Farewell Whitey — Farewell Good Night's Sleep

Whitey is running for the hills—or maybe from the hills since he lives in Bernal Heights. I'm kind of confused right now. Like a lot of people who get knocked up and spawn in San Francisco, Whitey and his partner have come to the conclusion that this charming, compact, urban outpost of the weird, wonderful, strange and sometimes dangerous ain't no place to raise a bub. They're doing a bunk for a rural sector of Oregon, about one full bladder's ride outside of Portland.

Saturday night was my send-off for him. He and I shared a house down by 25th and Hampshire Street for the better part of five years. We witnessed our neighbour, Francisco, scream "chupe mi dick!" at the top of his lungs at his estranged girlfriend in the wee small hours. We witnessed the very same Francisco's car leap into flames as a result of what he maintained was a mysterious vendetta. Whitey and I concluded the sudden torching came about due to the dodgy wiring he'd used as part of his homespun custom stereo installation. We'd staggered back home drunk after a solid session of boozing it up at Treat Street Cocktails, shoving each other into trash cans and shop screens as we stumbled our way back down 24th Street. He deserved a decent farewell.

And that's what we had. Our attempt to get a table for two at Suppenkuche was abortive—apparently the place does a roaring trade even up to 9:15pm, whence the waitress stopped taking any further names for tables—so we made our way down the road to Absinthe. To cut a long story short we imbibed sufficiently, eventually closing out the bar at Zeitgeist. With the bar now closed Whitey managed to zip over the road to the convenience store to snag a sneaky pint bottle of Jim Beam. It went down a treat.

So of course I came home a little on the sloppy side. The Great Organiser was very much The Great Expression of Tolerance this time around, and she even humoured me as I crawled under the covers. I didn't wake until 11:30am the next day.

And that was my undoing. Remember the sleep-debt payoff cycle? Well, it clobbered me with full force last night. With the clock striking 10:30pm and the movie finished I did my best to get some sleep. The remnants of the hangover will lull me off nicely, I thought. I was wrong. The clock kept ticking past midnight and beyond. Then it was 1am. Somewhere in between I drifted off into a hypnagogic half-sleep, coming fully alert sometime around 5:30am. The damage was done and I battled my way off to work.

Now it's 7:30pm on Monday night and my brain is mush. The higher order functions have fled me and I'm going to retire to a bowl of whatever The Great Organiser is cooking and senseless episode of Gatchaman. I'll see you in the dreamworld.

The Sleep Debt Payoff Cycle

There's a thing in my life known as the sleep debt payoff cycle. The way it works is during the week I run myself into a sleep-deprived state courtesy of a schedule that has me arising at 6am to leave for work. If we lived in an ideal world I'd get to bet at no later than 10pm each night, affording myself a comfortable and doctor-prescribed eight hours of rest. In reality that never happens. Invariably there's something else I find myself doing that keeps the clock ticking way past the witching hour, whether it be updating my iPod or ensuring Julia gets a bit of my attention (she deserves it). So come the weekend I want my rest and a I want a lot of it. Sunday morning swings around and bed seems like the best place in the world. I'll let myself drift in and out of sleep for hours on end, allowing myself to be just plain lazy. It's great and I know it's going to come back and bite me the arse eventually. That "eventually" is Sunday night. I couldn't get to sleep—not for hours. I spent most of the night barely dipping deeper than a light slumber, awakened by any slight movement of the cats who routinely park themselves at the end of the bed. The alarm goes off at 6 but I'm already awake. The new week has begun and the cycle starts anew. It's a cruel joke.

The hours I keep are largely a function of my job and for that I can really only blame myself. Nobody forces me to get up at 6am and nobody forces me to drive 50+ miles to work each day. There's a huge element of personal responsibility immersed in this problem and it's incumbent upon me to fix it. I'll just stop going to work.