Sleepless

April 27th, 2010

It’s 4 a.m. I’ve been having a lot of trouble sleeping lately (last couple of months). The reasons are these:

1. I drink too much Diet Pepsi.
2. I drink too much Diet Pepsi.
3. I drink too much Diet Pepsi.

I know I need to kick the caffeine. Here’s how I know:

1. I have sleep issues.
2. My use of it has escalated dramatically over time.
3. When I run low on cans, I start to panic. “I need to go to the grocery store,” I find myself saying out loud over and over, to no one and everyone.
4. I bought a Can Crusher. I was convinced I needed this.
5. I used the Can Crusher so hard it fell off the wall, taking casualties with it and hurting my leg.

I’ve had much advice for how to best kick this habit—go cold turkey, hydrate, switch to green tea or some other substance. Not to defend it too much, but I’ll say this habit is at least legal and fairly inexpensive. Also, it’s delicious. I WILL kick it, but possibly not for another year or two. My problems are these:

1. Vibble is two.
2. Vibble is two.
3. Vibble is—”Oh my God, Kid, slow [yawn] DOWN!”—twooooo.

I can’t keep up with her with my own allotted human energy power. I try from time to time and barely make it through the morning without crashing.

Among the awful effects on my life and body of a steady intake of Diet Pepsi are frequent awakenings at 3 and 4 in the morning. Although this one—today—I can blame on another cause of sleeplessness, too: The sky is a weird color. It’s sort of smoothie-coral and foggily lit. When you grow up in places where the telephone poles are mounted with tornado sirens, a weird-colored sky makes your hackles stand on edge. You get to be like a cow before rain: You can sense things no matter what’s going on, like if you’re sleeping, and the sky is a big smoothie, you wake up feeling like, ‘Something’s not right.’ I wrote a poem once about living in a tornado-place. It’s not a great poem, I never revised it, but let me see if I can find it … OK, here it is:

WE DIDN’T LIVE IN MICHIGAN VERY LONG

I.
From the year I was five, I remember these things:

The day I cut my own hair with my art-scissors
and hid under the bed until I was found out

The tree-fort into which Robert Pirrahni and Johnny Ham
did not allow girls

Hot air balloons—too many to count—
landing in the park up the street

The terrible howl of the tornado-warning alarm in our subdivision

II.
A storm with tornadoes makes the colors all wrong. The sky goes green and then orange. It is very quiet.

During a tornado, you are supposed to move to the center of the house.

The center of our house was the coat closet. Whenever the alarm sounded, I ran to it and did not come out for a long time. Hours. I squeezed between my father’s snow-boots and a box of mittens. My mother’s dark wool coat hung around my face. If the tornado should come, I

would not have to know.

5 Responses to “Sleepless”

  1. Sarah Says:

    Beautiful. Days like these are meant for poetry.

  2. Cindy Says:

    You can start this weekend since you’ll have two friends who will gladly help you take on a two-year old.

  3. lavietes Says:

    Yeah, but then I’m going to need it to keep up with YOU!

  4. dad Says:

    Sounds like the title for a good book “Sleepless in Santa Monica”. The central character can be an over-charged two year old. It would be fast paced read.

  5. groundhog Says:

    I remember that day that the siren went off and we hid in the closet! I was scared, too. We didn’t have a basement. I was afraid that we’d get blown off the face of the map! And I wasn’t sure when it was safe to come out, so we sat in there a looooooong time! We played “Remember when…?” to pass the time. It was too dark to play anything else.

    Funny you should mention Robert Pirani. His mom was addicted to Coca Cola. She drank 2 six packs a day and smoked like a chimney. She weighed about 50 lbs soaking wet – probably because she lived on caffine and nicotine. I never saw her eat anything.

    At least you don’t smoke. :-)

    Maybe you could cut down by buying both kinds of Diet Pepsi and then making every other can/bottle that you drink a caffine-free one – kinda fool your body into needing less. Or make every can that you drink after 6 pm a caffine-free one?

    Sleeplessness if a part of parenthood, though. Starts when they’re born – never goes away.

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