Daily Prompt: Mr. Sandman

What kind of sleeper are you? Do you drop off like a stone and awaken refreshed, or do you need pitch black and silence to drift off to dream?

I could quite easily sleep for ten hours, wake up, get dressed, have some breakfast, and then go back to sleep for at least another three or four hours. When I’m particularly stressed, or suffering from considerably anxiety, all I want to do is shut myself away in bed for a few days and just sleep. When I’m on holidays, all I want to do is sleep.

I’m very much a deep sleeper. Sometimes it’s great, but sometimes it’s a bit scary.

Before I met Hulk, it never concerned me. I’ve always been somebody who loves to sleep – probably because I just can’t get enough of it.

Having a partner who is a diabetic is something that truly scares me. There’s been nights where he’s been in bed next to me having a hypo (where his blood sugar is dangerously low), and I’ve been completely oblivious to it. Generally speaking, a severe hypo means that he will sweat profusely, and lose the ability to move. His body begins to seize up, and sometimes he can start to shake / convulse slightly. He loses the ability to talk. The reality is, he can go into a coma in his sleep, or worse, die.

So for me, it’s truly terrifying to know that I’m such a deep sleeper. There have been several moments where I’ve been completely out of it and off in dreamland, and he’s been right next to me, having a severe hypo. Because he can’t move or really say anything louder than a whisper or a gasp, I’m completely oblivious to what is happening right next to me.

I’ve had a number of nights where this has happened, and I’ve woken up to find him like this, purely by chance. I don’t know how long he’s been in that state, but as soon as I realise what’s going on, it’s like an instant shot of adrenaline, and my brain goes into overdrive, and before I know it, I’m rummaging around in the kitchen looking for something sugary to give him in order to bring his blood-sugar levels back up.

The one thing that completely terrifies me is the thought that he could die in his sleep. He could die in his sleep, and I wouldn’t know, simply because I’m such a deep sleeper. Just the thought of it, sends shivers down my spine. God forbid that ever happened… I’d never be able to live with myself. The guilt would just be too much. I’m supposed to be looking after him and taking care of him!!

I’ve noticed that with Hulk, he’s quite tired lately. We both are. Taking on too much, pushing our bodies with our gym commitments, long hours in the office, late nights – it all takes it’s toll on the body. By the time the weekend comes around, we’ve usually got a lot of stuff to do, but really, all we want to do is just sleep. I’d love to be able to go to the gym Saturday morning, then come home, have some breakfast and then have a nap for a couple of hours. Get up, do some housework, go grocery shopping, and then come home for another nap.

The reality of being able to do that however… not an option.

Even when it comes to having a nap – I’m not one of these people that can have a 30min power nap and wake up feeling all brand new. If I have a nap, I need like 2 – 3 hours at least, otherwise I actually wake up feeling considerably worse than I was before I had my nap.

I know that there have been sleep studies done to show the optimal time for a nap, in order for it do be restful and restorative for the body, but for me, the rules don’t apply. I’ll close my eyes when I need to, and then I’ll open them again when my body says I’m ready to. That might be 2 hours, 8 hours, or 15 hours. When I was a teenager, I’d sometimes spend entire days sleeping.

I remember sometimes going to bed and sleeping the whole night, and the entire next day, having over 24hrs sleep – obviously because I needed it. I know that some reports have said that too much sleep is bad for you, but I tend to disagree with that. I don’t think that such a thing exists.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/03/23/daily-prompt-mr-sandman/

Daily Prompt: Pour Some Sugar on Me

What is your favorite sweet thing to eat? Bread pudding? Chocolate chip oatmeal cookies? A smooth and creamy piece of cheesecake? Tell us all about the anticipation and delight of eating your favorite dessert. Not into sweets? Tell us all about your weakness for that certain salty snack.

 

For people like me, who have a real severe sweet tooth, having to pick one, has the same dread as a parent having to pick their favourite child. How can I possibly pick my favourite sweet thing to eat??

There’s simply too many choices.

At this precise moment, I could totally murder a family-sized custard tart… or an entire cake – like a chocolate Swiss roll, or a butter cake, or like a half-dozen chocolate croissants. Or an entire packet of biscuits – I don’t really care what type of biscuits, just as long as I get to eat an entire packet (or three) of them.

I have a weakness when it comes to sweet things and desserts. And I mean major weankess!! I just can’t restrain myself. In my drawer at work, more specifically my bottom drawer, is where I keep most of my food – like all my crackers, and tins of tuna, and powdered soup packets… but I also have my rectangular plastic container.

In that container I usually have it filled with a few different sweet-snacky things. At the moment I have a few individual packets of low-calorie berry-flavoured biscuits – they’re new on the market, so I decided to try them. In every flavour.

I also have these small banana and choc-chip two-bite snack cake things. Naturally there was three different flavours when I first discovered them, so had to buy a box of each, and have also slowly eaten my way through those as well.

Not to mention the odd mini packet of flavoured Tim Tams… or the odd chocolate bar…

Oh and when one of the parents brings a chocolate fundraising box to work, I’m gladly donating money to that… simply because I can get giant Freddo Frogs and Caramello Koalas for a dollar… A WHOLE DOLLAR!!

I don’t actually think it really matters what the item is, as long as it’s sweet and there’s plenty of it, I’ll go to town with it. Block of chocolate… it’ll be all gone within minutes. I don’t seem to be able to restrain myself, or slow down to savour the flavour, or enjoy the moment… my brain will see a block of chocolate, an entire cake, a box of truffles etc as a challenge and say ‘Right. See all of that?? How fast can you get that into your belleh?? You’ve got a 5-minute time limit. If you can’t finish that whole thing within five minutes, then you’re nothing more than an embarrassment. And a failure. A completely embarrassing failure. You make me sick. What the fuck is wrong with you? What do you mean you don’t feel well?? How dare you let that stop you?! GET OUT OF MY SITE IMMEDIATELY!!’

When I was younger, it was even worse. I had something called ‘The Oprah Box’, which was stashed away within the depths of my wardrobe. It was a red square box, and it was always stocked with packets of biscuits and lollies and blocks of chocolate. And I mean always!. Sometimes I’d get home late at night from dancing, and if I was staying up late studying, I’d attack the box. If my homegirl B came over, we’d attack the box together. There was always something in it.

It amazes me how I don’t have diabetes already. God knows I was certainly on the right path to developing it. I think because I actually eat normal food the rest of the time, and it’s actually pretty healthy, plus the fact that I’m quite regularly active at the gym.

As I finish this post, I’m currently sitting in the food court of a city shopping centre… people around me are eating Mickey D’s and it smells so. damn. good. I just wanna go smash down a couple of burgers, but I have to go to the gym later on, and I simply can’t do it to myself.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/03/15/daily-prompt-pour-some-sugar-on-me/