Monday 11 February 2008

Sleep...

...or lack of it.

E was at a sleepover with 5 friends last night. (The mother of the girl whose house they visited is a much braver woman than I am!) Apparently they ate lots of sweets and chocolate, talked a huge amount, and watched Pride and Prejudice - the BBC version. She and her friends proudly told me when I picked E up that the first of them (E, I believe) went to sleep at 3am, the last at 4am, and they all woke at 8am.

In contrast, I went to bed at 11pm and woke at 4am. I was then unable to get back to sleep until some time after 6.30am, whereupon I slept till 8am. Actually, given it was my first night without sleeping tablets for a long time, that's not bad. I've decided this holiday is the obvious time to see if I can re-regulate my sleeping patterns, since a few bad nights won't be emphasised by the need to teach. Actually, it wasn't the lack of sleep itself which bothered me, but the incredibly vivid (and weird) dreams I had. From reading, I gather this is a not uncommon reaction to stopping the particular sleeping tablets I am on. The dreams I had were very odd though. Fragmented, and full of things which could just happen - like abandoning my car 5 miles from work and walking, arriving late (not surprisingly). On the way I walked in through the back door of a shop and out through the front (it was a short cut), got to the school gate just as the caretaker locked it (and didn't ask him to unlock it) and met up with various pupils who were as late to school as I was. And when I arrived late at school, nobody had noticed my absence.

Massage later today - I don't know whether to ask for my shoulders or my lower back to be concentrated on. Both are bad today.

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