A Quarter to 2AM

Monday 28th of November.

That’s when I sat down to write this. Give or take a few minutes.

Someone rang our phone and hung up. Twice. Long about midnight.

As a means of waking me up, it’s very effective.

Once I’m awake, no matter what, I can’t get back to sleep.

It doesn’t matter how tired I am. It doesn’t matter what time it is. It doesn’t matter that there’s absolutely nothing keeping me from rolling over and going back to sleep. I just can’t find that restful place of slumber.

I’m awake for the day. And there’s still about three hours to go before I’m supposed to wake up. That’s three more hours in what is going to be a long day.

Today’s the day I’m going to arrange to get the dog neutered. This is supposed to settle him down a bit more. After that, I now plan on ringing the person who rang us back and ask politely what they were doing at about midnight.

I know it wasn’t our contentious neighbour. Max has hardly uttered a sound since the fence was fixed and we finally let him off the leash.

I know because I got up and checked on the dog after I gave up trying to find slumberland once more. He has kibble that he won’t eat and water. I suspect he’s not eating the kibble because his food bowl is a bit dirty. One more thing to do once the sun begins to peek over the horizon.

I worry about what to do about the neighbour. I can understand sleep depravation only too well. I’ve lived it for a few months, now.

St John’s Wort pills help me fight off anxiety and get to sleep, and the recommended dose is one tablet with meals. That means one pill in the night. No more. Having a source of white noise [air conditioning] helped me sleep through other neighbourhood dogs’ barking.

But it’s quiet, now.

Another neighbour, across the road and down the street a bit, has their lights on. I worry about them, too, even though I barely know them. BF in the morning is no time to be awake.

But they are awake. Or at least, they have some lights on.

And I’m awake.

At least I’m prepared to bop Max on the nose, should he bark with every other dog in the neighbourhood, come the dawn.

I shall add mocha and caramel sticks to my shopping list, and consume vast quantities of caramel mochachino [three months without! New record!] and tough it out until bedtime. It won’t even be the longest time I’ve been awake. My record on that is 36 hours. A day and a half. And I did that one without caramel mochachinos.

But my plans, like me, shall have to wait.

It’s 2AM.

The rest of the world is asleep.

And I wish upon our neighbours some wonderful, peaceful dreams. The kind that help them become better people.