Pages

Oct 4, 2009

NaBlo what??

Holy crap. My goal of posting something every day for a month fell flat on it's face.

Here is the rundown.

For nearly 22 days I managed to post something. And surprisingly, a lot of these posts were more than just a simple "I have to post something so I am posting this pathetic one sentence post in order to meet my requirements" post.

So what happened? I stayed awake for nearly 27 hours.

On Monday I got home from work in the early morning. I did a couple of things around the house then jumped in the car to make the 5 hour drive to my home town of Vacaville and see my son for a few days. Usually I go on a 4 day weekend, however circumstances dictated a 3 say visit instead. So I figured rather than waste a full day by sleeping half of it then driving down later, and getting there sometime after dinner, I would be leave early and get there before he gets out of school. I figured I could take a small nap before he got home.

Well, I managed to get to my parents house, my preferred place to stay when I visit, around noon. This would have allowed me nearly 3 hours to nap. However, I chose to have a rather lengthy conversation with my parents (which will be the subject of another post sometime in the near future) and in the end, the nap never happened. Bummer.

The boy's mother dropped him off around 3:30. By this time I had been awake for about 24 hours.

Anyone who has never been awake for that long of a period of time, let me suggest you continue to live in ignorance of the effects it has on your body and mind.

Let me try and describe it:

About half way to my folks house I was beginning to really feel the effects. Muscles start to ache, the eyes feel like raisins coated in sand in your eye sockets, speech becomes somewhat impeded, and your hands become rather shake (this last symptom might possibly be more associated with the copious amounts of caffeine I had consumed to simply get myself to a state where the other symptoms became so readily apparent).

I get to may parents, long conversation ensues, and soon I'm not sure of I am going to make it. My eyelids feel like two ton weights, and every time they close it became increasingly more and more difficult to reopen them.

The boy arrives and while we are sitting there talking a little and engaging in generally pleasant conversation I suddenly realize I have absolutely no idea what has been said in the last 20 minutes (either by my ex-wife or by me). Was I talking? Was she talking? why am I drooling on myself??

We went to dinner and came home. On the drive home from the restaurant I remember seeing the hills that separate Fairfield and Vacaville and how the somehow resembled some painting by an impressionist who has done entirely too much acid in his or her lifetime. All the lines seemed to mesh and intertwine in weird sorts of ways. Everything else was somewhat blurry and distorted. The brown colored hills and the many oak and walnut trees that adorn them looked to be mountains and mole hills all at the same time.

We got home and I sat on the couch. I was through. It was nearly 27 hours awake and I could take it no more.

I remember waking briefly to find Ben practicing his saxophone right next to my head. Apparently he felt it was worth a try to attempt to wake me by his own rendition of Mary Had a Little Lamb. This proved to be an exercise in futility.

The next thing I remember was waking next to him, who was also passed out and curled up in a blanket. He was cozy, at least (its amazing the weird positions children can be in and still fall asleep).

So thats how it went.  Its now too late to even rationalize a continuance. I guess there is always next month.

3 comments:

  1. Speaking from the parents point of view, watching Adam go downhill was hard. He wanted so bad to stay awake for Ben but it all kind of backfired on him. We did get some good conversation in before he went to zombie land. It reminded me of all the times Craig worked graveyard and tried to stay awake with the kids only to have it backfire on him too. Hopefully Adam the next time you can have that extra day to recover here. We love you and Delia and loved the visit.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Don't beat yourself up over the blogging goal. Another great blogging idea I love is: "blogging without obligation"... you can blog about whatever you want, whenever you want. And don't feel guilty about it! ;-)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hey, 22 out of 30 ain't bad, ain't bad at all! I know how damn challenging that was myself. Of the 30 days, only on half of them was I able to write anything of substance - the rest was just bitching and moaning, or haiku.

    But, don't give up blogging, my friend. You have a lot to say and a great way of saying it. Maybe make a reasonable goal of at least one post a week. I'm going for two a week, but I've already fallen down on that one. Don't beat yourself up and don't give up.

    ReplyDelete

You went to all the trouble to get yourself here, you might as well say something about it.

Related Posts with Thumbnails