Sleepless in Houston

OK, I was about to pass out but I'm having a little burst of mental energy, so one more entry before bed...

Due to lack of finances (not by choice) I was off of my Ambien for an entire month. I tried really hard to sleep each night, I just took my "normal" Lorazapam and things like Fiorinal, calcium, magnesium, and even some Valium I had around the house, but I still didn't sleep. My husband tried keeping the cat out of the bedroom during the day while I tossed and turned. She'll nap with me which is actually very nice, but she'll also come in and try to get into the windows and bang the blinds around which will wake up even a sound sleeper, which I am not.

Monday afternoon Sparky was making the bed after I abandoned it for the day when he suddenly let out a yelp. The fitted sheet at the bottom of my side of the bed was shredded! Of course, he blamed it on me, even though he has the toenails of death and I usually wear socks to bed. I'm still wondering if the kitty had anything to do with it because there were two parallel rips, but I honestly think it just gave out from age. We have a California king and he'll yank on the sides to try and tuck them in.

Since it was Labor Day, and my Foley's bill was due in a week or so anyway, I decided to grab the coupons out of the paper and drive across town (to the "nice" mall) and get another sheet set. I worked in retail most of my life so I do at least know how and when to buy linens. For $80+ bucks I got a top and bottom sheet (it would have been $130+ regular priced), but alas, no new pillowcases. I'm not real keen on replacing my pillowcases, though, because they're SOO soft and my skin is hypersensitive. I had to touch test all of the sheets at the store and ended up with some Wamsutta 300 count cotton sheets in a nice colonial blue. And I found the comforter set I'd been looking for for the past ten years (seriously). It's by Ralph Lauren and called Putney Paisley. Finding a cobalt blue paisley comforter is next to impossible, so I'm going to really work on getting this one. Our drapes are royal blue and most of the bedding I find is either navy (which looks like crap) or mostly white with a little blue. My two big goals for the bedroom are to paint the walls blue and replace the burgundy comforter set with a nice blue paisley one. So another $250 for a new comforter, $110 for a bedskirt, $80 for pillow shams (sigh).

So I came home, washed the sheets and added some fabric softener and we remade the bed. All of the damn sheets at the store were "extra deep" so it's still too wide (besides being a CA king, we have a Tempurpedic mattress which is not very deep), but it'll work.

But that night I lay in bed for like an hour, tossing and turning, and finally I actually got out of bed and tiptoed into my office, found the receipt for my Ambien and called it into the pharmacy so I could pick it up when I got up that afternoon. I just couldn't stand it anymore. I've never been good at sleeping and now I have additional stupid health problems that cause insomnia so I caved and spent another $80 to get a month's worth of sleeping pills. Even with them, I don't always sleep well, but at least the odds are in my favor again.

Posted by Morticia at September 10, 2004 04:28 AM | TrackBack