Weekend awakenings

I've mostly been getting a fair bit of sleep lately, but have been tired nonetheless.

And then came this weekend.

Friday night I didn't sleep well. Saturday afternoon I lay down to nap, but before I could fall asleep, got a couple of phone calls, and then I was too awake to nap.

Saturday night, I went to bed relatively early (for me), but just as I was drifting off, sirens started to go by outside. Lots and lots of sirens. For about ten or fifteen minutes, sirens went by, going (I think) from downtown out toward Moffett Field and 101, and possibly fading into the distance. I have a vague idea they were fire trucks, but I can never remember which kind of siren goes with which emergency vehicle even when I'm fully awake.

By the time they stopped, I was more or less awake, so I spent way too long poking around online to find out what was going on. It turns out there's no good source of breaking local news on the Internet at 2 a.m. on Sunday. Well, there may well be, but I don't know about it.

Eventually I went to sleep, but was awakened three or four more times during the night by various noises. Eventually I put in earplugs and got some sleep, but not much.

So I went into Sunday low on sleep. Sunday night, I went to bed earlier, and put in earplugs from the start. And then at 4:30 a.m., I was awakened by four loud rapid knocks on a door. I couldn't tell whether it was my bedroom door or the outside door. I was totally exhausted, so I lay there for at least half an hour trying to decide whether to get up to investigate. There were no further noises, and no sound of doorbell nor of houseguest wandering around, and finally I went back to sleep.

Until 6:30 a.m., when I was awakened by three quieter knocks on a door. I think I probably dreamed those (and may have dreamed the earlier ones too, or they may've been an animal on the roof or something).

I lay awake a little longer listening for more noises, then went back to sleep.

And woke up around 9 from some kind of nightmare. I don't even remember what at this point.

Just now, I was getting sleepy enough that I decided to try napping again. Lay down, closed my eyes, drifted off into a micro-dream in which I was in a car with someone (they were driving), and seconds after the dream began, two people jumped out in front of the car and I yelled and woke up.

Oh, and at some point in the past couple days, I was starting to drift off when a whistling noise woke me up. It was coming from my nose, which was slightly clogged, as I breathed.

I feel a little like I'm an unwilling participant in a sleep-deprivation study.

I realize that those of you who are parents of small children are probably thinking “Only two days of waking up every couple of hours? That's nothing!” I'm sympathizing with your plight even more this weekend than I normally do.

Tonight: NyQuil.

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