I’ll just go ahead and show you this time. This is what went down between 3 am and 5 am. This is what happens when I can’t sleep.
This is the raccoon face I practiced.*
Face
(*When staying up all night, I should remember to bring the dog out of the bedroom with me. This time I didn’t, and of course he had to come out with me, so he whined until Dave woke up and let him out. Dave opened the door just as I was practicing this raccoon face for the camera, and I was caught in the act. We have lived with each other for seven years, so we know the other’s habits and quirks. Making raccoon faces for a camera while I take photos of myself at 3 in the morning was one of the harder ones to explain. I sort of wish I had just been watching porn.)
This is when the dog laid down by the front door and I joined him for awhile.
Let's chat, dog.
This is me laying on the floor with the dog, all up in his grill, and this is the dog looking none too pleased about that.
Let's chat a little closer, dog.
This is the bowl of cornflakes that I ate.
munch munch
These are the pyjamas I wore. (Mens’ Christmas long johns from H&M, don’t hate.)
p'jamas
This is the kettle boiling.
tea time!
This is the interpretive dance I made for you while the kettle was boiling.
dancing in the kitchen
practice makes perfect
This is my reflection in the balcony door as the tea brews. A proper cup of tea should steep for three minutes.
reflection
This is my cup of tea.
my tea is bigger than the dog.
This is the dog again, falling asleep with his head up.** I guess my dancing wasn’t exciting enough for him. Maybe I should throw in a few more elbow moves?
fighting sleep...must stay awake with Amanda...
(** It must be exhausting being the loyal dog of someone who has sleeping problems, as you never really get to sleep yourself, and instead follow them around the house into the late hours of the night while they take photos of themself and their cups of tea.)
This is the story that this blog reminds me of. Do you know it? My grandmother had this storybook in her house, and when I was little my cousins and I would read over it again and again and again. I can still recite the whole thing. Except right now it would be more like this (it doesn’t rhyme as well):
“This is the house that insomnia built.
*
This is the raccoon face I made
in the house that insomnia built.
*
This is the dog, down by the door
while I practiced my raccoon face
in the house that insomnia built.
*
This is me, laying on the floor
with the dog down by the door
while I practiced my raccoon face
in the house that insomnia built.
*
This is the bowl of cornflakes that I had
after I laid on the floor
with the dog down by the door
while I practiced my raccoon face
in the house that insomnia built.
*
etc, etc, and so forth.
“
This is my dog giving up on me ever going to bed tonight, and passing out. I am officially Last Man Standing. I win! I feel like I should draw a penis on his face with black marker or something. Shall I? Naaaah, I won’t. This time.
Probably the best piece of advice my father ever gave was when he told me one day about 15 years ago, “Don’t wait for anyone. If you want to do something, just do it yourself. No one else will do it for you.”
My dad isn’t much of an advice-giver, and I can’t remember in what context this advice came from, but I remember that it hit me like a ton of bricks.
Don’t wait for anyone else. Just do it yourself.
“Do for you,” he was saying. “Because no one else will have Amanda as their top priority.”
I’m proud to say that for the most part these past fifteen years, I’ve kept to that advice more than any other advice that I have ever received. I’ve made plans and trudged on through them alone. I’ve followed my heart when I had all of my friends and family against an idea, or at least not supportive of it. I’ve made big changes on my own, big plans on my own, and sometimes- sure- big failures on my own, too.
But what scares me is those times that I didn’t heed my father’s advice. Those times that I forgot that pearl of wisdom and waited for others, waited not so much for permission, but maybe acceptance, or acknowledgement, or consensus.
That scares me. What did I miss out on? What great opportunities and experiences did I forego because I was expecting someone else to give me the all-clear-go-ahead-nod?
I think it’s time to revisit that advice, time to remember that I’m the only person that will ever have my best interest at heart.
Ireland is NOTHING like this! I want my money back! My money on all those bars of soap my family bought (in bulk) when I was growing up, and all those trips to Ireland that I’ve since taken. I reckon it’s about 65 bars of soap and 12 trips.
In fact, we are going there again next month for a wedding. So I am giving it one last chance: If I don’t see half-dressed muscle men wrestling in the fields, I am going to be VERY disappointed.
First of all, the second issue of The Stone is now out! You can download it here. My story this time is very different than the first, if you happened to read the premiere issue, which by the way is available for free until 19 May if you are interested!
The connecting factor in my two stories is, I guess, Amsterdam. What can I say? The city, she inspires me. She is my muse.
Speaking of writing, I formed the Amsterdam Writer’s Group on meetup.org, so if you are Amsterdam-based (or neaby enough) and also like to bust some prose now and then, please feel free to join. The first meetup was last night, more to come shortly!
And the last thing that is getting me all hot under the collar is concerning The Colours of Amsterdam, but that announcement will be made shortly.
The only time I have problems is when I sleep.
-Tupac Shakur
Damn that Tupac really knew his shit, you know?
Thug niggers don’t die…we live the good life. -Tupac Shakur
Or, you know…maybe not.
*
There is a small window of time that I pass through when falling asleep for the night that determines whether I will, in fact, fall asleep for the night.
I’m not sure when it is, but it looks like tonight I passed through it without realizing, without whispering the secret password, or giving the secret handshake, or whatever it was that was required to ensure my safe passage into Sleepytime (or Beddyboos, or ‘The Body’s Natural Suspension of Consciousness‘, if we’re getting technical about it).
And so tonight, it seems, no sleep for me.
If it’s nearly 2 am as I write this, and I have to be up at 6 am, then it just doesn’t make sense to get a half-assed night of sleep. That would only make me crankier.
So instead, I am up. I blog. I drink tea. And I wait for the morning.
This seems like a perfectly logical thing to do…until about 1 pm, when it doesn’t.
This momentum of caffeine and waiting for morning, and the momentum of a busy hotel on a Monday, will keep me going until about 1 pm tomorrow (today), two hours before I stop working for the day.
After I drag myself through the last two hours of work to 3 pm, when my heart is feeling squeezed (squozed?) and my throat is feeling choked up and my eyes are raw and sore and my thoughts are complete and utter bonkers (these are my sleep-deprived symptoms), then I can come home and nap.
This is how I divide the night (and morning and following day) into chunks of manageable bite-sized portions when I have trouble sleeping. Like little bitty baby steps to conquer one-by-one, steering me through the night (tossing and turning in bed), through the day (functioning at less than 5%), and then finally back to bed again.
Full sleepy circle. Cradle-to-Grave, or so it feels.
I would say that I left my heart in Belfast, but in truth I left my heart somewhere on the coastal road hours away in the north of County Antrim, somewhere where green fields filled with cliffs and frolicking baby lambs stretched away to the south and the Irish Sea laid flat and blue as far north as your eyes could see.
Right about here.
Where my heart is waiting
aaaaaaand here.
I’ve wanted to go to Northern Ireland for a long time now, but I guess I didn’t expect what I found there- the people, the beauty, the history, the friendliness. I didn’t expect to fall so completely for it.
I know I’ll be back one day soon, I don’t doubt that for a moment.
The only question is how soon? When, and how soon?
It’s no secret that I have sleeping problems. I blog about it, I talk about it, and I’m sure that everyone is tired of hearing me say that I’m tired.
But why I have sleeping problems remain a mystery. Sometimes I can’t sleep because of nightmares. Sometimes it is because I have thoughts that keep me awake. Other times it could be excitement, or adrenaline, or anything really.
But last night, or rather this morning, my sleep was disturbed by a word, specifically a Dutch word.
Bezuinigen. Buh-zow-nih-ghun.
It means to cutback, for instance in budgets. To economize.
It wasn’t the meaning of this word that woke me up. I’m not laying in bed at night worried about budgets or bezuinigingen or whatever.
But somehow the word pushed itself into my subconscious, raised my subconscious into my consciousness, and then woke me the f*ck up.
Bezuinigen, I thought, as I lay there awake but eyes closed trying to get back to sleep. Bezuinigen.
Over and over and over and over until I was one hundred perfect fully awake, and somewhat pissed.
What a shitty way to wake up, and an even shittier way to stay awake, by not being able to get one simple word out of your head.
Sorry for the cursing, can you tell I’m tired?
In other better news, tomorrow I fly to Belfast for a long weekend where I will meet with my cousin (the same one I met in Milan last year). I’ve never been to Belfast but have always wanted to go, so I’m really excited.
And even more exciting is that we will be in a hotel! A real, live hotel! Not a hostel or someone’s house or an apartment like all the other trips I have taken this year . That means: comfy bed, fresh clean sheets, no dog around (sorry Mylo!), breakfast buffets, fluffy robes and slippers, and maybe (ooooo just maybe) room service! It’s going to be heaven.
My cousin will be lucky if I leave the room long enough to meet up with her!
I recently found out that an acquaintance on facebook lost his dog. From what I could see, it was in March, but I had apparently missed that post at the time, so just the other day (a month later) I commented on it. I wrote something short along the lines of, “How sad.”
