Up Late, Up Early

I am writing this at 3:58 AM. I’m either up super late, or super early… depending on how you like to gauge these types of things. I’ve been awake long enough now that with each passing moment, the idea of going back to sleep seems less of a possibility. To keep myself a little busy, a little occupied… I’m writing up this blog post.

I’ve been a little sniffly lately, and maybe two nights ago had a few moments in bed where I felt some chills. They were brief and lasted a few moments – disconcerting at the time, but they passed fairly quickly. I didn’t think much of it.

Yesterday, throughout the day, I was sneezing a great deal. Blowing my nose a lot. I had a small tablet of Sudafed with me as an emergency backup, and ended up taking that guy a little before noon. It helped somewhat, but Sudafed always makes me feel… high on the drugs, as it were. Sudafed helps me, but comes at a cost. The second half of the day was difficult, and felt like me physically dragging my body across a small distance.

Near 5:30 PM, Liz decided to pop up to the office so we could travel home together. When she saw me, she remarked about how red my nose was. An hour or so later, when I looked in my bathroom mirror, I saw what she meant – my nose was lit up like Rudolph after a weekend bender.

I don’t know why it took me as long as it did, but the notion that Hey, I’m sick didn’t really cross my mind. I wasn’t sick – I was just sniffling a lot. And sneezing. And blowing my nose nonstop.

I had a fairly early night, and took some more medication. Due to my congestion, it was difficult to keep my CPAP machine – a device I use to help with my sleep apnea. As a result, I kept on waking Liz up, who would remind me to put my mask back on.

Around 3:30 AM, I woke up to another bout of sneezing. And basically… here we are. I knew that I was going to be unable to keep the CPAP going, and I didn’t want Liz to suffer from a bad night of sleep as well. So I decided to move myself out to the couch. Somewhere, during that short trip from bedroom to living room, I realized I was pretty awake. I decided to hop on the computer, instead.

So here it is now, 4:18 AM. I’m in a quiet apartment with barely any lights on. The rabbits are sleeping in a darkened sunroom near me, and I barely hear any cars along Logan Boulevard. If I’m very quiet, I can hear Baxter snoring, lightly.

I’m used to being up early, most days. I prefer going to the gym in the AM, before work, so I haul myself out of bed around try to get to the gym sometime close to 6AM. But right now though, it’s this odd time in between being up super early and being up super late. It’s hard to tell if I’ve outlasted the world, and people have fallen away to sleep… or whether I’ve arrived at a destination before anyone else. It’s a little of both, I guess.

The radiators are kicking in, creaking slowly as the metal expands. I hear a police siren in the distance, fading even as I type these words. Perhaps I’ll go to the living room after all, and pull a blanket over my body. Perhaps I’ll turn on the television and bask in its artificial light, and wait out the handful of hours until the true sun appears. Maybe by then, I’ll have fallen asleep.

[CC photo via telemudcat]

Related:
December Insomnia
Nerd Story
Wherein I Am Videotaped, Unawares
Sleep Study, Northwestern
CPAP Machine And Mask (Aka “The Vader Trainer”)