23 July 2008

Too tired to think up a catchy title

























Today was like that Tom and Jerry cartoon where Tom goes out carousing and then can't keep his eyes open the next day. (Video embedded at bottom. I dunno what's up with the asian subtitles but it's the complete unedited video, complete with racist depiction of old timey housekeeper.) No carousing involved in my case, but our CEO did catch me sleeping at my desk.

When the alarm went off this morning, I made the decision to keep hitting the five minute snooze button twelve times instead of getting up and blogging (or just resetting the alarm to wake me in another hour.) Totally counterproductive, of course, because not only did I not blog, I also didn't really get any extra rest.

By the time I got to work I'd had enough caffeine to pry my eyelids apart and everything was fine. I got a migraine after lunch but no big deal, I caught it early and took my medicine and that was the end of that. Until about 5:30, when despite being in a good working groove I was just overwhelmed with this wave of fatigue and figured what the hell, it's after 5, I'll put my head down on my desk and have a wee kip. So I did, for about 15 minutes, when someone leaving said goodbye and that woke me up.

And then I kept working for a bit longer and was getting ready to leave at 6:15 or so when the CEO passed by and said, "Long day?" I thought he was referring to the time and I said, "they're ALL long these days" and he said, "No... I noticed you sleeping at your desk." Oh yeah. "It was after five!" I said. "I just got really tired all of a sudden and figured why not put my head down for a little while?" And he said, "Everyone has had days like that ... next time, knock on the door of my office and if I'm not doing anything important you can come in and close the door and nap on my couch." Which was super duper nice of him, and I'm sure he meant it completely genuinely. I'm also sure I'll never, ever take him up on it.

I think my sleepiness might have been the migraine, actually, but I bet the migraine itself was triggered by lack of sleep (and lunch at a restaurant with bad, loud unst unst music.) I don't know if it's the medication or the headache which makes me sleepy. Certainly when I can, I retire to bed when I've got a migraine after taking my meds and usually nap and that knocks it out; also the tendency is also to fall asleep if I'm out of meds, although that's hellish because when I wake up the migraine is usually a great deal worse and then I start looking around for ways to cut off my head, because it hurts that much. (Seriously. One time I asked a friend who suffers from migraines and has had two natural childbirths which was worse, and she said migraine because in labor you are working towards a goal, so it's a positive sort of effort, whereas with a migraine you are trapped in your own head.)

Good article in the current issue of Scientific American on migraines, although it was pretty jargon-y for me and all I really got out of it was that migraines aren't my fault, I'm not imagining them (thanks) and they still don't know what triggers them but they think it's a malfunction in the brain stem - something to do with cortical spreading depression, which isn't a term I understand.

And now I'm home and I totally don't feel like doing a load of laundry or making dinner or dealing with my paperwork and bills ... but if I don't do it, who's gonna? And I'm out of clean underwear. Though I think dinner will just be a tomato sandwich - I made some whole wheat oatmeal bread last night, planning on using it for sandwiches later on in the week, but later on has apparently arrived already.




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