So far this month, I've had more sleepless nights than I have in, I think, ever. I can't even remember how many times it has been. Twice a week? Those are the "insomnia-lite" nights. My pain meds don't do their job and I end up unable to sleep. And I try. I go to bed and I lay there. I stare at the ceiling. The wall. The other wall. I lay on my side. My other side. My back. My stomach. I give myself two hours. If I can't fall asleep in two hours, odds are, I'm up for the night. I usually end up awake till 4 AM and I take another round of pain meds and exhaustion takes over.
Last night was one of those nights (again). And I knew why, too. Yesterday's weather- we had clear skies at dawn, quickly taken over by clouds. It snowed big, fluffy flakes. Before I could grab my camera for snowflake macros, it changed to freezing rain. Then regular rain. Then snow again. Then rain again. And this was all within a couple hours. Then we had rain and sleet off and on all day.
Along with Insomnia-Lite, I've also had days where my skin was so sore or so itchy, I didn't want to wear clothes. But I did, because this is Wisconsin and it usually gets cold here in January. So, I've spent a majority of my days dressed in my way-too-big jeans and a super-soft fleece hoodie. Or, too-big yoga pants and a super-soft fleece hoodie. Today was one of those days. The feel of broken-in jeans on my legs all but drove me insane and I didn't even have them all the way on yet!
Now, I know exactly why I've had so many screwed up sleep nights and "I wanna be a nudist" days. The weather. We've had days so cold that we didn't crack 0 on the Fahrenheit. Wind chills in the negative double digits. You know- typical Wisconsin winters. I grew up in Alaska, this is nothing for me. And then sometimes, the very next day, we'd get up to the mid-40s (that's around 7 Celsius). Every couple days, we'd ride this roller coaster in "expected high" for the day.
And the rain. I mean snow. I mean sleet. I mean sunlight... wait... I've lost track. We reached the mid-50s last week. All the snow we did have melted off. Then it got cold again and we had a couple inches of snowfall. (I did manage to get a bunch of photos of snowflakes. Here's a link to that album on Flickr). Then warm. Then cold. Then warm. Then cold. And then I ran my head into a wall repeatedly because a coma sounded a lot more comfortable than whatever the hell I was going through.
Today, I've slogged along with the all-over body aching. My muscles are stiff and sore and they feel like they're pulled tight. No extreme itching, luckily (and shockingly, because it is really humid right now). When I stand up from sitting for even a few minutes, my body is so stiff it takes me a few seconds to make sure I'm upright and balanced enough to attempt a step forward. It is one of those days that if I have to stand up, it ends up much easier to just stay standing than to sit down again. Every muscle in my body is sore. I feel like I was thrown from a horse. And for those of you who have never been thrown from a horse, I feel like I've been hit by a truck.
I got to the point today where I went upstairs, peeled off those horrid clothes (the too-big jeans and super-soft fleece hoodie) and crawled under my soft fleece blankets. A few episodes of "Law & Order CI" and "Snapped" later, I forced myself to get up again. I still hurt. My pain meds haven't put a dent in this pain, but I can feel their effects in other ways... Affects? Whatever, I can feel that I've taken them because I feel tired. But my body is still in pain.
And to show you what I'm in for in the next few days, here's a screen cap of the local 5-day forecast from Weather-dot-com. I added the Celsius conversions in red because one or two of you would appreciate it. I put it in link form because it is kinda big.
Just now, typing in the html for the link, it thundered. We're having a thunderstorm in January. That's not weird at all.
No comments:
Post a Comment