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Maybe I almost died today
Dec. 11th, 2024 06:22 pmI think I've finally found the keyS to sleeping through the night. Adding glycine to my just-before-bed supplement stack got me from five hours to six. I'd taken it before, but I took way too much and ended up groggy all day, so, on my then-medical provider's advice, I stopped taking it altogether. That was a mistake. Now I open the capsule and dump most of the powder out, lick a little off my finger to help me get to sleep, and swallow the roughly one-sixth full capsule to help keep me asleep.
But glycine is not all. I really hit the jackpot last night: I tried some junk food just before bed. It was literally just a couple of bites of soy chorizo, but it was full of oil/saturated fat, of which there is very little in my diet because I eat no animal products, little junk food, and, most recently, no refined oils. There's something about junk food saturated fat that works miracles for me: I used to use it regularly to get rid of certain kinds of migraines. Food cooked in regular old olive oil didn't work; only an oily processed food item, like a vegan pizza, did the trick.
I got some of the deepest sleep I've had in a long time. I had multiple dreams and was able to easily fall back to sleep when I woke up too early. I might not have woken up too early at all if I hadn't accidentally left the toaster oven on. (I cooked the chorizo in the toaster oven.) There was a large envelope full of papers sitting on top of the toaster oven, and, even with the toaster oven door closed, the papers somehow caught fire and smoldered for some time. I went to bed at 8:40 PM; the smoke alarm woke me up sometime after 1 AM. I turned off the oven, put the ashes/papers in the sink, and went back to bed. I should have opened the balcony door to clear out the smoke, but there wasn't a ton of smoke and I didn't want the cold to wake me up.
I woke up again around 3:40 AM to a repetitive noise I didn't recognize. It turned out to be the carbon monoxide detector. I'd never heard it before. I went back towards the kitchen, wondering how something could have been burning since 1 AM without causing a conflagration, but nothing was burning. The kitchen and living room seemed smokier, the air was worse. I so wanted to go back to bed, but it was just an hour before my alarm would have gone off and I decided not to chance dying in my sleep of carbon monoxide poisoning, so I opened some windows, put on the fan, got dressed as quickly as I could (it took forever because I had so much clothing to put on), grabbed a handful of date pieces (I wasn't hungry), had my usual salted water to prevent a migraine, and went out early for a walk.
As tired as I was, this turned out to be a productive walk. I found that the streets of my neighborhood were empty, truly empty, no joggers blinding me with their accursed headlamps, no dog walkers with flashlights. And it wasn't cold! It was chilly, but my hands and feet were not aching. I thought about this time of morning as I continued to walk this morning, and it occurred to me that there'd be few or no cars on the main roads at this hour as well. I wouldn't have to avoid the main roads on my walk (which is a pain because I have to go up hills to avoid the main road and I hate walking up hills—no matter how in-shape I am, it's always uncomfortable). And I'd be able to focus on my audio lessons without other walkers and the sound of traffic distracting me.
The downsides to walking at that time of day are that I'd have to shift my sleep/wake schedule (not horrible, but possibly risky for an insomniac) and wouldn't be able to safely walk the trails we have around town (there was an attempted sexual assault on one trail a few months ago, and I ran across a potentially drugged up/crazy person at night on another trail before that). Since I've been going out to walk while it's still dark, I've been waiting until after sunrise to hit the trails anyhow. I decided that the pros outweigh the cons: tomorrow, I'm getting up at 4 AM instead of my usual 4:40 AM. I might end up shifting my routine to something even earlier than that, but I decided to take at least one interim step to avoid disturbing my sleep too much. I'm expecting to sleep like a baby again, but I can never be sure.
My head began to hurt shortly after I returned home this morning, so I worried that the apartment was yet clear enough of carbon monoxide even though the detector was no longer sounding. I packed up some study materials and went to the local library. Mercifully, it was relatively quiet. I knocked out over four hundred Czech flashcards that were way past due. Not having Internet access can help boost productivity sometimes.
My head never did stop hurting (it still hurts now, at six-thirty pm), so I came back home. I'm going to bed an hour early; I'm in too much pain to keep on and too unproductive to bother trying. Usually, going to bed early disturbs my sleep, but I'm going to chance it anyhow.
Listening to pleasant music makes me feel bad sometimes. I don't know why, but it reminds me of all the pleasant experiences I've missed out on in my life. It's not the lyrics (which I usually don't pay attention to and generally cannot understand); it's the melodies.
But glycine is not all. I really hit the jackpot last night: I tried some junk food just before bed. It was literally just a couple of bites of soy chorizo, but it was full of oil/saturated fat, of which there is very little in my diet because I eat no animal products, little junk food, and, most recently, no refined oils. There's something about junk food saturated fat that works miracles for me: I used to use it regularly to get rid of certain kinds of migraines. Food cooked in regular old olive oil didn't work; only an oily processed food item, like a vegan pizza, did the trick.
I got some of the deepest sleep I've had in a long time. I had multiple dreams and was able to easily fall back to sleep when I woke up too early. I might not have woken up too early at all if I hadn't accidentally left the toaster oven on. (I cooked the chorizo in the toaster oven.) There was a large envelope full of papers sitting on top of the toaster oven, and, even with the toaster oven door closed, the papers somehow caught fire and smoldered for some time. I went to bed at 8:40 PM; the smoke alarm woke me up sometime after 1 AM. I turned off the oven, put the ashes/papers in the sink, and went back to bed. I should have opened the balcony door to clear out the smoke, but there wasn't a ton of smoke and I didn't want the cold to wake me up.
I woke up again around 3:40 AM to a repetitive noise I didn't recognize. It turned out to be the carbon monoxide detector. I'd never heard it before. I went back towards the kitchen, wondering how something could have been burning since 1 AM without causing a conflagration, but nothing was burning. The kitchen and living room seemed smokier, the air was worse. I so wanted to go back to bed, but it was just an hour before my alarm would have gone off and I decided not to chance dying in my sleep of carbon monoxide poisoning, so I opened some windows, put on the fan, got dressed as quickly as I could (it took forever because I had so much clothing to put on), grabbed a handful of date pieces (I wasn't hungry), had my usual salted water to prevent a migraine, and went out early for a walk.
As tired as I was, this turned out to be a productive walk. I found that the streets of my neighborhood were empty, truly empty, no joggers blinding me with their accursed headlamps, no dog walkers with flashlights. And it wasn't cold! It was chilly, but my hands and feet were not aching. I thought about this time of morning as I continued to walk this morning, and it occurred to me that there'd be few or no cars on the main roads at this hour as well. I wouldn't have to avoid the main roads on my walk (which is a pain because I have to go up hills to avoid the main road and I hate walking up hills—no matter how in-shape I am, it's always uncomfortable). And I'd be able to focus on my audio lessons without other walkers and the sound of traffic distracting me.
The downsides to walking at that time of day are that I'd have to shift my sleep/wake schedule (not horrible, but possibly risky for an insomniac) and wouldn't be able to safely walk the trails we have around town (there was an attempted sexual assault on one trail a few months ago, and I ran across a potentially drugged up/crazy person at night on another trail before that). Since I've been going out to walk while it's still dark, I've been waiting until after sunrise to hit the trails anyhow. I decided that the pros outweigh the cons: tomorrow, I'm getting up at 4 AM instead of my usual 4:40 AM. I might end up shifting my routine to something even earlier than that, but I decided to take at least one interim step to avoid disturbing my sleep too much. I'm expecting to sleep like a baby again, but I can never be sure.
My head began to hurt shortly after I returned home this morning, so I worried that the apartment was yet clear enough of carbon monoxide even though the detector was no longer sounding. I packed up some study materials and went to the local library. Mercifully, it was relatively quiet. I knocked out over four hundred Czech flashcards that were way past due. Not having Internet access can help boost productivity sometimes.
My head never did stop hurting (it still hurts now, at six-thirty pm), so I came back home. I'm going to bed an hour early; I'm in too much pain to keep on and too unproductive to bother trying. Usually, going to bed early disturbs my sleep, but I'm going to chance it anyhow.
Listening to pleasant music makes me feel bad sometimes. I don't know why, but it reminds me of all the pleasant experiences I've missed out on in my life. It's not the lyrics (which I usually don't pay attention to and generally cannot understand); it's the melodies.
