Night Howls
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So I'm a bad sleeper at the best of times. When diagnosis came along it got worse and hasn't recovered, most of my physical and emotional setbacks can be traced back to lack of sleep. I get around 3 hours a night during the week and I'll finally crash and spend my weekend in bed.
Thing is, I could be getting much more sleep, my rhythm is just fine, but I don't get to sleep at night because my boyfriend has made a habit of playing documentaries on his iPad like a bedtime story that he says he "needs" to get to sleep, and he started snoring a few months ago.
Somehow the ASTRONOMICAL BOOM of his snore doesn't wake him up, but my turning off the iPad does. I have tried ear plugs, headphones with music and white noise and my own shows, the place I live right now has a massive amount of traffic noise that drives me insane at night too and now there are these other competing factors so I literally don't get to go to bed until he wakes up. It's 2:30AM and the trucks are screaming down the main road, some YouTube guy is yelling about how politically upset he is, and my boyfriend is snoring about the volume I wouldn't turn the TV up to because I don't want to upset my neighbours. The worst part is that these are nights of 6-8 solid hours that I can't use to get my study done (uni student here) and when I do have a work shift I'm always exhausted to the point of nausea before I even start. I can't go on like this but I have no idea what in the h* to do! Whose partners snore? What do you do?
My noise sensitivity skyrocketed right after my first chemo. I remember being irritated by my loud neighbour before my surgery and laying there thinking how I needed thicker walls, but the same noise just after my second chemo sent me into a rage, and tears, and panic attacks, and anxiety so bad I can't leave my house, and a handful of noises have had the same impact ever since. There's nothing I can actually do about the misophonia other than take anti-anxiety medication, but I don't want to be on it all the time and I can't know before-hand when my (long reputation of being extremely inconsiderate) neighbours are going to host a rave.
UGH.
I'm going to have another go at de-wolfing the dingo now. Thanks for reading if you managed to get through that wall of text rant. Anyone up?0 -
I've de-fluff quite a bit. Is that better?
And here's a non-pink version too for people who are over-saturated. I though the gradient was cute but that can just be a solid colour if you prefer, I added some shading on the ribbon too
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Looks good,, @inkpetal. Maybe you should refer your boyfriend to a sleep clinic. He may need a CPAP machine if he's snoring so badly. My husband used to be bad but has used a machine for years now - it just takes a couple of nights to get used to sleeping next to Darth Vader (and he's not stopping breathing several times a night, now).
Hope you feel better soon @SoldierCrab
@Kiwi Angel and @kmakm My memory is so useless. I did end up making the pears using golden syrup - I don't know if it was really okay or not as I can barely taste it.
A journal sounds like a great idea @kmakm. I've found my blog so far has a secondary psychotherapeutical kind of purpose. When I was walking first thing in the morning, a lot of thoughts and worries would coalesce and that was often when I came back and wrote.
I must admit that I'm finding everything pretty pointless at the moment which is what forced me to finally pick up the phone to start organising some psychological help as mentioned in a post yesterday. I'm howling very loudly.
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Moon! Mars! Get outside and have a gander!2
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About to wake up the kids and drive us to a high spot!1
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Hi there @InkPetal ..great ribbon choices. I can soooo identify with the noise sensitivity and reactions to it. My husband and I have been married for 39 years, and to save our marriage, his being alive and my sanity, we now sleep in different rooms. Between his snoring and my night sweats and terrible insomnia, it seemed the lesser evil. As for other noise, well, I have almost totally lost the plot on a number of occasions regarding surrounding noise. I have a neighbour two doors down who has two yappers. a chihuahua and a schitzu...I call it the Shit Zoo. She goes out and leaves them in an enclosed courtyard surrounded by a metal wall. They yip and yap for the entire time...sometimes hours. She also puts them there even when she is home, and they do the same. I won't go through the measures I've taken, both her as well as the council, but let's just say the only solution now seems to be a baseball bat. Then there's the old fool over the road with his leaf blower. He blows the leaves up the road and then down the road.Inbetween the long blasts, he does the brrmm brrrrmmm brrrrmmmm thing as he walks. Repeat +++. He eventually blows them onto an enormous leaf pile under a tree in his front yard, (about chest height), where they remain until either the next breeze or the local bush turkeys sent them adrift again. Drives be totally batshit.I won't mention another neighbour on the other side who starts his truck up at the crack of dawn, and even before, and then leaves the engine idling, all the time spewing diesel fumes into my open windows in the warmer months. This can be for fifteen to twenty minutes. Dripping taps also undo me. This noise aversion has become almost pathological since this cancer gig, and my only relief during the daytime is to walk, lurch really, with my granny walker to the local library, where I stay until about 5pm.
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Regarding the snoring..One of the loves of my life was a snorer. No that's understating it. It was like trying to sleep next to a gravel crusher. Not just snoring, but teeth grinding and general thrashing around. All night. Every night. Thankfully I only saw him on the weekends as he used to drive up from Melbourne.
Nothing I could do would convince that individual that he needed to do something about not only the physical damage he was doing to himself but the mental issues that were behind it. This guy was a retired professional bull rider, he wasn't going to do anything about anything and to be honest he'd probably have ripped the Darth Vader mask of in the night and tried to kill it if I had persuaded him to try it.
In the end I moved the honey pot to the spare room and then it was all over--what's the point of all that driving if there's no honey? I was devastated for a couple of weeks but I'd have strangled him if I'd had to spend another night awake listening to the whole performance. The irony that I spend most nights awake and rattling around the house even when I'm alone is not lost on me. Man, that guy could be fun to be around. Oh well. Never mind.1 -
Thanks @InkPetal I am going there right now. About our dear dingo, I think I might have liked the fluffy muffin better. Need to see them side by side. So interesting to read your comments about noise. Right after my diagnosis and mastectomy last November the neighbors from Hell began their reno right outside our bedroom and kitchen area I mean three metres away and it starts every morning at 7 so no sleeping in. We decamped to a liitle place in the Blue Mountains I don't think we can ever come back. We sleep in separate rooms because apart from snoring I am up and down peeing at night and reading the Howling (and the rest). Just getting away from the road noise and the flight path has been such a revelation although I still don't get much sleep.
@Sister being so completely at the mercy of the medical system is part of what drives us nuts in the first place. But being able to talk to someone completely outside your circle can be good just because you are free to say things you don't dare to say to those close to you. I think we bottle so much up to spare others but that's not good or fair to us. I see a counselor not a psychologist I feel he is the only person who really "gets"me as I am now and has no agenda and no expectations. He isn't working on the assumption that I am the same person I was until BBC. I hope your person is really good for you, meanwhile walk away from things and people who get you down. Lots of self care needed and tears are fine. Thinking of you.3 -
@Sister He's gone to his GP and they've said he might have asthma so they're going to try some things to see if it helps. He literally went today, took him this long!
@Zoffiel Thank you
I will be hiding in this giant snuggle blanket where I can hide the awkwardness I still experience as a grown-ass adult whenever I get a compliment.
@AllyJay I'm am so on board the different rooms train right now. Toot toot!
THE SHIT ZOO!
Oh my gosh yep, that all sounds like what nightmares are made of. Ugh the leaf blower though 
. Around 5:30AM I know there's no point trying to get to sleep because the shop downstairs gets deliveries every morning and it will just wake me up, they just bang and crash around like whatever it's past 5AM everyone's awake right! No and I want to set you on fire. I've taken to staying late nights at the university library if I have to study ...I spend a lot of the time I should be spending comfortably in my home there instead. When the neighbours start up I feel like telling them to pay my rent. Oh, you want to fill my home with your music? There's a $95 storage fee! Thank you for grumping with me, it's both crappy and comforting to know I'm not the only one.
...The cat just crawled on my partner and is sitting on top of him. The cat's just like whatever you're warm, good bed-human, on top of this chainsaw noise factory. I took out my phone to take a video, tapped to record and that tiny little 'bu-ling' sound woke him up! He giggled because he noticed the cat on him and figured out what I was doing, said "I know right?" and less than 3 seconds later, literally 3 seconds, he started snoring again. What is this devil's sleep magic and how do I master it, why can't I fall asleep like that even when I'm exhausted. Flippin Tamoxifen that's flippin why. BOOO
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@Annski I don't know how much better quality sleep I'd get really but there's so much to be said for the peace and quiet we can at least enjoy a cup of tea in.
Thank you so much for liking my silly page haha I'll try to get something actually done to update there soon.
Here's a spot-the-difference of fluffy muffin and smoothie muffin
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Great view of the moon up on the ridge. Just wished my eldest had wanted to wake up (he'd normally be the first out) to take his you-beaut camera up to take photos!1
. I'm online as InkyPlaytime. 
