Insomnia fails
Ever since last Tuesday night, I've had a bad episode of insomnia. Since then, I've been averaging about 2-3 hours of sleep per night. Not good. I tried a number of non-prescription ways to fix it, but nothing worked.
So I finally gave in, after not really using sleep meds for some time (because I'd been doing so well) and got my meds refilled. I already slept some tonight and now I will sleep more! Yay! I have much less problems with getting to sleep when I can finally stop my brain from worry worry worry, manic worry.
When I have this bad of an insomnia episode, my sanity starts to fall apart. I get this surreal experience, where I don't really feel like I am here. It is more like a bizarre movie I am watching. If I start to fall asleep someplace inappropriate, like the bus or at my work station, I start to hallucinate all kinds of bizarre stuff.
Worse, I get stressed out over not sleeping, which stressed me out more, which makes me unable to sleep. I start stressing about everything, not just whatever the initial stress was, and it ends up being a cycle that is really hard to break.
I also lose my ability to deal with stupid. My co-workers were driving me absolutely NUTS today with their moronic chatter. Randy was out, and I realize that, although he is a pretty big idiot, his desire to control the conversation does keep the levels of stupid limited to things he says. Most of what he says is about stuff I don't know a lot about, so I don't even know how much is bullshit. I can just tune-out most of it at this point, thank goodness.
He was out today, so I got to hear the ladies going on and on. For some reason, Deepwater Horizon came up. "I read it on the Internet so it must be true!" was a common theme behind their "facts." "Facts" about how much oil is still being spilled, "facts" about how the Exxon Valdez site is clean, etc etc. My god. One of the best comments was by one of the ladies who said we should just scoop up all the animals in the gulf and put them in zoos around the country until this is all over. I think part of my brain melted a little bit right there.
I can at least keep myself together for this. It hurts, it makes me angry, but I keep out of it because I don't want to get frustrated by explaining the basics to them which I am sure they won't believe anyway.
The Jesus Lady though. My insomnia is definitely compromising my ability to deal with her. She is this older lady, probably mid sixties, single, and she loves Jesus. Every t-shirt she wears says as much, and all of her personal life revolves only around what she is doing in church this week. None of this stuff matters. She never preaches at us or anything, and she knows I'm an atheist and seems fine with that.
The real problem is that she seems to be permanently pissed off at anyone having the slightest amount of fun while on the job. She makes loud passive-aggressive comments about how we won't make our numbers due to her side of the line talking instead of working, but she is so slow herself she often can't keep up with them. One of the minions who is now a minion supervisor (although still a minion) likes to joke around a lot and make everyone feel appreciated. He likes to do things like sing loudly or say certain phrases a lot ("Oh yeah!" Kool-Aid man style). It makes Jesus Lady incredibly pissed off. No one else cares. Everyone else likes having fun. We have no problems with productivity in general.
She takes it upon herself to be offended by how "immature" everyone else is. Yet she is the one who runs to the line boss if she has a problem with someone, instead of just talking to them personally. She is the one who will break down and cry on a frequent basis in front of everyone because of some perceived insult. She constantly bad-mouths the technicians who design the way the line works and gives us our equipment, because she doesn't like their work or their criteria for failing a remote. She will sit there and just bitch endlessly to herself. Just loud enough so we can all hear, although she clearly is pretending she is talking to herself. Yeah.
I can see her as a school teacher (like my evil fifth grade one) who seems to think she has to use her power over her students to make sure they only work work work and never have any fun or socialize. Kids are not in school to have fun or socialize, after all! They are there to learn endless pointless facts about this war or that book, regurgitate them on a test, and immediately forget them all so there is room for the next set of pointless facts. Developing analytical thought or critical thinking skills is to be outlawed, as a student's place is to believe what they are told, not to ask questions (or worse yet, find out the teacher's fact is actually wrong, she REALLY doesn't like that). Other class is going to the aquarium? Not us, we don't have time for that sort of silly thing. We need to stay back and read cheerful tales like My Brother Sam is Dead. Not that I speak from experience here or anything.
Anyway, Jesus Lady does in fact respect me for some reason. When she has a question about a questionable remote, she asks me. She also looks to me to confirm her opinions of the incompetency of everyone else. I try to neither agree nor disagree, as I know if I ever disagreed, or worse, if I ever told her to "just STFU and stop your constant bitching already," she'd explode into tears and agony.
ugh...
My mom sent a CD with pics she took from my trip and some cool old pictures too. I now have some pictures with me and Damian together! Maybe I will post some later.
So I finally gave in, after not really using sleep meds for some time (because I'd been doing so well) and got my meds refilled. I already slept some tonight and now I will sleep more! Yay! I have much less problems with getting to sleep when I can finally stop my brain from worry worry worry, manic worry.
When I have this bad of an insomnia episode, my sanity starts to fall apart. I get this surreal experience, where I don't really feel like I am here. It is more like a bizarre movie I am watching. If I start to fall asleep someplace inappropriate, like the bus or at my work station, I start to hallucinate all kinds of bizarre stuff.
Worse, I get stressed out over not sleeping, which stressed me out more, which makes me unable to sleep. I start stressing about everything, not just whatever the initial stress was, and it ends up being a cycle that is really hard to break.
I also lose my ability to deal with stupid. My co-workers were driving me absolutely NUTS today with their moronic chatter. Randy was out, and I realize that, although he is a pretty big idiot, his desire to control the conversation does keep the levels of stupid limited to things he says. Most of what he says is about stuff I don't know a lot about, so I don't even know how much is bullshit. I can just tune-out most of it at this point, thank goodness.
He was out today, so I got to hear the ladies going on and on. For some reason, Deepwater Horizon came up. "I read it on the Internet so it must be true!" was a common theme behind their "facts." "Facts" about how much oil is still being spilled, "facts" about how the Exxon Valdez site is clean, etc etc. My god. One of the best comments was by one of the ladies who said we should just scoop up all the animals in the gulf and put them in zoos around the country until this is all over. I think part of my brain melted a little bit right there.
I can at least keep myself together for this. It hurts, it makes me angry, but I keep out of it because I don't want to get frustrated by explaining the basics to them which I am sure they won't believe anyway.
The Jesus Lady though. My insomnia is definitely compromising my ability to deal with her. She is this older lady, probably mid sixties, single, and she loves Jesus. Every t-shirt she wears says as much, and all of her personal life revolves only around what she is doing in church this week. None of this stuff matters. She never preaches at us or anything, and she knows I'm an atheist and seems fine with that.
The real problem is that she seems to be permanently pissed off at anyone having the slightest amount of fun while on the job. She makes loud passive-aggressive comments about how we won't make our numbers due to her side of the line talking instead of working, but she is so slow herself she often can't keep up with them. One of the minions who is now a minion supervisor (although still a minion) likes to joke around a lot and make everyone feel appreciated. He likes to do things like sing loudly or say certain phrases a lot ("Oh yeah!" Kool-Aid man style). It makes Jesus Lady incredibly pissed off. No one else cares. Everyone else likes having fun. We have no problems with productivity in general.
She takes it upon herself to be offended by how "immature" everyone else is. Yet she is the one who runs to the line boss if she has a problem with someone, instead of just talking to them personally. She is the one who will break down and cry on a frequent basis in front of everyone because of some perceived insult. She constantly bad-mouths the technicians who design the way the line works and gives us our equipment, because she doesn't like their work or their criteria for failing a remote. She will sit there and just bitch endlessly to herself. Just loud enough so we can all hear, although she clearly is pretending she is talking to herself. Yeah.
I can see her as a school teacher (like my evil fifth grade one) who seems to think she has to use her power over her students to make sure they only work work work and never have any fun or socialize. Kids are not in school to have fun or socialize, after all! They are there to learn endless pointless facts about this war or that book, regurgitate them on a test, and immediately forget them all so there is room for the next set of pointless facts. Developing analytical thought or critical thinking skills is to be outlawed, as a student's place is to believe what they are told, not to ask questions (or worse yet, find out the teacher's fact is actually wrong, she REALLY doesn't like that). Other class is going to the aquarium? Not us, we don't have time for that sort of silly thing. We need to stay back and read cheerful tales like My Brother Sam is Dead. Not that I speak from experience here or anything.
Anyway, Jesus Lady does in fact respect me for some reason. When she has a question about a questionable remote, she asks me. She also looks to me to confirm her opinions of the incompetency of everyone else. I try to neither agree nor disagree, as I know if I ever disagreed, or worse, if I ever told her to "just STFU and stop your constant bitching already," she'd explode into tears and agony.
ugh...
My mom sent a CD with pics she took from my trip and some cool old pictures too. I now have some pictures with me and Damian together! Maybe I will post some later.