Strange Week

Spring semester: day fifteen

My week has been a haze of going to and from school, and not much else. In trying to stay awake enough to actually accomplish all of my school-related responsibilities, activities, and assignments, I have run myself ragged most of the time. No longer do I remember even half of what I'm supposed to do/get done without writing it down, and I no longer remember anything discussed in any of my classes. Frequently, after teaching my students, I will either return to my office or return home after class and not be able to remember a fucking thing I just said. It will all be a blank. I'll remember the concepts, sure, and maybe a little of the class discussion, but for the most part it's like I'm on autopilot.

I am convinced that this entire "living in a haze" sort of feeling is because I have some sort of medical problem related to sleep/sleep deprivation. I've not really talked about it much, but I haven't slept on a "normal" sort of sleep schedule for any real amount of time since elementary school, when I had a set bedtime of 9PM. In junior high -- when I first got the internet, in 1995-1996ish -- is when I developed my "night owl" lifestyle, primarily because of the internet. In high school, I got up at 5AM or earlier (much like I do now) because I caught the bus at 6:50. I came home from school, had dinner, and went to sleep around 6PM or 7 at the latest on most nights. In college? About the same, though most of the time I would make my own dinner, go to sleep, and then get up around 2AM. After college it became even stranger; my schedule was constantly in flux when I was working both at the grocery store back home as well as the university on alternating days, and I had to sleep whenever I could. Once I moved to the midwest, of course, I worked overnight shifts at the grocery store in Missouri for three years. For the first few months I was living in Kansas, I wasn't working (read: I slept whenever/however), and then got another overnight grocery store job before leaving that place to work for the newspaper and then attend grad school. My point is that throughout the vast majority of my life, I haven't had the sort of lifestyle that would allow me to do the whole "go to bed at 9PM, wake up at 6AM" sort of thing for any really substantial amount of time. And I think all of the years of being unable to sleep on a set schedule has completely wrecked my body's ability to adhere to any sort of actual rhythm, instead of telling me things like "You. Sleep now. I don't care that it's 9AM/2PM/6PM/etc. It's time for you to sleep, and if you don't comply, you will submit by force."

Metaphorically speaking, of course. That's certainly what it feels like.

Case in point: on Thursdays (read: yesterday) I get done with teaching my classes by 12:15. I set up my schedule to where 90% of the time, unless I have some sort of prior commitment, I can come home as soon as I'm done teaching and start my weekend early. Sometimes I can't do this; I'll have meetings with students or organizations within the department that I am part of, but generally I can come back home when I'm done. Again, I wanted this schedule. I set it up this way on purpose. Yesterday, even though I'd gotten some decent sleep the night before (not a lot, but some) I came home, made a small lunch, and basically slipped into a coma for seven hours straight. I was in bed by 2PM. Seriously.

I've had a really strange week, actually. For example, I saw several people yesterday morning dressed really strangely, including a girl with a pink mohawk much larger than her actual head, and a nun wearing a full habit -- both walking around inside the building in which I work. Living in Kansas and attending a public university with what seems to be low admission standards, however, I've found that these sorts of things rarely surprise me anymore.

I'm not kidding about that last part, either; I just found out this week that the fall 2011 entering class had the lowest test scores on record (I assume said tests were the SAT or ACT tests) allowed for admission to the university. Or something along those lines. This is amusing, because you'd think that's something that, y'know, the university really wouldn't want to be publicized.

My week was punctuated by a few other weird things as well. This is a short list of those things, with the first being a sudden and crippling illness which lasted for less than an hour.

Let me explain.

On Tuesday night, I went to bed fairly early -- around 9:30 or so. I was tired, I'd gotten home from classes around 8, made dinner, and wanted to go to bed, so I did. Around 2:30 AM, I awoke very slowly, a little at a time, because my stomach was bothering me. Sometimes I'll get heartburn in the night, and it sucks, but after a few minutes it tends to go away and I'm able to go back to sleep. This, however -- whatever it was -- wasn't going away. And as I felt more and more sick, I began to wake up fully and realize that no, this wasn't heartburn, it was something else.

Around 2:45, I realized that okay, this is a sort of "you need to vomit" feeling.

Generally, as you could probably assume, this is a really bad sign. Normal, healthy people don't just wake up in the middle of the night and need to throw up -- that's usually something associated with food poisoning or the stomach flu, neither of which I wanted or had time for.

I went upstairs, turned on the hall light (which is one of the fluorescent bulbs, so it's a softer light that won't necessarily blind you) and immediately threw up into the toilet. A lot. Really a lot. Which was surprising seeing as it had been about six hours since I had last eaten at that point.

When I was done, I felt fine. Hm, that was weird, I thought to myself. I rinsed out my mouth, gargled, drank two glasses of water and took some Pepto Bismol, and I went back to bed -- where I was almost immediately able to fall back asleep. When I woke up Wednesday morning, I felt normal, as per the usual. Whatever it was, it was out of my system.

In all of my life I can't recall another time where I was able to rid myself of illness in less than thirty minutes. That was a very, very surreal experience. I felt so normal the next morning I wondered briefly if I'd dreamed the entire thing. I knew I hadn't, but still. I've not been ill since. It must've been what I ate for dinner -- a chicken sandwich -- that disagreed with me.

At some point, I also pulled a muscle in my back while I was sleeping. How I do this on occasion is anyone's guess; I must be special in that regard. Still, it's a muscle on the right side about halfway up my back, and it feels like it's underneath my shoulder blade. It also feels like it's the muscle that connects to the back of my rib cage, so when it hurts it draws up tight and locks -- which is painful enough in itself, but also gives me the added bonus of feeling like I can't breathe. It's slowly getting better, but it still sucks.

Yeah, folks, I've got problems.

In other news, on Wednesday I also received my plane tickets for Spring Break from my mother. I'll be in West Virginia for a little less than five days, which gives me the other days of break back here to do whatever work I need to take care of for school during said time off. Three of those days have already been planned out, actually -- the first I'll be traveling and more than likely meeting Wayne and Jane for a late lunch in Pittsburgh as soon as the plane lands, the second I plan to visit my grandmother, and the third Andrea and I will be spending quality time together as much as possible (read: shopping and galavanting about Morgantown). I've planned nothing further than that, but I'm guessing there will be at least one large family dinner at at least one Mexican restaurant, as is customary for my folks.

I was lucky to get out of class early on Wednesday evening, but due to said luck I also missed the huge, bright and massive meteor that crossed over at least two states and was visible here. A lot of people in Wichita saw it, and apparently it landed (if it did land) somewhere in extreme northern Texas or Oklahoma. Yeah. It was that big. Wichita news websites were going crazy about it, hundreds saw it fall, etc. The link I posted above has a few photos and the one live video I've been able to find of the occurrence, taken from the dash cam of a cop car, but apparently those who saw it even up here said it was spectacular.

As an aside, I've seen some pretty big ones myself in the early morning and/or late night drives I make to and from campus. I just think it's neat. Meteors have always fascinated me.

Today, we (finally) get paid for the first time this semester. This is good, because I'd been living off my loans and credit card for the past few weeks to pay bills and be able to eat/put gas in the car. Now that I'll be getting regular paychecks again every two weeks until the end of the semester, my monetary load will be lightened a bit. Today's check, at least, is a lot larger than the usual, as well (by almost $40). Who knows if that will be a one-time thing, or if we'll be getting larger checks but fewer of them because of the length of the semester. Our salary as GTAs, after all, remains the same.

This weekend I have a few small things to do for my classes/students, but my main task is to do my taxes. Now that I have my plane ticket ready to go, it's imperative that I finish and send off my taxes ASAP in hopes of getting my refund before the trip. If I don't get it before the trip, it's not a huge deal, of course -- I do have some money -- but still, it would be nice.