no sleep 'til Sparta

[the_siobhan]

When I graduated from University I got a job in Toronto and continued to live in Guelph. It was a 60-mile drive each way. I also kept my part-time job, bartending at night in a strip joint. It was a punishing schedule and there were days when I would suddenly wake up to find myself already at work. The most disturbing thing about this is that I'm convinced that if I ever do fall asleep at the wheel one day I am likely to wake up in Willowdale.

This morning I woke up in the shower. I have a vague idea I might have been talking to Axel at the time but I'm not entirely sure about that. I know that at one point I discovered I was talking to an empty room, and I'm not sure if it's because he left while I was talking to him or because I blanked out for a while or if I simply dreamed the whole incident. I do know that I later fell asleep while getting an acupuncture treatment[1]; snoring face down on the table with needles bristling out of my butt like a doped-out hedgehog.

We've hit the evil stage in the renos - the one where we aren't doing any actual work, but everything needs to be organized in order to create space for work to happen. Once again I am sorting things in and out of boxes, cleaning out spaces to be used for storage, putting excess crap up on freecycle and craigslist and in general just driving myself crazy. I set myself a list of tasks to be accomplished each night before bed and just sort of hope that I'll still manage to make it to bed before midnight. Hah. Fat chance. Instead I just sleep through alarm clocks and doze off on the subway and I still haven't gotten around to putting up my Haiti photos a full month later.

I console myself with the reminder that I spent an entire three hellish years doing this for LD50 and I didn't die then[2] so it's unlikely to kill me now.



[1] On top of everything else I have now developed sciatica. You can just imagine my fucking reaction when I got that piece of news.

[2] Although I did once fall asleep while doing sit-ups. When I woke up again I was still doing them.

Comments

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

i imagine your reaction involved swearing a lot and then falling over. that's what mine is, whenever mine flares up.

tylenol with codeine is otc in your fair country, and it certainly helps lots with the pain for me.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I'm not at the pain stage yet - it's numbness and tingling and more irritating than painful.

Fortunately being up and moving around helps a lot, and I can do tons of that while I'm not actually at work. Unfortunately at work I'm chained to my desk by a headset so that's where it bothers me the most.

[the-fury.livejournal.com]

You might be able to get a longer headset cord. I've found that just standing up and pacing around for a foot or two can really relieve a lot of pressure.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I can actually stand up with the headset on. The real problem is that when I'm on the dialer I could be connected to a client Any Second Now. So I have to have my finger hovering over the button that brings up their account information. Otherwise there are embarrassing conversations about why it is that I don't know why I'm calling them.

And we're clocked for our On Dialer time, so I can't just turn it off any time I want to stretch without impacting my numbers.

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

If I could exercise while sleeping, I'd probabaly actually do some.

[dark-phoenix54.livejournal.com]

Okay, I only know "LD50" as meaning the 'dose that is lethal enough to kill 50% of the subjects given it'. While it certainly sounds like what you're doing could be lethal, I suspect that's not what you mean?

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

It was a start-up that sucked up every waking moment for about three years. It failed spectacularly.

[50-ft-queenie.livejournal.com]

It failed spectacularly.

Never let it be said that we do anything halfway.

[50-ft-queenie.livejournal.com]

We've hit the evil stage in the renos - the one where we aren't doing any actual work, but everything needs to be organized in order to create space for work to happen.

That stage sucks hard. BTDT and will probably do it again real soon.

I've heard that sciatic pain is not unlike SI joint pain, which I have. I had a bit of a flare up this past week and almost limped into Dr. Pat's office. Luckily I feel better now, but I'm thinking of trying acupuncture in the new year.

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I've found acupuncture to be the best thing in the world for pain relief.

[etcet.livejournal.com]

Better than vodka?

o.O

[panic-girl.livejournal.com]

Vodka just creates other pain. :(

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

If I'm actually on my way to work at the time.

Banks have no sense of humour.

[50-ft-queenie.livejournal.com]

Yeah? M also swears by it, and I do have $500 of insurance money to spend on it. Dr. Pat and Lynne are doing a great job of keeping me as pain-free as possible, but I'm not 100% there yet.

[dj-doc.livejournal.com]

Yes it's the only thing that keeps my migrane attacks at bay... Everthing else failed but back in my teens taking all the pain numbing stuff built myself a nice resistence towards opiats.

[coyotegoth.livejournal.com]

Yurk. Back in my cross-country biking days, I fell asleep/spaced out while biking once or twice; I'm probably lucky I didn't wake up in Narnia.

[http://users.livejournal.com/cincinnatus_c_/]

Did your bartending happen to be at that place that's kinda like a house with a motel attached to it, maybe with "Manor" or something like that in its name, out by a highway ramp? (I ask because it's a familiar landmark, and also because there was an article in one of the Waterloo student papers a while ago by a (maybe former) stripper saying what a scary place it is.)

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

The Manor Hotel. That's the place.

Serious. Dive. That's where I learned to slam an ashtray on the counter and kill a cockroach without breaking eye contact with the customer.

[hel_ana]

My mother worked at the Manor as a desk clerk, in 1971, after she got her nursing certification and before she landed her first full-time nursing job.

My sweet, nearly fresh from the Irish-Catholic southwestern ontario farm, mother.

It blows my mind.