Sleeping it Off

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I’ve been going back to work everyday for the past two weeks, but I’m absent for today’s shift. I knew I’ve had allergic rhinitis attacks in the mornings since last week but yesterday I woke up with a clogged but runny nose. It did not get better with water therapy. I knew coffee wasn’t bound to help (I was told it promotes congestion) but I needed help to stay awake and focused so I fixed myself half a sachet of instant coffee. When I got home, I did nothing but sleep. Whenever I woke up on the couch, I’d complain to either Dad or my boyfriend that I was feeling so sick. My head felt so heavy, nose still runny, had a very sore throat, and I felt feverish.

In the afternoon, I got up to eat and popped OTC cold meds. After reading two chapters off A Clash of Kings, and doing two rows of crochet, I went back to sleep.

SLEEP.

 

I know that the natural remedy to colds is lots of sleep and lots of water. So I skipped work to catch up on sleep. Since getting back into the grind I felt like I have lost so much of it.

I worked the early shift (8PM-5AM) and mid-shifts (10PM) before but I was doing the closing shift again (2AM-11AM) for at least three weeks prior to my long medical leave. I always loved the closing shift. Being an opener only worked because we made arrangements for the boyfriend to have the same schedule as I do. When I was in the hospital his schedule got moved again and now we’re on opposite shifts and not the same weekends off. That is not helping. I try to stay up until he gets home but I just can’t. Truth is, the best time for me to sleep is 12 noon so I can get up feeling well rested at 6PM. But when I get home at 8 or 9 in the morning, I just can’t stay up. So I sleep way too early and wake up four hours later. I stay up for two hours before I get sleepy again and then try to get some more rest before I absolutely need to get ready for work. I hate that pattern but it’s become the story of my life. I hope it only takes one more week to adjust.

Right now, my back hurts a bit. It does that sometimes. It’s not too painful that I’d need to take any medicine, but it hurts enough to remind me that I probably need to be a little more aggressive in my almost non-existent effort to lose weight. And that I should also do the back exercises my therapists used to make me do.  I know that getting home tired isn’t an excuse to not making time for exercising but it’s just so easy to use that excuse. I’m also always blaming the boyfriend for not being fit, my argument is that if he made time for it, I would too. But he’s not responsible for my body, I am. If he doesn’t feel that it’s urgent that he lose his belly flat, well it’s a very urgent thing for me.

Besides, if I am to do any travelling soon, I’d better get my stamina built up again. I can’t be tired after only 5 minutes of walking, can I? Too bad sleeping doesn’t miraculously slough off the pounds…