Situation Normal

[lydy]

So, I'm working. For the first time in three years. It's very normal. Relaxingly normal.

I get to wear scrubs to work, which is great. No agonizing over work clothes. No worrying about what to wear today. I have two colors of scrubs, blue and green. I work three nights a week. So I alternate, and have "blue weeks" and "green weeks." I wear either blue, green, blue scrubs or, the next week, green, blue, green scrubs. Very orderly.

I'm doing ok at sleeping during the day. My cat has stopped trying to get me up at 3 p.m. She waits until 4. Quite a concession, for her. The alarm goes off at 5. Typically, I wake up around 4 p.m., and doze until around 5. Depending on the cat, the dozing is more or less restful. I wish I had more time to sleep during the week. I go to bed at 10 a.m. Which, even if I slept until 5:00, would only be seven hours. I prefer nine to twelve. But there you go. The penalties of having a job.

I try to go on days during my off days. This is more or less successful, depending on the week. One week, I essentially never went off nights. Oh, I went to bed at eleven or midnight, but I slept until three or four in the afternoon, so what was the point? Lots of sleep, I guess. This week, I went to bed in the morning, Saturday morning, as usual. Slept until six which was a little long, but I had been tired all week. The weird thing was I fell asleep again two hours later, at eight in the evening. Slept until seven this morning. However, I've been up since then, so I guess I made the transition to days ok. Looking forward to sleeping tonight.

I make my living watching people sleep. So, I dream about watching myself sleep. I typically have two patients when I work. Lately, when I sleep, I think I'm sleeping twice. When the alarm goes off, I think, "Well, the other one can sleep a little longer." Unfortunately, there isn't really another one. It's just in my dreams. Dreams are weird.

So, that's what's going on. Which is basically nothing. But it's a nice, calming, comforting nothing.

Comments

[spacecrab.livejournal.com]

This is good: productive peace. I hope you won't interpret it as condescending if I predict that more good things may follow from this, later on.

[markiv1111.livejournal.com]

Just to let you know, spacecrab, that I am very pleased to hear from you. Somebody had mentioned (about a month ago) difficulty in reaching you and was not sure you were okay. So this is a very good update.

[quadong.livejournal.com]

Back when I used to hit my snooze button four or five times before getting up, I had all sorts of odd dreams in those 8 minute intervals with the same general idea of your dreaming that you were sleeping twice. I'd dream, I dunno, that I was sleeping backwards in alternate snoozes or something else that doesn't make sense except in a dream.

[carbonel]

I'm about to finish my every-six-months volunteer editing gig that has been eating my free time for the last couple of weeks, so maybe we could get together sometime.

It's not sleep, but it might be similarly restful.

Job

[markiv1111.livejournal.com]

Jobs are good. I don't know how well I could possibly adapt if I were working the night shift like you, so I am impressed that you are making it work. Please continue keeping us posted.

Nate

[careswen.livejournal.com]

Nice update! I'm glad to hear it's going well. Your name came up yesterday: greykev and I were debating how long it takes to actually have a dream. I had heard that the dream takes about the same amount of time as it takes when you tell it. Kev had heard that dreams actually only last a few seconds. He reflected, I bet Lydy would know! So do you know, O our local expert on sleep?

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

It sounds like the lest stressful schedule you've been on for a while.
Since it's a type of schedule you haven't had for a few years, I'd suggest that simply executing it well for the next couple of months counts as Making Quota.