside temperature has warmed to 33°F now. The habitable zone starts at 45°F, in my opinion. A weak sun shines through a thin overcast. The boiler in my cellar is running, cranking out hot water for the radiators. A small electric heater sits on the floor beside my legs, blowing warm air on me. For the moment, life is good. It doesn’t take a lot to make me happy. Simple things are important: chocolate chip cookies, a glass of cold orange soda, and a quiet place to munch and sip go a long way toward happiness in my world.

Lazy Saturday

It’s 1:20 on a sunny Saturday afternoon in late January. The temperature outside is 61°F according to the NWS. My city’s Emergency Operations Center also says the temperature is 61°F. The air feels quite comfortable outside.

I drove to Wally World this morning and picked up some junk food: two large bags of chips (a regular and a salt-and-vinegar), a bag of chocolate chip cookies, an Italian sub, two pre-made salads, a 2-liter bottle of cola, and maybe some other stuff. Now, half the chips are gone, as are many of the cookies and much of the cola. I have no self-control. That’s not quite true; I’ve gone from daily alcohol to no alcohol for the past three weeks. That takes some self-control. It also takes self-control to not eat the entire bag of chips, or the entire bag of cookies, all at once. Although, the Italian sub is definitely in jeopardy.

I diced a green Bell pepper and a white onion. I plan to make chili with beans later. I bought a pound of ground beef made from grass-fed steers. The product comes from Australia, so it costs a little more than ordinary ground beef, much of which probably comes from China. (If a package says “Product of U.S.A.”, that really means little. Steers can be born in, raised in, and slaughtered in another country, but as long as the imported meat is processed in a USDA-inspected facility, it can bear the label “Product of U.S.A.”.) But grass-fed steers are supposed to be healthier than grain-fed steers shot full of antibiotics to make them gain weight. Maybe it will taste better, too. I’ll find out.

Enough blogging for now. I may get back to it later today. Or not.

Sorry Ladies

I’m starting to get a complex. Every day I read about high-profile and powerful men being accused of sexual harassment by various women. Donald Trump bragged about abusing women and look what happened: the public elected him president. I’m beginning to feel that sexual harassment is normal behavior for men and there must be something wrong with me because I’m averse to doing it.

I don’t know why I don’t harass women. I wasn’t taught to not do it. When I was growing up, it wasn’t even a thing. Despite a seriously screwed-up home environment, no one mentioned sexual harassment. I had to learn about it through hundreds of women in the news. And that has only been in recent years. So for decades of my life, I was avoiding a behavior that other men were practicing seemingly everywhere—in the business world, in the Hollywood world, in the academic world, in the athletic world, just … everywhere. No one told me to get busy, to begin being aggressively obnoxious around women, and all those other manly responsibilities that men routinely engaged in for all those years. I knew nothing about it.

I apologize to all the women I’ve known for not pinning you against the wall and running my hand up the back of your skirt. I really didn’t know it was a thing that men were supposed to do. Stupid me, I seriously thought that a part of being a real man was respecting women and even, if necessary, protecting them. I feel stupid for being so clueless. But after reading all these accounts in the news—and new stories still seem to pop up daily—my eyes have been opened. Old habits are hard to break and I’ll probably never be able to sexually harass women properly. It’s just not me. I can’t even do a decent wolf-whistle or catcall, much less make persistent unwanted sexual advances. But don’t worry ladies, apparently there is no shortage of men available and willing to harass you, even if it’s too late for me to do it.

Big sigh.

Let There Be Light

I got up at 4 AM, my new usual morning wakeup time. When I was drinking alcohol and awoke at this time of day, I’d have 2 or 3 more shots and go back to bed and to sleep. Now that I’m not drinking, I simply get up and stay up.

First, I take a pill that requires me to wait an hour before eating. Then I wait 15 minutes before eating breakfast, which varies in quality. This morning, breakfast consisted of several servings of potato chips, plus a banana, plus a couple of chocolate chip cookies. Perhaps I should call it “first breakfast” in true hobbit fashion. In a couple of hours I’ll have “second breakfast.” Then first lunch and later, second lunch. Followed even later by supper. Or dinner, if you prefer, but of late I’ve been returning to my roots. My grandparents called it supper. If I were eating a fancy meal, maybe I’d call it “dinner.” But I might end up eating a BBQ sandwich or a couple of hot dogs at the end of the day and for that, “supper” is good enough.

The house is quiet—only the gentle whir of the fan in the electric heater at my feet. Yesterday morning, the halogen bulb in the torchère lamp near my computer desk burned out. After only three decades of burning faithfully day and night, the bulb failed. I was so disappointed. Where’s the quality these days? I was considering taking the entire lamp back to the store where I purchased it in 1989 and asking for my ten dollars back. But I lost the receipt.

So I went to Home Depot and began searching for a replacement bulb. I needed a 300 watt type T bulb. I wasn’t sure if I needed a T2.5 or a T3, or something even harder to find. But I thought it was probably a T3 that I needed. For those of you not yet in the halogen world, type T means tubular and the number refers to the diameter in eighths of an inch. So T2.5 is 1/4 inch diameter and T3 is 3/8 inch diameter. It looks like this, more or less:

I began strolling the halogen lamp aisle and a young man in a Home Depot apron asked if he could help. I told him I needed a 300 watt type T halogen bulb, and he set about assisting me. Another fellow joined us, and he was dressed in civvies, no apron. He overheard me say 300 watts and he jumped in.

“Three hundred? That’s a big number. Are you sure? What’s it for?”

“It’s for a torchère lamp,” I replied.

“What’s that?” he said.

“You don’t know what a torchère lamp is?” I asked.

“No.”

“It’s a floor lamp, about so high,” I explained, holding up my hand. “It has a bowl shaped reflector on top and the bulb goes inside. The light reflects off the ceiling.”

By then the other young man had located a look-alike, but it was 500 watts. “The current goes through a dimmer, and a bulb that size might burn out the dimmer,” I commented, thinking: let’s stick to what the lamp was designed to handle.

Soon he found a 300 watt T3. He said if it didn’t work I could get my money back. I thanked him and went to a checkout machine and paid. I took it home and it worked like a champ. I have light again. And it only cost ten dollars, as much as the entire lamp cost me three decades ago. Of course, for that price I got 2 bulbs, so in another three decades when this new one burns out, I’ll already have a spare bulb ready to use. Thinking ahead, you know.

Joel and Lia Visit HEB

It’s dark outside; 6:15 AM here. I’m catching up with some YouTube channels I enjoy, and I ran across this video from Joel and Lia’s channel. It’s from their Texas Series.

Joel and Lia are young Brits exploring America and posting their many adventures on YouTube. In this video, they visit an H-E-B store and experience some Texas hospitality. I live on the East Coast, but I know a fellow who works at an H-E-B in San Antonio (the chain is found only in Texas.) The food looks very appetizing. I’m jealous.

Dry January Update

I mentioned a few blog posts ago that I took up the Dry January challenge—giving up alcohol for the month of January. I stumbled coming out of the gate. The first three days were fine, but on the 4th and 5th days I drank alcohol again. But then I stopped again. Today is the 21st and I haven’t drunk alcohol since the 5th. I want to at least make it to the end of January, and if I can do that, I may never drink alcohol again. At least that’s the plan.

I began drinking nightly to get to sleep. I had very bad insomnia, lying awake all night until the sun came up. So I was self-medicating. But now I’m not drinking, and last night I didn’t bother going to bed. I wasn’t sleepy at all, and I felt filled with energy. I watched a little TV then made two or three videos and published them to YouTube. At 4 AM I went out to the garage and took the battery charger off my Jeep. (The battery had gotten so run down that the engine would barely crank, so I had put the charger on it at 10:30 AM the previous morning.) I checked the oil and added half a quart of 10W-30, which is all I had on hand. The engine coolant reservoir was low on antifreeze, but I couldn’t find the antifreeze I had on hand so that was postponed. At 4:30 AM I pulled on a hoodie and walked down the street to my friend Butch’s house. The air temperature was 21°F and a brisk wind made the temperature feel like 10°F.

I spent two hours visiting with Butch. I felt energized and not at all sleepy or tired. When I walked back home, the night felt even colder. The temperature always falls as sunup nears.

Around 10:30 AM I decided to drive to Food Lion. I walked to the garage and got into my Jeep, inserted my key into the ignition, and turned it to Start. The engine cranked like the Jeep had a new battery! I drove to the store, bought what I needed, and returned home. The car’s battery performed like new on both engine starts, going to the store and returning.

Now it’s almost 4:30 PM. I haven’t slept in at least 42 hours and I’m beginning to feel fatigued. I don’t care when I sleep, be it day or night. I don’t care whether I get 8 hours, or 6 hours, or just 3 or 4 hours sleep. It only matters to me that I sleep a few hours each day. If I can do that, I’ll be satisfied.

It’s 4:30 on this January afternoon. Dusk will fall soon. The sun will set today at 5:21 PM. By 6:30 PM the sky will be dark. Maybe then I’ll lie down and try to get a few hours of rest.

Death Comes

My phone rang in the dark hours of the morning. The caller was the wife of a friend. My friend had been suffering from cancer for many months, and she called to tell me that he had just died. It was sad news, but his life had essentially ended weeks earlier and had become only suffering. He’s gone now, and I will miss him. But we’re all terminal, every one of us.

He (and his wife) lived in another country, so I won’t be attending his funeral. But I’m not really good at handling notices of a friend or loved one’s passing. It’s awkward. I feel there is something special I should say. I feel if I could find the right words, I could lift some of the grief from the other person. But I don’t know what those words would be. I told her I was sorry to hear of his death but I thought, given his suffering, it was also a good thing for him. I thanked her for calling me. I told her if she needed to talk, I would be here for her.

I’ve been down this road before. Grandparents, parents, close friends, and yes, even the death of a beloved pet can cause grief. It’s a wound that requires time to heal, as all wounds do. That’s a cliché, of course, but it’s still true. When you’re not a close relative of the departed, you feel like a bystander. You’re watching events from the “outside” and feel unable to be of any help.

My belief is that death is not the end of our journey. It is a “passing over” from this world to another existence. I have read dozens of books about the experiences of people who were clinically dead and were revived, and many of those people, after their near-death experience, recounted an amazing journey. For those people, the near-death experience was so powerful that it changed their lives in major ways. So I believe there is life after our bodies die. I believe, not because of religion, and not because of philosophy, and not because I want there to be life after death; I believe in an afterlife because of descriptions of it from thousands of people who went there. As a science-oriented person, I also understand that the evidence is anecdotal, meaning it cannot constitute proof, but for now it’s all we have so it will have to suffice.

WB and the Lexophiles

I have a longtime friend—I’ll call him WB—who always wants to debate politics. But if you debate him on any political subject, you’ll soon discover that by an amazing string of coincidences he is always right. He has always been right in the past and he will doubtless always be right in the future. I’ve debated him more times than I should have. If someone is never willing to concede a single point in a debate, sooner or later no one is going to debate that someone. What’s the point? It’s like talking to a telephone pole. You know “going in” that no matter what you say or how long you talk, that pole is not going to budge a millimeter in its position.

There’s an email going around with the title Lexophiles. It’s about the quirks of certain words in the English language. (If you haven’t seen it, you can find much of it here.) Most people find the email, at the least, amusing, and some people also find it thought-provoking about the English language. When I sent Lexophiles to WB, his reply was simply, “I think it’s more challenging to debate politics.”

Well by all means, WB, in the future let’s talk about things you and I find challenging. You enjoy politics, so we’ll discuss that subject. My favorite interest is quantum physics, so we’ll spend half our debates on that subject. I especially enjoy the topics of superposition, wave function, and wave function collapse. Speaking of which, do you prefer the Copenhagen Interpretation, the Bohm Interpretation, the Many Worlds Interpretation, the von Neumann Interpretation, or one of the several other interpretations of quantum physics? And speaking of wave function collapse, I’d like to discuss the role of the observer. How do you, WB, define the observer? Must the observer be a conscious entity or can it be a mechanism? If the observer is a mechanism, must the output of the mechanism be examined by a conscious entity in order to collapse the wave function? And how can an experiment conducted today change events that happened in the distant past? Can you explain Bell’s Theorem and the Bell inequality? But I’ll stop here lest we wander into the difficult parts of quantum physics. It’s a fascinating subject that I’ve studied for decades. It does help to have a good understanding of mathematics, so you’ll want to brush up on your differential calculus and integral calculus and linear algebra and matrix algebra. You know—the kinds of math you would expect to encounter in first and second year engineering classes.

Do you see the danger of only wanting to discuss and debate topics that you personally find challenging? Others may find those same topics deadly dull, or filled with conflicts that seem irreconcilable, while you simply brush all inconsistencies aside in order to “be right.” My experience is this: the more certain you are that you’re right, and the less willing you are to consider other points of view, the more likely you are to be wrong. There’s a divide in our country today, and it’s because there are two camps and each camp is very sure it is right and the other is wrong. Each camp believes that inasmuch as the other is wrong, there is no need to consider what they have to say.

So, WB, do we have a deal? Or perhaps, upon further reflection, you should stick to writing letters to the editor, and I’ll stick to my own studies of how reality works, and maybe we’ll both be more content.

Late Night

I was tired. I lay down on my bed a little before 8 PM. At 9:15 PM, I knew I wasn’t going to sleep, so I threw the covers off and put my feet on the floor. I turned on the bedside lamp. I was wearing sweatpants, so as I stood up, I grabbed my phone off the dresser and stuck it in my pocket. Immediately, I was notified of an incoming message. The sender was Linda asking if I was free to talk. Of course, I had to usher a giant mob of people out my front door. I didn’t even know most of them. I don’t know why they’re in my house, unless it’s the free booze I give to guests. Do you think there’s a connection?

Actually, I’m always “free” when I’m at home, unless I’m using the loo. Even then, I can text you. Or talk with you. I just won’t video chat with you. Not that you would ever want to see that. Trust me. I’ve seen me naked and it’s something that even I recoil from. Can you end a sentence with the word “from”? I seem to remember a rule about prepositions. According to Grammar Monster, you can. Thank you, Grammar Monster, for clarifying that.

But it’s late. The computer says 1:15 AM. Linda and I video-chatted for two hours. Then I got off the chat and washed about a week’s worth of dishes: sixteen plates, four glasses, one Mason-jar-glass, and a bunch of knives, forks, spoons, and steak knives. No, I never eat steak, but steak knives are useful for cutting sandwiches in half, which I sometimes do.

Now it’s 1:25 PM. You see how time flies for a blogger. One paragraph, four sentences, ten minutes.

I blogged previously about Dry January. Allow me to quote from it:

“It’s hard to say how long my Dry January will last. Might be 3 days, might be 3 weeks, might be 3 months.”

I was fairly prescient. My Dry January lasted 3 days. Then I ran headlong into the reason I drink: sleep. I started drinking alcohol at nighttime because I couldn’t sleep. You’re thinking: insomnia. Nuh-uh, it’s not your standard insomnia. I’m talking about not sleeping for days at a time. I lie in bed, awake all night until daylight. Night after night after night. It ends only when I drink alcohol before I go to bed. Imagine: you’re awake all day, and all night, and all the next day, and all the next night, and all day long the day after, and all night long the night after, and your doctor will not prescribe sleeping pills for you (because, you know: habit-forming), and you’re lying in bed wide awake and you know that a few drinks will put you to sleep, what do you do? What do you do?

The time is now 2 AM. I’ll go to bed soon. Will I sleep? I bloody well hope so. I’ve prepped my body with the appropriate amount of ethanol. If I don’t sleep tonight, I’ll go to the liquor store tomorrow and demand a refund.

Ralph

I have lost many people in my life. I lost my grandparents. I lost my father. I lost my mother. I lost friends. Soon, I will lose another friend. He is dying from cancer. His doctors have told him treatment is available but he has chosen to reject it. I will miss him, but this is a choice that every person must make. Of all the decisions we make in our lifetimes, how we end our lives must be the most personal decision.

One way that people end their lives is in poverty—on the streets. None of my friends need to end their lives in poverty. As long as I have a place to live, they will have a place to live. All they need to do is let me know. My home is their home. Of course, their liquor is their expense. I’ll pay their room and board, but not their whiskey tab.

So all of you know: If I have to, I’ll spend my bottom dollar to give you a place to live—on one condition: you must allow me to help you.

Dry January

I’m taking the Dry January challenge this month. Dry January began in the UK in 2013 (Alcohol Change UK) and quickly gained a lot of traction around the world. In  2019, 4 million people participated.

I like to enjoy a few drinks before I go to bed. But it’s become a nightly habit, and that’s not good. So I’m going to take a month off. I do something  similar anyway, from time to time. I’ll take a few days off now and then, and sometimes a few weeks off, from my nightly alcohol. I end up going back to those nightly drinks because they relax me and help me get to sleep. It’s easy to overdo them.

It’s hard to say how long my Dry January will last. Might be 3 days, might be 3 weeks, might be 3 months. If I go 3 months without alcohol, I probably won’t go back to drinking it. That would make my doctor happy. The alcohol is thumping my liver and causing my liver enzymes to go higher than they should be. They’re not terribly high, just elevated, but getting them back in the normal range would be good. I guess.

Why don’t I just take sleeping pills? Because when I take sleeping pills, weird stuff happens. I do things during the night that I don’t remember doing. It’s like living with an invisible roommate. You see evidence of their activity but you never seen the roommate. Like I said, weird stuff.

My body is sort of built for alcohol. For one thing, I never get hangovers. Not ever. Not that I’m complaining. But it’s probably time to slow down, and maybe stop. I’m not sure how to cope with things I see on the news if I stay sober. I guess I’ll just quit watching the news. The nightly news is enough to drive anyone to drink. Someone should create a news website with nothing but good news stories. In fact, it appears someone has. It’s called the Good News Network. How about that!

It’s now the wee hours of the morning, a little past 1:30 AM. I should probably hit the sack now or I’ll end up sleeping till noon tomorrow. Goodnight, and good luck to all of us taking the challenge.

New Year 2020

I intended to ponder the old year, and the old decade, in preparation for the new. But I had a little too much New Year’s Eve “cheer” to get into a pondering mood.

I got up at 8 AM and took my morning meds. I felt tired, so I returned to bed. I fell into and out of sleep several times, each time waking with the memory of a dream. Finally, I got out of bed and made myself a bacon and tomato sandwich. That, and a few peanut butter cookies, took the edge off my appetite.

New Year’s resolutions: I know that if we don’t change certain things in our lives, the universe will change them for us, and maybe not in the way we would have chosen. Lose weight. Exercise more. Eat healthier. Get out of the house more often. Do more house/yard work and less sitting in front of a computer screen. I know what needs to be done. It’s just a question of motivation. There is always that old nemesis called tomorrow lurking to kill our best intentions.

In 2019, I reconnected with a friend from a place I worked years ago. Her name is Linda. You can’t have too many friends. Friends thread themselves like warp and woof through the fabric of my life. When I think about my life, I think about friends I have known.

It’s 2 PM, time for a bit of lunch. I turned on the toaster oven. I have a Pollack fillet in the freezer; I’ll cook it and have coleslaw and potato salad with it. That will be my big meal for the day.

No more time for pondering. After lunch, I’ll do some cleaning and change the bed sheets. I’ll cut my hair (I’ve been cutting it myself for years) and take a shower. I’ll dress and go for a walk in the sunshine. I might walk around the nearby park. A good friend named Butch lives across from the park. His wife died and now he lives with his little black Shih Tzu named Lizzy. Sometimes her name is Lizzy-loo. She is always excited to see me and hops into my lap as soon as I sit down. Then she usually sneezes right into my face. Shih Tzu barely have any nose at all. It’s a man-made defect in the breed.

It’s five minutes until toaster-oven shutdown. Then I’ll let the fillet coast in the oven for another five minutes with the heat off. Then I’ll eat lunch and get my day started. Y’all have a Happy New Year! I’m going to give it my best shot. Till next time.