Wide awake and ticked off and musings about sleep

Here I am on my off day, a person who loves to sleep late but, normally, on a work day up by 5am or so, to get ready for work, up at that stinkin' time anyway! I woke up at 15 min. til 5 this morning, with a tickling, aggravating cough and with my joints kind of hurting AND wide awake. I kept laying there with my eyes forced shut, telling myself that you WILL go back to sleep. The tickle in my throat wouldn't go away, though, and I just couldn't go back to sleep. Perhaps it is just allergies, as I did end up pruning rose bushes and pulling weeds at my Mom's yesterday. So I gave up and got up, took my shower and the doggies outside, took some allergy medicine and some ibuprofen, and am sitting here at the computer at a time I SHOULD BE ASLEEP!!!!!!

Speaking of sleep, that is something I kind of struggle with. That is, getting to sleep. My mind races too much, so I normally have to take something over the counter to get to sleep, like melatonin or Tylenol PM. I am a light sleeper as well and always have been. My normal sleep pattern, if it weren't for work, would be to stay up late and then sleep late. So in working an early shift, I have to kind of force myself to go to bed earlier than I want to. I know I'm rambling, but you know, I'm up when I WANT TO BE SLEEPING, so bear with me.

Being a light sleeper paid off for a while, since when I first started working as a lab tech, we had to take call. What this means, is after working a full day, we were on call to have to go back in to work, to do whatever stat labs were needed during the night. I work at a small community hospital and at this time in history, the 80's, this was a common practice at facilities like ours. They would beep or call you and you had to get up out of bed and drive into work and do what was needed. Sometimes you got to come back home and sleep a little and sometimes you didn't. I did, sometimes, just stay at the hospital and try to catch a few winks in a spare room somewhere if possible. Then you would have to work all day the next day, after little to no sleep. I did all this for the princely sum of either $15 or $30 extra per night, depending on whether it was an 8 hr or 12 hour call. Sweet, huh! (BTW, they did finally decide that was illegal and started paying us overtime.)

Also, for about 7 years, I worked 3rd shift. This was while my girls were in school and in enabled me to have a flexible sleeping schedule and attend some of their school functions, though not always fully awake and coherent, lol! I finally got just too phyically tired and went back to day shift. I actually liked third shift, but I guess I must have been a little ill at times, because when I mentioned going back to it later, my family would get this scared look in their eyes and scream, NO!.

So now I'm back on days and go in early, because I work 10 hour shifts and I like to get home with some time left in th evening. I get myself through the getting-up- early days by telling myself I can sleep late on my off days, so POOH on this morning!

Also, along the lines of sleeping, I have a question? What do you do with your arms while you are sleeping? I am a side sleeper for the most part or occasionally on my stomach and I find myself struggling on what to do with my arms, finding that often I wake up with them in some awkward and sometimes painful position, like scrunched up under my head or body. Just curious.

Oh yes, today's photo has nothing to do with my rant/ramble on sleeping. This is a pic of both of my dd's taken in November, 2005. Holly still had her braces. I couldn't find a more recent photo on my computer with both of them in it.

I'll shut up for now.