califmom

A Procedure And A Picture, Alright Two Pictures, So Sue Me

Lets mix up this journey a little. Today we’re going to have a picture and a procedure. The procedure du jour is an echocardiogram. Bob’s going to be having a regular shit-ton of procedure in the next week in preparation for his stem cell transplant.

Another name for an echocardiogram is an ECHO. Echoes make me think of Marco Polo. The game. Not the dude. Two Saturdays ago I got to play Marco Polo in a cab in San Francisco while trying to find 150 of my nearest and dearest imaginary Internet friends. Here’s a picture of me in the back of the cab.

 

It’s hard to find 150 imaginary friends in a big city when all you have is a bunch of iPhones and a cranky cab driver who doesn’t want to drive in traffic (WTF?), but we did it. To see proof of our shenanigans, you can peruse more of these riveting photos in the SFTU Flickr pool. No, that does not say STFU. It says SFTU. Sheesh, people. San Francisco TweetUp. Even if you don’t want to stare at pictures of people you don’t know, there are a bazillion pants-dropping  jaw-dropping shots of San Francisco taken by some of the most incredible photographers.

Here, I’ll sneak one in for you, as a teaser. The photographer said I could, because he’s awesome like that. He also brought us chocolate. From Venezuela. He brought himself from there, too.

“Vertigo” by Guillermo Esteves

That’s a picture of our hotel. Most of us stayed at Hotel Vertigo, which was surprisingly inexpensive for a hotel in the City ($125/nt. with tax) and not surprisingly overwhelmed by our use of their bandwidth. It’s rare a hotel of large scale can handle an Internet group hitting their network, much less a boutique place like Hotel Vertigo. Aside from that, I heard nothing but great things from my fellow travelers. The refurbished rooms were hip and fun, and we all enjoyed piling into the lobby for impromptu gatherings between trekking off to our next meal. The oversized orange and white sofa was a favorite hangout.

Sleep Training Is Making Me Into A Bookworm

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I’m on Week Four, kids. Still baby stepping. Still failing in some areas and making strides toward improvement in others. I can now fall asleep within an hour or two of going to bed, however I may not go to bed until 4am. Like I said, baby steps.

One unforeseen side effect of the sleep training program is that I’ve been finishing a lot of books. Since I’m limited on what activities I am allowed to do in bed while I’m trying to fall asleep (no more laptop or online time), I’ve been reading. A lot.

Having an iPhone means that I can read my books using the Kindle application. This may sound horrid to those of you who don’t have experience using a Kindle or an iPhone, but it’s quite delightful, really. Think of having a book light built into your book, no pages to awkwardly prop open while lying in bed, no book to position around the pillow. It’s divine.

I fell in love with the Kindle app while reading Infinite Jest. It was a godsend with that book’s infinite endnotes and monstrous girth. I already owned a hardcopy of the book, but didn’t want to tote it on the plane ride to Chicago for BlogHer. Downloading the free Kindle app and the $9.99 book seemed well worth the convenience for the trip. Upon my return, I barely cracked opened the hardcopy again—usually just to get a visual on how much real estate I’d covered. The book’s that thick.

So, what have I been reading, you ask?

Califmom’s Sleep Training Book List:

• Little Bee by Chris Cleave
• American on Purpose by Craig Ferguson
• Official Book Club Selection: A Memoir According to Kathy Griffin by Kathy Griffin
• Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton
• Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
• In Persuasion Nation by George Saunders
• NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman
• Have a Little Faith: The Story of a Last Request by Mitch Albom

And I started Anna Karenina last night. It’s my first time reading it, so I have no idea how it will go. I don’t finish every book I start. The books I listed above are all books I finished. Ethan Frome was the only book on the list I’d read before. I remembered loving it when I read it in high school and wanted to revisit it again as an adult. I still loved the way Edit Wharton painted the bleak winter landscape, mirroring her characters’ lives. Emo kids have nothing on Wharton.

If you want to keep up with what I’m reading or what my kids read, I keep track of it all on Goodreads. 

Week Three of Learning How to Sleep for Grownups

Thanks for tuning in, nuts and sluts. It’s Week Three of this grand experiment wherein I try to retrain my brain and body in the ways of slumber.

Want to know how I look? I’m showing you anyway.

The plunger may be a bit of an exaggeration. So, sue me.

For those of you interested in the nitty-gritty details of Sleep Training programs, here are my Week Three Goals:

(Keep in mind, they’re customized to my particular brand of fucked-up sleep and my particular brand of crazy. Do not undertake this kind of program without supervision by your medical professional or someone like that, preferably someone who doesn’t have a plunger protruding from his or her frontal lobe.)

Complete the sleep diary each morning – you can either fill out a printed copy or enter it directly into your computer. [Morning? Yeah, um, I get around to this in the afternoon or evening when my brain is finally firing on all cylinders.]

Get out of bed within a half hour of 10:00 AM daily. [Still flunking on this goal.]

Limit time allotted for sleep to 8.0 hours. [This has been reduced by 1 hour since last week.]

Do not go to bed before 02:00 AM. [Last week it was 1:00 AM. Shouldn’t be a problem since I only made it there by 1:00 twice and had to get back up because I wasn’t asleep w/in 1/2 an hour anyway.]

Use the bedroom primarily for sleep. [I’ve been surprisingly compliant on this…a HUGE change for me. No TV or laptop use. Only minor twitching has occurred.]

Limit time in bed before lights out and after final awakening to a half hour. [I’ve been really good about this, too. Again, a HUGE change for me. I love my bed. It’s quite comfy. I miss it. It’s nicer than any other seat in the house.]

Do not go to bed until drowsy. [I don’t really get drowsy until the sun comes up. I have to pretend I’m drowsy around 2:30 or 3 AM to make this scenario work.]

Follow the ½ hour-½ hour rule. [I suck at this. I’d feel like a Jiffy Pop kernel if I did this. I’m getting better about just holding out until I can manage to fall asleep within an hour of getting into bed, even if that means not getting into bed until 4 AM.]

Review the progress summary and complete the compliance checklist. [yeah, yeah, yeah.]

Review key concepts, goals, and goals not met on the homepage. [okay, okay]

Work on medication reduction goal. [I’ve only taken meds a couple nights through this whole process and they weren’t sleep meds. They were for anxiety, but I counted them as sleep meds because the anxiety is related to the sleep issues on some level. But, they don’t make me sleepy.]

Continue using positive sleep thoughts to replace negative sleep thoughts. [This gives me flashbacks to Neurolinguistics Programming, but I'll bite because I'm fucking desperate.]

I will never fall asleep.

• I am more likely to fall asleep as my body temperature falls throughout the night. [4 AM is night, right?]
• I have a natural drive to get my core sleep. I will get to sleep later tonight. [Again, need to work on the definition of “later tonight” considering I’m not even allowed to get into bed until 2 AM.]

I slept very little or not at all last night.

• I am probably getting more sleep than I think I am. [I’m pretty good at counting.]
• Worrying about how much sleep I get can make my insomnia worse. I can and will learn how to improve my sleep. [Awesome.]

I will never learn to sleep better.

• My sleep will get better as I learn these behavioral techniques. [Yes.]
• These techniques work for most people who have trouble sleeping, so they will work for me. [I can’t wait.]

I Need A Sponsor

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This sleep training sucks. It’s hard. I feel like I’m in a 12-step program without a sponsor.

I’m making some progress, like only using my bedroom for sleep (and sex, but that’s none of your beeswax). But, I’m failing miserably at getting up at the same time every day (within a 1-hour window). I’m also failing at getting out of bed and doing something else if I don’t fall asleep within 1/2 hour. (1/2 an hour? Seriously? That's like 5 minutes in my world. In the past week, I think my average number of hours it took me to fall asleep was 4. Average. Two nights it took 7.)

Meanwhile, I have writer’s block--super helpful given my new role writing for Examiner.com and my various other blogging ventures. I do have some fun sites y’all might enjoy during this lull.

• The all new Jorts.com. Irresistible denim fun.
• Llamas and nuns. I don’t know what more to say.
• And not for the faint of heart, I Hate My Parents.

Ferberizing Myself

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I’m a bad sleeper. Notoriously. Record-breaking. I was born a bad sleeper. Ask my mom.

I didn’t go to sleep.

I didn’t stay asleep.

When I was a teenager, I didn’t go to sleep and I didn’t get up.

Now, I have such anxiety around going to sleep that you can’t knock me out with the strongest sleep meds available. I can ride out a dose of Ambien CR like it’s a baby aspirin. My brain views it as a challenge. “See if you can make me. I dare ya.”

Enter the only solution left, short of a nightly elephant tranq dart (which my husband is about ready to volunteer to administer): Sleep Training - Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for Insomnia (a.k.a., Ferberizing for grown-ups).

Fortunately, Kaiser offers an online version of the program, so I don’t have to drag myself to a weekly class.

I’ve just finished Week One, which consisted of an educational piece and the start of my sleep journal. To say my sleep patterns are a little fucked up would be like saying Dolly Parton’s a little busty. I average a normal number of hours of sleep in a 24 hr period, but it often takes me upwards of 7 hours to fall asleep. Yes, seven. Hours.

In Week Two, I have to go to bed at the same time each night and get out of bed and the same time each morning, whether I’ve slept or not. WHETHER I’VE SLEPT OR NOT. Let me repeat myself. WHETHER I’VE SLEPT OR NOT. When it takes you 7 hours to fall asleep, there’s a strong possibility the alarm to get up is going to go off before you’ve fallen asleep.

Wish my family luck.

I don’t get to take naps this week, either, unless they’re under 45 minutes. That’s not a nap. That’s a blink.

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