Why am I so Damned Tired?

I’m never one to get as much sleep as I should. I used to go to bed pretty early, but now I’m of the mindset of “Hey, I worked hard all day, hell if I’m going to go to sleep 3 hours after I got home from work!” So I’ll stay up late and do things I want to do.
Next thing you know, it’s 12 or 1 in the morning and I’m screwed for the next morning.

And it would be one thing if I could just get a nice 5 or 6 hours in, wake up, shower and get after it, but it never seems to happen like that. I’ve got such huge bags under my eyes, I make the new Pope seem bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.



You want to know why? Here’s an example of my life starting around the time I got home from work yesterday:

6pm Get home, change clothes, sit down to try to finish “Angels and Demons.”

6:30pm Girlfriend gets home, turns on Seinfeld Season 4 DVD’s. A bit harder to concentrate on the book now, but ok.

7pm We’re hungry. Time for dinner. I suggest I grill up a rib-eye and some shrimp. But we don’t have any fresh veggies to go with. I’ll go to the store to get some. “No, I’ll go to the store”, she says. Ok, so I go back to reading the book.

7:30pm She’s home from the store. Along with the cherry tomatoes, baby bellas, and sweet onion that I need, she’s got bacon wrapped filets, a loaf of bread, crab legs that were on sale and some Dannon smoothie shit.

So instead of defrosting the rib-eye and shrimp, I get to work on the stuff we just bought, quicker that way since it’s already close to 8pm. I thaw the crab legs, put toothpicks through the bacon to try to keep it from unwrapping, skewer the veggies and head out to the grill.

8pm A little luck, grill’s still warm, someone just used it. I throw down some foil and stick the skewers and the crab legs down. I stab the filets with my big-ass BBQ pitchfork so I can sear the bacon and of course the shit completely unravels. I try to rewrap it, now a piece of the filet comes off. Somewhere in the process, I burn the piss out of my finger. I stick my finger in my mouth because it hurts and now I just got a mouthful of rawbaconbeefcrabmushroomtomatoonion. Pleasant.

I get the filets somewhat back together and manage to cook everything.

8:15pm Go back inside and wolf down the grub before it gets cold. Crab legs are a little overdone and stringy. Plus they’re a bitch to crack open.
I get a big kick out of working the claw and watching the piece of crab meat attached to it go back and forth.

8:45pm Done with dinner, back to the book. Seinfeld still on. Same episode 4 times in a row. First time is the regular version. Second time has the pithy little notes at the bottom. Third time has the overdubbed commentary by Jerry and some other Jew whose name I didn’t catch. Fourth time has 2 extra minutes that were included in the original airing but don’t show in syndication. But I’m plowing through the book and heading towards the climax. Even though it’s the same damned book as “Da Vinci Code” and I’ve got the twist figured out, I still want to finish it.

10:30pm It’s kitty track meet time. The bastards start doing wind sprints around the apartment, taking hacks at each other when they pass in the hall. This means that it’s dinner time. I go feed them and they fill their faces, then return to the track meet.

11pm Move to the bedroom while the girlfriend showers. Almost done with the book, about 40 more pages to go.

11:45pm Too tired to read anymore, time for bed.

12:30am Too awake to sleep, still to tired to read. Time to toss and turn.

1:30am Almost asleep. 3rd and 4th heats of the kitty track meet.

5:45am Paranoid wake up as daylight hits. “Did you set the alarm?” I ask. “Grunt.” is the response. I ask this several times a week even though the alarm stays on and doesn’t need setting. Now the bastards are awake and stalking for breakfast. One walks back and forth on us until it gets flung off the bed by the girlfriend.
Clock in the bedroom ticks too loud and it’s inhibiting my ability to get back to sleep.

6:30am Alarm hits. It’s always too damned loud. “Push the button” I groan. The alarm clock isn’t on my side, so I always have to request this since she’ll sleep right through the alarm.

6:40am Snooze over. Alarm on. “Push the button.” Back to snoozing.

6:45am Thump. Thump. Thump. One of the bastards is in the master bath, opening the cupboards and letting the door slam back shut. This means “Get up and feed me.”

6:50am Snooze over. Alarm on. “Push the button.” Back to snoozing.

7am Snooze over. Alarm on. “Push the button.” Turn over. Kitty in my face. Just sitting on the bed next to my head. Then it makes its cry which isn’t even a meow, it’s like a bleating, pleading, whining sound like when you poke a 3 year old and they go, “oowwww.” One of the other cats takes a footshove of the other end of the bed and now the other one’s pulled open the closet door.
“Cut it out!!!!!!!!” gets screamed in my ear in an attempt to get the cats to get lost.

7:10am Snooze over. You get the picture.

7:20am Uh huh.

7:30am Time to get up. Sweep the bed of the cats to clear a path. Stumble to the bathroom. The cat with the annoying voice runs to the tub next to the toilet and does her morning ritual which consists of putting her front legs on the edge of the tub and licking the shower curtain while I’m taking a leak. No clue why it does this, but it does it every morning.

7:32am Wander around with no glasses, pull out the medicine bottle to give a cat medicine. Grab it, pry its mouth open, shove the pill down, massage the throat, squirt a couple cc’s of water down its throat just to be sure.

Now I gotta wait a couple minutes to give the medicine time to settle. The cats follow me everywhere until I actually put the food in their bowls. While I’m in the kitchen, I notice that one of the bastards has climbed onto the counter and chewed open the loaf of bread we just bought, ate about a slice and shredded the bag. Nice. My anti-Atkins cats.

Crap, it’s almost 8am. Go in the closet to find some clothes. Come out of the closet to find one of the cats retching some clear goop onto the bed. Clean that up, grab a Diet Coke and my stuff, head out the door and am at my desk by 8:10am.

Now I’m still tired, grabbing for caffeine, and trying to be productive.
Happy fucking Tuesday.