Thursday, April 19, 2012

The Sand-Man Is A Big Jerk

I am 99% positive I have insomnia. 

I haven't always had it, in fact I've been a champion sleeper for the better part of my life. It seems after entering "adult-hood" the sandman stopped frequenting my bed and sleeplessness has been progressively taking over my nights. 

My mother thinks it's the added stress of being grown up and having real life responsibilities, my little sister blames my lack of fort building to tucker me out. 
Personally, I blame the sandman
He's a big jerk. 

Whatever the cause, I have not been sleeping. 
Months of increasingly restless nights have finally culminated in a my transformation into a full fledged insomniac. 

Each episode begins the same way - with an inability to get comfortable.


I'll Toss


And turn


And keep tossing and turning. 
















I doubt there is a position on my bed that I haven't tried. And no I'm not talking about the fun kind of positions, I am talking about the sleeping kind of positions. 

None of them work. 

It's nights like these my husband appreciates the king size bed we purchased as he's comfortably snoozing next to me. 


Sometimes Insomnia makes me dislike my husband.

Since I am generally opposed to being medicated, and changing positions only seems to worsen my new condition, I have developed a variety of coping methods.

First, I have the psychological approach.

This technique is characterized by an extensive use of willpower and self mastery. 
I simply command myself to sleep, relying on my own resolve to obey. 



Then I check up on my progress. 


My tenaciousness is sadly insufficient. I am rarely able to order myself to slumber. 
In fact, it's never worked. 


After failing to conquer my psyche I turn to altering my body temperature. 

Cool first 


Warm second


If anything, this venture is counterproductive providing a rush rather than a sleepy calm but it's already been inducted into the routine and thus cannot be removed. 

When adjusting my inner thermostat fails to lull me to sleep I employ workout tactics to tire out my body. 

That's right, while most of you are snoozing I am sculpting my body into a tantalizing collage of tone and womanly curves.

 Regrettably, these late night attempts at definition/sleep are often my only sculpting endeavors, which explains the inner-tube shaped layer of extra whitney around my mid-section. 

The routine goes like this -

50 Bed-Sit-Ups


50 Bed-Leg-Lifts


And a 60 second Bed-Back-Bend. 



The success rate of exercise induced sleep is variable. In some cases I will succeed in tricking my body into being lazy and finally drift off to sleep. 

In more cases I only further agitate my insomnia and stay awake longer. 

I then enter a state of sleepy misery. 
My eyes start to ache from being open so long, my thoughts won't sit still and I am extra irritated at my subconscious's inability to become unconscious. 

I concede to wakefulness and just stare at the ceiling. 




This terrible state continues for almost 10 minutes. 

But then I get bored, and misery loves company. 
So I do this. 







I'm very sneaky. 


But not very persuasive. 

As you can see, I have not yet vanquished my insomnia, nor have I found appropriate, or considerate, ways to cope with it. 

If you have to be around me in the near future, please be extra nice. I tend to get grumpy, snappish and truthfully sarcastic without adequate sleep. 

If you have any solutions, please share. 

If you too have Insomnia, call me and we'll play Jenga. 

Sunday, April 8, 2012

Conoco Can't Service Me

As previously featured on raspy wit (see the post entitled "the mobility quest" or click Here to be automatically redirected) getting my drivers license was a hard earned achievement for me. Not only did I have to take the drivers test 3 times but I was 16 for a full month before my parents, and the state, finally trusted me with a motor vehicle.
But I got my license.
The first thing I did after securing that glorious piece of paper was drive to my best friend Elise's house. There I honked, waved and shouted for her to join me in "Roger".

Sidenote: Roger is the name of my first car - he is a 1981 Volkswagon Rabbit with cracked white vinyl seats, a shiny red paint job, that mothy "vintage" scent and a leaky convertible top that takes 30 minutes to change and gets stuck in the rain.



Elise joined me in Roger and since she didn't have her license yet and we essentially had no other friends we relished in our first taste of unsupervised vehicular freedom. 
Problem was we had nowhere to go and nobody else to share our freedom with so we ended up driving around for most of the afternoon visiting various grocery stores and flashing our keys at each and every pedestrian. 

Oh, and of course, there was ice-cream. 


After driving around enough to deplete 1/2 a tank of gas we realized the little glowing light on the side of the dash meant we would most likely run out of fuel. 

Excellent, we would fill up the gas tank like real adult drivers do - one more adventure to check off our driving check list.  

As novice drivers we had no idea that gas prices vary depending on the grade of station you choose. We chose the closest one to our current location, a conoco. As most of you know - conoco is not a cheap station.

 I now use only flying J, Maverick or Sams Club for 1-2 cent cheaper gas.

Am I getting questionable gas grades? Yes.
Is my gas possibly cut with water, food coloring or other non-fuel products? Yes.
Am I saving almost a full dollar per fill-up? Oh yeah.

Anyway - filling up at Conoco went something like this.

On the first pass we drove up to the wrong side of the terminal.


Honest Mistake. Quick Fix.




So we drove around. 




.... But were still on the wrong side. 




So we drove around again






And Again






After failing to master the art of gas tank siding we decided the hoses were long enough they must be made to reach OVER cars since our car was obviously incompatible with right sided pumps. 





Nope. 

This meant only one thing, conoco could not service us. 


 We thought we had learned a new lesson, that gas stations were brand specific.

VolksWagon is a german company after all, and Conoco didn't sound german at all.

We considered finding a 7-11 or a maverick but decided the blinking red gas light may not allow us to make it all the way. The last thing we wanted was to run out of gas in the middle of main street, in a stick shift roger with a license for one day. 

This required much thought. 


The thought payed off and we had a brilliant idea. 


This was our brilliant idea: 




It took us 20 minutes, mad reverse skills and the total of our combined allowances but we finally filled up Roger. 

The End. 
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