sleepless in santa clara

In our household typically jparks is the insomniac. He'll stay awake all night if I let him, playing on the computer or on the wii. His internal clock seems to be set to be nocturnal and I have to beat it into submission to get him to come to bed with me. But for some reason, for the past few days, our clocks seemed to have switched places in some Freaky Friday move that has me staying up all night and letting that bastard jparks sleep soundly.

It started on Thursday when I had a nightmare that I had gotten shot in the head and jparks wouldn't take me to the hospital. Except I wasn't really shot in the head so much as I woke up, in my dream, with a hole in the back of my head and I assumed I had been shot. Jparks told me that "No, if you wake up with a hole in your head you haven't been shot. You're fine and you just have to live with it." I spent the rest of the dream poking at the hole and suggesting that maybe I should you know, have someone like a doctor look at it. It's safe to say that I woke up in a cold sweat and pissed off at jparks.

Since then my nights have only gotten worse. Friday night I had dreams of earthquakes (no doubt because we had one that night). From Saturday night I don't remember specific dreams, just that I tossed and turned all night and never seemed to really sleep. Finally we hit Sunday and I thought for sure I would sleep like a rock.

On Sunday I went for my long run and, to motivate myself during it, I kept chanting "You'll finally sleep tonight." I got home that evening and was exhausted. I showered, ate dinner (and then a cinnamon roll and maybe part of a cookie. stop judging me), and headed to bed. Yes, I know all that sugar couldn't have helped the no sleeping situation, but shouldn't a day of running and not much sleep in the three prior days cancel out the sugar?!? Apparently not.

Last night was the same situation, jparks and I got in bed and I listened as he fell asleep. After 30 minutes I honestly thought about waking him up, but figured why bother; I was too tired to have sex and too cranky to have a conversation, so I let him be. God, I should have woken him up just so he could suffer too.

Today I have bags under my eyes. Big, black bags that are so attractive I don't know how random strangers are resisting approaching me to make out with them. My head feels like it's in a fog and I would slap a puppy if it meant I could take a nap. I'm hoping tonight my body finally cries "uncle!" and I get to sleep. To stack the odds a bit more in my favor, I'm going running this evening. I'm going to run until I can't take another step, in the hopes that the extra bit of exercise will guarantee tiredness. And so help me, if this doesn't work I might just hit myself in the head with a frying pan.

Or do you have some sleep inducing trick that works like a charm and that you're willing to share? Please, save me from one more sleepless night and from the pain of a frying pan slap. And by sharing it, you save yourself from one more rambling post where I whine incoherently about not sleeping. See, we all win.