{"id":331,"date":"2009-03-07T07:46:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-07T07:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2009\/03\/the-worst-thing-in-the-world-is-to-try-to-sleep-and-not-to-f-scott-fitzgerald.html"},"modified":"2009-03-07T07:46:00","modified_gmt":"2009-03-07T07:46:00","slug":"the-worst-thing-in-the-world-is-to-try-to-sleep-and-not-to-f-scott-fitzgerald","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2009\/03\/the-worst-thing-in-the-world-is-to-try-to-sleep-and-not-to-f-scott-fitzgerald.html","title":{"rendered":""The worst thing in the world is to try to sleep and not to." ~F. Scott Fitzgerald"},"content":{"rendered":"
I’m seem to be suffering some sort of insomnia. I’ve not gotten more than 3-4 hours’ sleep per night this past week, except for one night — a night off — where I made things worse by sleeping right through till almost morning. This is bad because I work nights here.<\/p>\n

So I’m living that quote above. I remember once learning that if you cannot sleep, your body can still get rest by just remaining still in the dark.<\/p>\n

That’s easier said than done. There are several contributors to the insomnia — working night shifts is a start. Also, I think as I get older I’m developing an oversensitivity to caffeine. Over the past 2 weeks I’ve been compensating for the lack of sleep by consuming more and more caffeine: diet sodas, coffee, chocolate…<\/p>\n

Yesterday, because we were showing around some visitors from the U.S., I needed to stay awake all day after working overnight. So I consumed some 2 large coffees, 2 or 3 cans of Diet Pepsi, ahem, Pepsi Diet<\/em>, and also this beverage called “Rip It”<\/a>…and energy drink that’s provided to us in the dining halls here. Really. You will see on this website that Rip It “Fuels Our Heroes”…<\/p>\n

Then I turn around and try to go to sleep before all that caffeine works out of my body. So even though I was playing Patricia-the-Bobble-Head in the meetings — as were our visitors who were suffering horrific jet lag, I would lie in the dark and be alone with my thoughts and frustrations.<\/p>\n

So after my 2-3 hours sleep Friday evening, I awakened at 11pm with a resolve to go into work and not consume any<\/em><\/strong> caffeine during my shift.<\/p>\n

I did not do well. It was horrible. I must have faded in and out several dozen times. I hadn’t been this tired since Timmy was a baby, and I certainly hadn’t felt this tired doing critical Air Force work in over a decade! I’d be sitting at my workstation, staring at weather charts, and out of nowhere it would be 10 minutes later. Did I fall asleep? Was I just staring at the computer screen? The good news was that I didn’t miss any of my tasks during the shift, but I certainly looked foolish swooning all over the place…my workstation is alongside a high-traffic pathway and who knows who saw me. <\/p>\n

(My boss here is now a Facebook friend and might be reading this — hey Matt! Don’t worry, everything got done!)<\/p>\n

The good news is that I thought I would have had a blinding headache, but I don’t. I think getting the caffeine out of my system is all I need to do, and I will stick to one good-sized coffee per day, 1-2 hours after I awaken, as I typically do at home.<\/p>\n

I’m barely awake enough to finish typing up this blog entry, but I have about 30 more minutes on the clothing in the dryer.<\/p>\n

Yes, I’m currently doing my own laundry. I’m living in Rose’s dorm and I get to do my own laundry! As you might remember from my previous post about the laundry<\/a>, although I thought I would absolutely LOVE the idea of laundry service, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be and I’m thrilled to get to do my own this morning. <\/p>\n

Also, the civilian wireless connections on this base have been giving me a lot of problems, so I’m limited in my blog posts for now to e-mail only. In other words, I am able to e-mail text to my Blogger account and it posts automatically. I’m also about to set up the ability to e-mail Twitter updates, which tie into the Twitter widget on the right side of the blog and my Facebook status. These posts are also auto-forwarded to Facebook.<\/p>\n

Anyhoo, enjoy this blog post and I hope to come back to you soon with some fresh photos and an update on Howie!<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m seem to be suffering some sort of insomnia. I’ve not gotten more than 3-4 hours’ sleep per night this past week, except for one night — a night off — where I made things worse by sleeping right through till almost morning. This is bad because I work nights here. So I’m living that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[],"tags":[13,63,616],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5ycQ0-5l","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":334,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2009\/03\/altogether-now-how-tired-were-you.html","url_meta":{"origin":331,"position":0},"title":"Altogether Now: "How Tired Were You?"","date":"20 March 09","format":false,"excerpt":"Happy Friday and Happy Spring! Another random funny deployment story for you.So here it is...6:15pm on a Friday night, and I'm still awake.\"Hey, me too! Let's go hit a club and go dancing later!\"No no no no no. I'm not supposed to be awake! For those unaware, I've been on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"air force reserves\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":296,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2009\/01\/a-delicate-balance.html","url_meta":{"origin":331,"position":1},"title":"A Delicate Balance","date":"10 January 09","format":false,"excerpt":"Greetings from Southwest Asia!Now that I've gotten some sleep, I can write something that makes sense. I am well...I'm well rested, I've unpacked and am settled into my dorm room, and I've started my training program to learn my new job. The food here is decent and I'll be getting\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"air force reserves\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":102,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2008\/03\/hey-im-trying-to-sleep-here.html","url_meta":{"origin":331,"position":2},"title":"HEY! I’m trying to sleep here!","date":"14 March 08","format":false,"excerpt":"In part because I'm sick of all the references to Terminix and Ant Farms for sale at the top of my page, and in part because I'm tired today, allow me to vent!For the unaware, Apex, NC is this \"special\" location on the former Seaboard Air Line RR: the highest\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"ranting\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":19,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2008\/01\/slowly-but-surely.html","url_meta":{"origin":331,"position":3},"title":"Slowly but surely…","date":"03 January 08","format":false,"excerpt":"...it took till nearly midnight to convince my laptop that YES I wanted the hard drive formatted! It isn't as easy as you might think, and I don't have the wherewithal to go into it here, so I won't!I'll just refer you here, which is one of the many geeky\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"kitchen laptop\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":329,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2009\/03\/this-week-with-david-brinkley-i-mean-with-major-mom.html","url_meta":{"origin":331,"position":4},"title":"This Week with David Brinkley…I mean, with Major Mom","date":"04 March 09","format":false,"excerpt":"I've laid low from the web lately. Partly on purpose, partly because the WiFi hotspot has been acting strangely. So here's a summary of what I've been up to this week (omitting job-related stuff, obviously):First off, a friend from when we were stationed in FL came over from a nearby\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"air force reserves\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":395,"url":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/2009\/09\/being-sick-sucks.html","url_meta":{"origin":331,"position":5},"title":"Being Sick Sucks…","date":"01 September 09","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm just wrapping up a pretty nasty cold, upper respiratory infection, whatever you call it.Whatever it's called, it sucks.I don't get sick often. I last got quite sick the last week of February 2008. Yes, you read right: 2008. It was a horrible case of the flu, actually. Once I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"housework\"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/331\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thevollmerfamily.com\/MajorMom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}