Night of the living dead

Our backdoor

Sleep has been eluding me. Happens to everyone at some point, I know, but it’s a big fat bummer. Sunday night I logged some shut-eye, just not enough to keep me from sagging in the afternoon. Monday night I fell asleep just fine, but I kept waking up every hour. So last night I was good and ready to hit the sheets and snooze.

Which is exactly what happened. Until 1:15. I was out cold when I heard a loud noise and bolted out of bed…only to step on Pete who had snuck into the bedroom and was lying on the rug by my feet. I scared the bejesus out of him, myself and my snoozing husband.

Still reeling from being awakened from a coma, I was trying to figure out what noise roused me. I could still hear it, but couldn’t identify it. I asked Scott what it was. His answer? A truck backing up. OK. I can see why he thought that since I, too, heard the beeping noises associated with a truck backing up. But this very loud noise was coming from inside of our house. He rolled over and went back to sleep, apparently unconcerned, while I stumbled into the hallway to investigate. Turns out one of the cats had stepped on the ON button for the paper shredder. So I flipped it off, closed the office door and headed back to bed.

Except that the noise that now dominated our bedroom was the truck backing up. We live right across the street from a hospital, which normally recieves delivery trucks at all hours. Yet most of the considerate truck drivers don’t loiter in the street as this one was. So I grabbed my glasses and looked out the window to observe a Consumers Energy truck parked right in the middle of our street — and right in front of our house, of course.

And I do mean parked. Apparently they were making repairs on the wires. This is not a quiet job. The truck was running the entire time and there were other power-toolish noises every few minutes. On top of that, they cut our power in the middle of this exercise. This nocturnal repair work went on for 40 minutes or more. I could even hear it through my earplugs.

Finally, they powered us back up and drove away. I crawled back out of bed, having been wide awake throughout, and reset the clock and set the alarm. Then I got back into bed. And laid there. I was now wide awake. So I dragged my pillows, a blanket and some books downstairs, pulled out the futon, and read until I finally fell back to sleep around 4:00.

I woke up again at 6:07. I felt like a walking zombie. My brain wasn’t quite working, my gait was lumbering as I headed back to the bedroom and I could barely keep my eyes open. Ugh. I slept for maybe another hour, but I still feel less than special. Good thing I decided to stay home today. But I’m just a bit wary of how my kickboxing performance will measure up tonight.