Eyes wide open

I'm taking a hint from my blog's title, and losing sleep.

For some reason, the past couple weeks at my home after the sun goes down, my once-cozy abode becomes a creepy, rattley, drafty, scare-the-shit-out-of-me apartment. Over the summer, I slept like a corpse. NOTHING could wake this. Even if I only got six hours of sleep, I was bright and refreshed in the morning.

It seems the cold weather made the ghosts in the attic start hanging out in my apartment on the second floor. Probably because I have heat now.

So last night about 8 PM, I started watching the first season, first episode of Dexter.

Halfway through the show, my heat starts to clink on... fine. But after a few minutes, the wood floorboard between my couch and the vent starts to creak every couple minutes -- like a creak when someone walks on it. This is just my mind getting a little riled up. It keeps happening. Then I start hearing it outside my apartment door, every few minutes. I know my friend/neighbor/co-worker Lisa is at her other PT job until late, so she's not home. Can't be her. What IS that.

I'm not really into paranormal crap. But when I'm by myself, sometimes my mind gets the best of me. I could probably handle that, but what's worse is someone broke into my friend Sara's apartment here in Fort last weekend. Nothing happened because her boyfriend woke up and scared the guy, so he fled.

Now, I've got to worry about real people, and fake people, err, ghosts?

Called my mom, talked for a little while. Forgot about it. Got ready for bed.

STILL hearing this creaking. It's already 11 PM.

I called the one person I knew would be up: Matthias.

Being an excellent multi-tasker, he continued playing his Left 4 Dead demo (for the duration of our conversation) while I told him what was up.
"So, what you're saying is someone is trying to rob you?" MATTHIAS WTF WOULD YOU SAY THAT I'M CALLING BECAUSE I DONT WANT TO THINK ABOUT IT. "Now I've jinxed it. You'll get robbed."

So the first part of that conversation didn't go well. But after that, we started talking about Thanksgiving, 4chan ("It's the Mos Eisley of Internet content"), water and zee Germans.

I was getting tired around 11:30, so I said I'd try to sleep. But, he'd be up till 3 AM or later if I needed to call back. Awesome.

Here comes the sun

I was intrigued by Menace's post about near death experiences, but I thought I'd address my initial blog idea I thought of this morning instead. (Wait til next week.)

Every morning for the past month, I've been a perpetual snooze button pusher. I'm usually pretty good about getting up around 5:30 to head to the gym. Or at the very least, getting up around 6:45 to begin the normal morning routine. But I've been getting out of bed later, and later, and later. That means, instead of hitting snooze once or twice, I roll out of bed around 7:10, 7:15. I've even reset the clock to jolt me awake, again, around 7:30 AM.

I blame the dark sky.

Why in the hell would my body think it's time to wake up, if the sun ITSELF isn't even out of bed. There aren't any birds chirping to wake me up. No morning runners. No construction. Nothing. It's silent... and it's dark.


This weekend, we'll set our clocks back an hour. That means one more hour of sleep. It also means another hour of sunlight in the morning. Hopefully, that also means returning to a somewhat normal schedule.

Maybe then I'll be able to roll out of bed.

I don't want to hibernate all winter.


Did you know? Arizona and Hawaii are the only U.S. states that don't participate in daylight savings. Indiana just started turning it's clock back this year.

Night terrors

Last night, I lost track of time and ended up going to bed around midnight. My neighbor/co-worker/friend, Lisa, was in Milwaukee for the night, so I was left to my own defenses as the sole occupant of the upstairs of my extremely creepy, 70-year-old house.

I probably would've been fine if I didn't know she was gone... and I slept fine all last week while she traveled. But for some reason, every noise scared the piss out of me.

I'm not sure if it's because Halloween's so close, I might syke myself out more... but I swear there was someone, or something, in my house.

I sleep with a fan on, to avoid dead noise. Plus, it's good at lulling me to sleep. I make sure all my doors are locked and windows closed. Sometimes, I even check closets if I'm feeling particularly vulnerable.

But last night I kept hearing noises. The steam-pipe vents kept clicking, and anytime a large truck went over the pothole in the front of my house, the windows shook. I even kept my bedside lamp on for a little while but the shadow of myself, kept scaring, myself.

I would let my thoughts drift off to the day, work, things to do... but they kept coming back to the fact that I was by myself in my house. With all these strange noises.

I'm not sure if I was more afraid of an actual intruder, or some supernatural creature that might attack me if I let my defenses down in slumberland.

I finally fell asleep around 1 AM, after getting up twice to turn on my lights to make sure nothing weird was going down.

That also meant hitting snooze an additional three times this morning and getting up at 7:30 AM. Oops.

The Toof

I don't think I lost all my baby teeth. In fourth grade, I remember having loose teeth and waiting for them to fall out... but I have a memory lapse -- I got braces in fifth grade (and had them until junior year of high school; I was THAT big of a nerd.)

Did I lose all of them? What if I still have teeth that are going to fall out?

Why do we only have one set of teeth? After you're seven years old, you're stuck with the ones you've got. Too bad if they get knocked out, get cavities, or rot out of your mouth.

I'm not much for dream interpretation, but I distinctly remember reading that dreams about teeth falling out mean a change in your life. Not sure if it's just a big, upcoming event, or a change you hope to implement.

A couple weeks ago, I had one of those dreams. Like most, I can't remember everything that happened. I've probably had about half a dozen dreams about teeth, ever.

Does that mean I didn't lose all my baby teeth? Is change coming? Am I crazy?

I don't know; but, I did decide to cut my hair last week.