Dear My Brain, please explain to me why you will not let me sleep lately.
Seriously.
If you could give me some sort of sign or indication as to why you feel the need to keep me up at all hours of the night, I'd really appreciate it. Did you really want to see that infomercial for the Showtime Rotisserie again? I know you love to chant "Set it and forget it!" with the studio audience, but I'd really like to sleep. And once we finally are able to fall asleep, you decide that the asscrack of dawn is the perfect time to get up and get out of bed. If you could let me know you're reasoning, that'd be great, because then I could shut it down, and we both could finally get the rest we deserve. As it stands right now, I am too exhausted to lift my leg up over the tub in the mornings to get in the shower, so sometimes I'll just turn the water on and sit in the bathroom until I feel like I've heard enough water running to count as a shower. I have a matching 5-piece luggage set under my eyes right now. It's not pretty. They don't just call it beauty rest for the hell of it. And to be perfectly frank, I need some of that, because I'm starting to look a creature that would live under a bridge and ask you a riddle before you can pass.
What I don't understand is why you woke me up at 9:30 today. You and I both know that we don't have to be at work today. That ship sailed on Friday, when I finally told my job to peace out after 2+ years of getting hated on by nerds. We both know that this week is our only time to sleep in, because for some reason I told my new job I could start this monday. Oh wait. It was probably because I was so damn tired that I couldn't be slick enough to ask for an extra week off. Way to go, us. Way to fucking go. And what's worse is that now we have an actual commute to contend with in the morning. We're talking a fight your way onto a crowded metro at 8 in the morning commute. To get to our "business casual" office by 9 AM sharp. We can't just roll out of bed at 8:55, throw on the first article of clothing our hand touches and casually stroll to the office anymore. So we're going to have to start to get a little bit more sleep. Because if I have to shave every morning now, and I'm exhausted in the morning, I might slip and cut my carotid artery. Those five bladed razors are just four more blades of death when you're bleary eyed and shaving. And think of how pissed you would be if I accidentally killed us. I know I would be mildly upset.
I wish you weren't so resistant to falling asleep. You won't even let me drug you into sleep. While Meg can take 6 Tylenol PM and pass out in her nightie, those Tylenol PM would not have the same effect on me. Even if I was also wearing a revealing nightie and expecting the maintenance man to show up. (Sidebar: everyone knows Meg only claims this was an accident. She 100% intended for a porn plot to play itself out in her apartment.) The last time I tried to put you under using medication, you refused to fall asleep and I spent 4 hours feeling like I'd just chugged a keg. To the point of me being so out of it that I was legitimately scared. Why, brain? Why couldn't you just take the medicated hint and let me sleep? No, instead we were awake and trying to gchat with some people, which consisted of me palming my keyboard for 15 minutes, typing words with an inordinate amount of vowels and punctuation, before finally giving up and admitting defeat. Sure, you shut down our fine motor skills, but my body is still awake and kicking. It's not fair. Come to think of it, every time we've taken medicine that makes you drowsy before bed, you think it's funny to stay up, regardless of the drugs coursing through our veins. Tylenol PM, Nyquil, what have you. Nothing will make you go to sleep when you're supposed to. But the one time I take Sudafed before going to the movies because I was feeling a little congested, you pass out right after the opening credits. I still have no idea what movie it was that we saw. I have a vague recollection of Meryl Streep maybe being in it. She might have had a kinky threeway with Andy Dick and Rin Tin Tin, that's how little I know about the movie. Thanks a lot. That's eight dollars that I'll never get back.
We're going to need to change this little repartee you and I have going on, because it's getting pretty tired. And I don't mean that in an ironic way. I know that right now you're probably just feeling a lot of emotions about the upcoming move. I think that's normal. If we weren't nervous, I'd be a little bit more concerned. But really, we just have to make sure we catch out train on Saturday and we're good to go. And the only way we're going to do that is by getting some sleep this week. Because if you choose to let me sleep in on the one day we have something to do, it will not be a pretty sight. I will go Fight Club on our ass.
So, in conclusion, please act right and let us sleep a little bit more tomorrow. It's all well and good that we're up now, because it's sunny and we should probably get out and do some New York City related activity while we don't have to work but are still living in the city. Had we slept in today, we would have missed a solid three hours of sunshine, which has been mighty rare these past few weeks. Can't waste any of that. Now that I've finally given you the piece of my mind I've been hanging on to, let's work on cooperating better in the future. Deal? Deal.
I would like to grossly apologize for how late I'm posting this afternoon. It's all my fault. I shoulder the blame 100%. I had a wee bit of an accident last night that left me incapacitated until about, oh, T-minus 30 minutes ago? Perhaps if I tell you what happened you'll be slightly more understanding. Although given what happened, I probably still wouldn't be...
Last night I went out to dinner with Alex and my parents and I wasn't feeling "great," per se, but I forged ahead and had a lovely time anyway. As my parents drove me back to my apartment, I started to get a splitting headache and felt like I was going to puke all over god's green earth at any given moment. Welcome to Migrainetown, USA. Population: me. Ocne back in my apartment, I did what I always do when I get a migraine—I chugged some Pepto and took 6 Extra Strength Tylenol. I generally take Tylenol on a sliding scale: 2 for minor pain, 4 for pain-pain and 5-6 if I feel like I'm going to die. What's a "dosage" anyway if not just a friendly recommendation, am I right?!
Confident I'd be feeling better soon, I turned on Project Runway and started cleaning up my apartment a bit while I wrote what was to be today's blog post in my head. Suddenly I got rull sleepy. "Hmm," I thought to myself, "I am getting rull sleepy. This is odd because it's only 10:30 and I normally don't get tired until the wee hours of the morning. This is very uncharacteristic of me. OH SWELLS! I'll just lie down on this comfy bed here for a hot second and rest a bit."
Except I didn't lie down. I Chris Farley-style face planted on my bed. (Side note: I couldn't find a youtube clip of Chris Farley face planting on a coffee table—which is completely ridiculous—but I did find this video:
How much does that portly young gentleman hate his life? You just know that when all the high-fives are exchanged and the Natty Lite is gone, he goes home to his dorm room alone and cries and cries, and cries and cries and cries because he just wishes people would think he's cool without having to hurt himself or emulate a man who died in a pool of chicken wings, coke, prostitutes and self-loathing. Poor kid...Blokay, carry on!)
As I lay there face down on my bed, drooling every so slightly on my duvet cover, it struck me that I felt sort of odd. I felt sleepy, yes, but more than that, I kind of felt like someone had lit my veins on fire and miniature devils were dancing around on the ashes with their pitchforks of regret. It was a familiar feeling. But when had I felt like this before?....Wait a minute, this is exactly how I feel when I take NyQuil and/or DayQuil, which is why one of my life motto's is, "I don't fuck with Quils." But I had taken Pepto and Tylenol, a classic combination none too strange for a person like myself who's forever sick. Why, oh why, was I so Quilled-out to the gilled-out?
And then it hit me: I didn't take 6 Extra Strength Tylenol. I took 6 Tylenol PM. Two little letters that make all the difference in the world.
*BLACK & WHITE CSI-STYLE FLASHBACK!* You see, to avoid this very confusion, I always keep my Tylenol PM in the table in the hall and keep the Extra Strength Tylenol in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. However, just weeks earlier, I opened the medicine cabinet in the bathroom only to discover I was out of Extra Strength Tylenol. Frustrated and desperate to get rid of a headache, I got the Tylenol PM out of the table in the hall, went into the kitchen, poured myself a glass of water and took the pills, leaving the bottle on the counter when I was done. Later that night as I tidied up my apartment, as I always do between the hours of 11 and midnight as I am a highly neurotic person who can't sleep if things are out of place, I picked up the bottle of Tylenol in the kitchen and out of habit returned it to the medicine cabinet instead of the hall table where it belonged. Last night, distracted by the pain of the alleged migraine, I went into the medicine cabinet, blindly grabbed the Tylenol bottle, poured myself a handful and took the pills with a swig of water. What I didn't know is that due to my own absentmindedness and penchant for a place for everything and everything in it's place, I had just taken a handful of Tylenol PM—pain reliever and potent sleep aid. *END OF BLACK & WHITE CSI-STYLE FLASHBACK!*
"God damnit," I thought to myself as I lay there face down, fully aware I was about to pass out in about three minutes. I knew it was going to take way more than 6 Tylenol PM to kill me, but I was slightly concerned about peeing my pants. Not gonna lie. I briefly debated calling my mom to let her know what had happened and ask if she'd call me in the morning to make sure I wasn't dead, but sadly, as you know if you follow me on Twitter, this wasn't the first time I'd done this.
A few days after I got fired, my sister was supposed to swing by the apartment to pick something up on her lunch break. Wanting to prove to her that I could be unemployed yet not a total waste of space, I went to embarrassingly elaborate lengths to make myself look like a productive member of society. I got into gym clothes, threw my hair up in a pony tail and set a sensible lunch (turkey sandwich and a side salad) on the coffee table, conveniently located next to my copy of The Washington Business Journal, of which I was on the front page. As Becca's lunch hour neared, I put on my reading glasses, casually sat down on the couch and sipped some Pellegrino as I thoughtfully read business emails, ready for her to come in and discover me in all of my productive glory.
Unfortunately for me, I mistakenly took 2 Tylenol PMs between making my sensible lunch and arranging WBJ on the table at the perfect angle and suddenly felt overwhelmingly tired. "God damnit!" I thought to myself, "I put the Tylenol PM back in the wrong place." I sat up and looked around for something to keep me entertained. Because I would NOT let myself fall asleep. I kind of picture my sister like a more attractive version of myself who actually has her shit together and the last thing I wanted was her to think that I'm using my unemployment as time to catnap on the couch with a half-eaten turkey sandwich dangling out of my mouth. It's far too predictable. So I called my mom, told her I had accidentally taken Tylenol PM and was getting sleepy.
"So? Just take a nap," she said.
"NO! I CAN'T. YOU ARE A BAD, BAD INFLUENCE, MADAM," I slurred. She then suggested I take a shower and let me tell you fine people something—taking a shower while trying to resist the urge to fall asleep on Tylenol PM is almost as fun as getting drunk and brushing your teeth. Almost.
The real bitch of it is that Becca didn't even show up that day because she was too busy at work. So not only did I waste a perfectly good sandwich and side salad, I also wasted what could have been the best nap of my life. (I did, however, set the scene up again the next day which, thankfully, she saw. She even marveled at how I had food in my fridge! WIN!)
The point of this story being, I really didn't want to call my mom again all, "O00o0OOopsies! I took-a-the sleepy-sleepy pills again! Bout to go nightieroodle! Call me tomorrow to make sure I'm not deadsies! LOVES YOUUUuu!!!!1" Plus I couldn't really lift my head to find my phone...so that didn't help. Finally, I gave in and passed out.
As I drifted off to sleep, not only was I slightly nervous I was going to pee my pants, I was also nervous that my building's maintenance guy was going to come into my apartment first thing this morning to fix my shower. You see, sometimes I wear lingerie around my apartment just for funsies. I don't really know what to tell you about that. I have it. It rarely sees the light of day. Why not wear it while Swiffering and watching Project Runway, right? DON'T JUDGE ME! Anyway, I happened to be wearing a mildly racy, see-through black nightie when I crashed face first onto my bed last night, thereby leaving my bare ass hanging out to the world. Now, I live in a studio apartment. You walk in to fix something and you walk into my bedroom. Good morning to you. As my eyelids got heavier and heavier a little voice shouted in my head, "NO! YOUR ASS! YOUR BARE ASS IS IN DIRECT VIEW OF THE DOOR! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, MUSTER ALL OF YOUR STRENGTH AND PULL THAT SLUTTY LITTLE NUMBER DOWN, YOU LONELY, LONELY WOMAN!" My fingers twitched slightly but it was too late. I was out like a light.
When I woke up this morning (and by this morning I mean 2pm) I was groggy, black eye makeup was smeared all over my pillow and at some point in the night I had flipped over onto my back, exposing an entirely different view to the maintenance guy. I stumbled into the bathroom to see that my tub was still clogged (thank you Jesus) and I looked into the mirror and shook my head slowly at the hot roofie mess staring back. I knew what I had to do. I went into the kitchen, grabbed a sharpie and gave into the fact that I am a small child who should not be left alone.
So, that's what happened to me last night. I apologize again for the delay in posting. Hopefully next time I reach for the Tylenol I won't take my "sleepy pills" by accident and all will be right with the world. And speaking of all being right with the world, it's T.G.I. HAGMAN!
As of 4:24 on March 19, 2010, Larry Hagman is.........alive! AND HOO-ZAH! That's what I call a good way to start the weekend!
As per always, thank you so much for reading and spreading the 2b1b word. We love you more than JR Ewing and chemically induced sleep combined. Have a great weekend and see you right back here Monday morning. Bye!
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