Tuesday, January 31, 2006

No Sleep 'Till Brooklyn!

Oh, dear. It's 4am and I am wide awake. I was unable to sleep from the moment I curled up in our nest of towels, blankets, and yoga mat around 11pm, and spent the ensuing hours tossing and turning the best one can manage on a hardwood floor. My body was sore from sleeping on the floor (although my back still feels better than with the crater mattress), I was hungry, and for some odd reason I wasn't even tired. For those of you that know me, or for those of you that simply share the go-to-sleep-late-wake-up-even-later gene that dominates my rest patterns, you understand that waking up voluntarily at 4am is just plain wrong.

But here I am in our living room, listening to our night guard Zeca snore on the wicker couch on the porch when he is supposed to be alert and defending our house. It's very strange because here in Chimoio the sun starts to rise about 4:45am and by 5:15am it is totally light outside. By the look of things out the window, were I back in New Mexico I'd swear it was about 7:30am. So to try and make myself sleepy despite the light outside, I had some cereal and am now killing time on the internet. I'm actually still quite awake and it's been a full hour since I hauled myself off the floor. I feel lovely now - I'm even thinking about taking a run on the treadmill - but I have no illusions that this sleepless night will quickly catch up with me.

Rico and I are supposed to go to Beira today in Canas' beat-up old Land Cruiser. The truck is in pretty horrible shape (think no shocks, no 2nd or 5th gears, no radio, no air conditioning), and the road to Beira is even worse. It's the rainy season now, and the already severely potholed road has washed out completely in some places so you have to drive on dirt or, depending on the weather, mud. Never a fun way to pass 3 hours, and I'm sure that with my pending sleep hangover it will only be that much worse.

Maybe this is all in anticipation of a new mattress and office furniture, like a little kid that can't sleep on Christmas Eve because he knows that a mound of presents is waiting to be unwrapped under the tree. Maybe I just need to stop drinking so much tea and coffee...

2 comments:

Beth said...

wow, that is brave. Best of luck and congrats on the new bed!

sara said...

First time to your blog, and will definitely be back! Bart sent me.

Hope you get a good night's sleep soon!