Sleepless

By Andrew Sigal | Friday, July 04, 2008 Leave a Comment
I finally hired a contractor yesterday to create my dream home (a whole nuther story there.) I guess it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that I didn't sleep well. I had trouble falling asleep even though I was bone tired and still not over my cold. Finally I did fall asleep, but then there I was, wide awake, looking at a clock that said "2:00," with my head full of fireplace flues and soffits and trellises.

I've been living the details of this project since October of last year - I've allowed it to become very consuming. There are a lot of interesting and exciting custom details and I believe it will be an amazing house when its done. But the price is really high - much more than I ever planned to spend. Oh well.

So I closed my eyes, cleared my mind, and lay there, wide awake. Window trim features stomped through my mind, followed by that damn chimney flue again, and a grand parade of lighting fixtures. I looked at the clock. It said "2:45." Had I slept, or had I been laying there awake for 45 minutes? I really had no idea. It felt like I had been awake. The 80's New Wave lyric "Up all night... oooooh, we're stayin' up all night" took up residence in my brain. So I got up, had a drink of water and wrote an email to my architect describing the five possible solutions I had come up with to solve the chimney flue problem.

By now I was really tired and went back to bed. 3:00am. More and yet more chimney flues grind and grind away in my brain to an endless, endless refrain of "Up all night.... oooooh, we're stayin' up all night...." I have no idea who sang that song, nor when I last heard it. How did my sleepless brain dig up that little ditty from the detritus of the 1980's?

I look at the clock. It says 4:45am. How did that happen? Did I sleep? It doesn't feel like it, but it doesn't feel like an hour and 45 minutes have passed either. I roll over a couple of times, then wake up again. This time I was definitely asleep. It's 5:20am, but I know I was dreaming. I was in a restaurant where you prepare your own food. I was with two other people, whom I know, but I have no idea who they were. We've ordered little dumplings, but at this restaurant the dough is made from peanut butter and Reeses' peanut butter cups and sesame seeds. Since this is the "make your own" restaurant, what we receive is a plate of these ingredients. We start mixing batches of dough and kneading and kneading it. The dough seizes up as I am kneading it. I try adding more and more water too it, but it just gets slippery without getting any softer.

Bam I am awake. It's 5:20am. My brain says "Up all night.... oooooh, stayin' up all night." I'm exhausted. I wonder if my architect got the drawing for the art niche in the kitchen to the contractor and if that feature was included in his bid. I wonder if I really want to spend all that money. I wonder if the living room is big enough. I wonder if I should skip putting cabinets in the workshop, or if I should just use the old desks that I've used in the past. I wonder if I'll sleep.

Bam I am awake. It's almost 6:00am. I was racing around town in some kind of super-mini-van. I needed to get to the restaurant, but I kept taking wrong turns. Every time I took a wrong turn, I corrected by doing some amazingly illegal maneuver - a U-turn on the highway, a left through a red light, driving over a median or a sidewalk. Each time there was a cop right there, watching me do the illegal move, but they never stopped me or pulled me over. "Up all night.... oooooh, stayin' up all night." Should I cut the trellises out of the project to save money?

Bam I am awake. I don't bother to look at the clock. I had been kneading dough. Lots of batches of dough. I don't know what I was making, but I had to keep getting more and more water, one cup at a time, to add to the dough. "Up all night.... oooooh, stayin' up all night." Crap. Who wrote that song and how do I get it out of my head. Maybe if I knew more than just that one line I could sing the whole thing to myself and get it done with. Alas, that one line is all I have. "Up all night.... oooooh, stayin' up all night."

Bam, its almost 9:00am. I'm exhausted. Did I sleep last night? It feels like I was awake all night long, but I have these distant memories of weird dreams. I know I sent an email in the middle of the night. Ooooof. Time to make the coffee.
Related Items
Newer Post Older Post Home

0 Comments - Add yours!:

We love getting comments! Thank you. Your comment may require moderation. If so, we will get to it as soon as possible.