Crazy Sleeping Stuff

Listening: Whatever You Want - Vienna Teng

Whatever you want
Whatever you want
Whatever you want
Is fine by me...

I had absolutely the worst sleep of my life last night. Normally I don't make posts about my sleeping habits, but last night was actually retarded. It was very confusing and scary, and while I'm sure it's normal, I'm not going to feel better until someone assures me of that fact.

So it was roughly midnight, and I decided to go to bed. I'd had a stressful night and I knew I had work the following day, so I figured it would be for the best if I tried to get some sleep. I piled into bed with Boo, my stuffed dragon, Q2, my plush octopus, and the rest of the toy entourage (I have a lot of stuffed animals) and plugged my iPod in next to my bed. Normally the only way for me to get any semblance of sleep is to listen to music--I have an entire playlist devoted to soft stuff--but last night I figured I'd just leave it be.

Before long I was in that state of near-unconsciousness, stuck right between the two, the period where your brain is still functioning but you know you're already semi-gone. As often happens, a name popped into my head. This happens to me a lot, especially at work; I'll just suddenly think of something really random and odd and write it down for future reference. This was the case last night. The word "harbringer" popped into my skull, and I started to shift to turn on the bedside lamp and scribble it down on the pad of paper I keep nearby for precisely this purpose.

Or rather, I tried to shift.

I was conscious (or at least mostly), and trying to move, but for the life of me I could not do it. Weirdly enough, I would try to move an arm or a leg or something, and it was like the inside of my brain would tingle. The harder I tried, the more my brain would hurt. I know this was one of those weird things like the Hag, where I was probably not even entirely conscious, but sweet Jesus it scared the everloving hell out of me. I felt like my body was falling asleep and my brain wasn't.

I jerked myself out of it after a few gut-wrenching moments of sheer terror, and lay there in bed staring at the ceiling. Unfortunately, where I'd been so close to sleep, my brain wasn't ready to snap fully out of it yet. I would try repeatedly to force my arms to move, and they would refuse to obey. Due to my semi-conscious paranoia, the minutes ticked by and I plunged myself deeper into terror every time I stopped moving.

Finally I sat up in bed, which seemed to help (I was almost fully awake by this time) and grabbed my iPod. I figured that if my brain was determined to stay awake and start freaking out when my body went to sleep (the way I explained it in my mind), then I might as well switch on some music to listen to. Fortunately, that seemed to help more than anything else. I lay there in the dark, trembling, listening to Sarah Slean music and occasionally trying to move my limbs (unsuccessfully), but finally, after several hours, I actually managed to black out.

Easily the weirdest sleep of my life. And yeah, some of you are probably rolling your eyes going, "Oh come on Julia, that was >insert medical jargon here<, why are you telling us about your lame sleep cycles," you can hush, because words can't describe how terrified I was last night. Or this morning, actually, when I woke back up. I can still feel the lingering effects, even now.

I had crazy dreams, too, once I did sleep. Something about how every structure in town had been transformed into a relic or a temple of some kind, and the entire island was overgrown with an enormous forest, and I had been given a cell phone imbued with a sort of unnatural evil. Also, there was no number '5' on it, that I remember clearly, because I was trying to call my house and going like, "Goddammit, there's no number five on this!"

Cole and I were hanging out with Matt yesterday, and while we were at Wal-Mart, we ended up buying a ton of food and hi-tailing it back to his apartment to cook it and watch Hannibal, which Cole finally agreed to. When we got there, we told Matt that we would do the cooking, on the condition that he cleaned up all the dishes lying in the sink. He snapped to like a good boy, and Cole and I went to play Smash on the couch.

Halfway through a battle for the multiverses, we heard a phenomenal crash, and then Matt cursing. One of us hit pause, and we both looked up. "You okay?" Cole asked him.

"Yeah," he replied, darkly.

We weren't fooled. "Did you hurt yourself?" I probed.

"Yeah," he replied, holding up one arm, streaked with rivulets of bright red blood.

Cole and I were instantly in motion. She ran into the bathroom to boil linens or something (I'm not entirely sure what) while I grabbed Matt's hand and held it under running water to try and clean the soap away from the gash. He'd broken a glass, apparently, and it sliced open a huge gash in the skin between two knuckles. There was a metric fuckton of blood, but in retrospect, that was probably due to the hot water he'd been doing the dishes with. Whatever, it successfully spurred Nurse Cole and Therapist Julia into action.

We got the blood cleared away, gave him a clean cloth and told him to keep his hand elevated and put continuous pressure on the gash, and then like the good doctors we are, we looked up what to do next online. There are a surprising number of decent sources on the 'net when it comes to treating this kind of thing, which was a bonus for a certain Pharaoh and Marchioness.

We had him keep up constant pressure for about fifteen minutes, whereupon I checked it to discover that the bleeding had stopped. It had, so he kept the pressure for another fifteen before we dried it off and I mended him with Liquid Band-Aid. I even went trekking off into the wilderness after a while, looking for butterfly band-aids, but instead I found only sanitation wipes, a huge bandage, and Benji, who was hanging out at Irving for some reason. By the time I returned, I found my trip had been in vain, because the Liquid Band-Aid was actually doing a wicked job.

Cole continuously made sure to keep Matt's hand elevated and kept forcing him to sit back down whenever he tried to get up to return to his usual Lumberjackery. Then I made some food, and then she made some food. Then she and Matt started playing Mariokart 64, which proved that Matt could now bend his knuckle without affecting the gigantic lesion in his skin. Mariokart 64 filled me with incoherent rage, so I just sat there and watched them.

All in all, it wasn't a bad night. Cole and I proved that we are wicked doctors/doctorettes and Matt got to be pampered all night. Things would have been better if I hadn't failed miserably at sleeping, but you win some, you lose some.

Wal-Mart for the next six solid days. It's then followed by two days off, and I only seem to have one really long shift, but still, six days is kind of a downer. On the bright side of things, it's a really good opportunity to work out plots and other fun details in my head. Ah well.

Adieu!

Icarus knows 'harbringer' is a word, and is wondering why the hell it's being marked as incorrect in the spell-checker.