WAKE UP!
holy crap my meal almost got ruined.
I have four children under five. I went to bed extra early last night, but my husband woke me (once), Gnat (4yrs) woke me twice, TomKitten (2yrs) woke me twice, and the twin girls (6m) woke me at least ten times together.
I was a space cadet most of today. I may be almost as tired as Ann.
Not as bad as it used to be. People may write off the idea, but ever since I started taking various green and algae supplements (garden of life perfect food, spirulina, chlorella), I am not as tired as I used to be. Even if I only get 3-4 hours sleep I can still function more or less fine the next day, in general I think I need an hour or so less sleep a night than I did before. Totally worth taking.
However that is just physical tiredness. mental exhaustion (like the kind that comes from watching kids, I find watching kids to be more mentally draining than physically draining) it doesn’t really help.
I’ve had chronic insomnia for 40 years, and spend much of my “waking life” incapable of doing simple tasks such as driving my car (luckily, I have a home office) and capably carrying on my end of a conversation. All sorts of reasons, including depression and anxiety, and prescription pills have so much of a rebound effect that I refrain from using them unless circumstances are absolutely dire.
4-5 days ago I was shaving and was apparently so uncoordinated doing this (mostly as a result of every damn night waking up in the early morning hours and being unable to get back to sleep for as long as 3 hours) that i succeeded in punching myself in the nose. A bit of bleeding from one nostril, and immediately somewhat sore, but it was quickly apparent there was no serious damage (other than a major dose of self-mortification).
Thing of it is, I have spent the last 50 years with a very limited sense of smell. For example, I can rarely smell flatulence (including my own) and have been known to fill the kitchen with smelly gas when the burner light doesn’t go on when I’m boiling water for my morning coffee and I don’t smell a darn thing. It’s not total, as, for example, I enjoy the taste of food. And, if a woman is wearing so much perfume as to have passersby making the P.U. gesture at her retreating figure, I am at least somewhat conscious of her stink.
And I apparently succeeded in un-deviating my septum, or something of that nature after a half century, 'cause for the last few days–eureka–I can smell my underarm deodorant (even if my head is nowhere near my armpit) and the other evening, I could smell the pizza reheating in the toaster oven downstairs.
So I guess sometimes exhaustion has an unintended upside??
This happened to my boyfriend coming up on 2 years ago, when he was 37. Despite years of smoking (though not for 5 years now) and usually carrying about 50 pounds too much, his lungs and heart are also remarkably clear. In his case, it was a pulmonary embolism. They found it when they did a blood test which showed his blood clotting abnormally. Then they did a CT scan and another with contrast to make sure his legs had no clots (they didn’t). After 3 days in the hospital waiting for the blood thinner to get to therapeutic levels and another year on warfarin (and now 325mg daily aspirin just in case) his blood is clotting normally.
The thing is - they still have no damn clue whey after 37 years his blood suddenly started, and then stopped, clotting abnormally.
As for how tired I am…not very actually though I was feeling bone weary before opening this thread. My lifelong insomnia has taken a vacation this summer and I’ve been sleeping normal hours nearly every night. I went to bed at midnight but was woken up at 6am by the very clear sound of one of my dogs about to barf on my face. I got myself and my dog off the bed just before she blew up - only to have her expel only a dime-size splat of foam. The dogs had no trouble going back to sleep but I didn’t manage it. I don’t have to leave the house for another hour (bridal shower today). I’ve already had breakfast. My job ended on Friday and school doesn’t start until tomorrow. I don’t have enough time to start a computer game or movie. I don’t have cable. If I start reading a book I’ll probably fall asleep.
So I think in my case, I’m very bored and a smidge tired and the combination is making me feel a whole hell of a lot more tired. The good news is that if I can stay up all day, I should have no trouble falling asleep tonight so I can be up at 5am for school.
I’m tired all the time. My work schedule is somewhat brutal (3 hour roundtrip daily commute in the city, 10 hour shifts) so when I get a day off I mostly sleep through it. As soon as 9:30 rolls around, it’s lights out.
Happy birthday! You’ve got a 13 year and 3 day head start on me. 
I’m tired. You know what I need? A nice long heart attack.
Not the kind that kills you. the kind where you go to the doctor and you’re like “whoa, I’m out of breath and I think I broke a rib” and he’s like “dude, you had a heart attack!” and you’re like “no way” and he’s like “way” and you say “Oh, man, how will I do my 70-hour a week high-stress job if I have to take time off” and he’s like “I think I see the problem, in addition to these heart-related thingies, here’s a note that says you need to take 4-6 months off work.”
Then I could sleep in a little.
Pretty tired at the moment. It’s about midnight. We did a lot of cleaning today – the storage area out back, balcony. Plus I’m on my fourth gin and tonic. I’m going to hit the sack soon. The wife crashed an hour or two ago.
I’m 3 months pregnant and have a two-year-old and a full time job. And a husband with a full time job working an opposite shift from me: I work 5 am to noonish, he works 1ish to 10ish, so we are both always on baby duty if we aren’t working. I get to sleep from 11 pm to 4 am, plus whatever naps I can finagle out of the toddler. I’m really looking forward to my three months off work on half pay (disability) when I deliver. What little I remember of having a cosleeping newborn was very sleep-positive.
It would probably backfire on you. After all, a lady where I work broke her kneecap falling in the parking lot and only missed 1.5 days! It’s either die, be near death, or get back to work.
I’ve thought about getting pregnant for the six weeks maternity leave. Yes, I know that strategy would backfire on me as well.
You could put the kid up for adoption. Repeat this each year for an extra six weeks per.
Mommy’s gone for a week, Didi at 22 months has been taken off breastfeeding and a pacifier all within the last couple of weeks. He’s back to sleeping like a baby (wake up crying every couple of hours). Beta-chan is 34 months and she’s getting a little better, but still is a e-year-old.
I’ll be happy when mommy gets back.
Utterly knackered. I’ve been coughing my lungs up for two weeks and have just had a week-from-hell at work. Today’s a day off and I haven’t even managed to get dressed (it’s almost 4:00pm here), so I think I’ll just stay in my PJs all day.
Yeah I’ve had a horrible cough for two weeks now and I never usually get sick. Let me see:
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I have a daughter who has just turned one and has never in her life slept for longer than five hours at a stretch. Not once. Usually more like three.
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Last week because of people being off work I had to cover for an entire other department, which more than doubled my workload.
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I regularly don’t leave work until 11pm, and my commute is an hour and a half each way.
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I commute by bike, 18 miles a day.
I’m pretty darn tired.
I remember when I took six months of work and went travelling. Six months with no schedule, no early mornings (unless I chose to), no stress. By the end of that trip I felt better than I have ever felt in my life. It gave me a glimpse of what a life of leisure could be like, and how *rested *it is possible to feel…
However… my wife has gone to her parents for a few days with the little one, so undisturbed sleep here we come!
I am so so tired right now. I can’t wait to finish my hour and a half tutoring session with my client so I can come back home and nap for a few hours in the mid morning to early afternoon. I am normally a pretty happy guy but right now I have to fight every urge not to punch anyone and anything that I see.
Tired enough that it requires medication to keep me functioning on a day-to-day basis. I took a couple of days off the medication last weekend, and as a result fell asleep through most of a movie (ParaNorman), got home, and slept fitfully for 2 hours on the couch, literally could not keep my eyes open.
Tired enough that when, about 18 months ago, an odd combination of more-than-most-people-need sleep for multiple days, and that “wake me up” medication caused me to feel well rested, it scared the crap out of me. I kept asking my husband if I was acting in a way that worried him, because I felt so, so, well I think the word is “rested” but it’s been several decades since that’s happened.
Mamma Zappa, What wake-up and anti-tired medicine is that? I want me some of that.
You win.
So tired I cry on the way to work at least once a week.