Because I just finished up a run of four night shifts.  Generally speaking I feel worse and worse with each passing one, since I can’t seem to sleep very well during the day.  I have a room in my house completely blacked-out, I crank down the a/c, turn on a fan, no extraneous noise, but even with all that I’m back up after 5-7 hours of light sleep, feeling unnaturally awake, no alarm clock needed.

After the final night shift I came home spent but wired from too much coffee.  After burning an hour or so reading stuff like this I finally head to bed where after some obligitory tossing and turning I sleep for four and a half hours.

BEEP BEEP BEEP!  Seriously?  I just shut my eyes.  It has to be this way though, or I’ll never fall asleep later tonight.  Feeling like my soul has been ripped from my body I stumble over to my master, the coffee maker, and wait meekly for him to dole out 6 cups or so.  I sit in my chair, open up the computer (again), and gradually start to feel human once more.

On this particular day I have some errands to run, which is good because it’s better to keep moving.  I find myself of all places at the mall which fits in nicely with this whole bizarre out-of-body kinda day.  I pass a Starbucks and obviously can’t resist that so sure why not and drink some more coffee.  Now feeling pretty good I call some friends, one of whom notes that I’m “on a roll” and I concur, coffee Ten is really the only Ten I’d want to bother hanging out with.  I hit the arcade, check out some Air Jordans, and get something to eat (oops that’s from a post twenty years ago, except for the cookies that is — some things never get old).

Now it’s time for dinner, so I meet my sister as planned.  It’s Tex-Mex so obviously I have to have a margarita, and well can’t have her drinking alone so I have a second one as well.  My heart, esophagus, liver, kidneys — still drowning in coffee — wonder what the heck is going on up there but my brain couldn’t care less; it is buzzed and relaxed and ever so grateful to be contentedly munching on chips and queso instead of heading back for yet another shift in the ER.

Finally I get back home and it’s time for bed and even though I fall asleep quickly I don’t sleep that well as I’ve just gotten used to being up and working at this time of night.  I wake up a few times, have some dreams of varying strangeness, and even though I sleep for eight hours it sure doesn’t feel like it.  My head doesn’t hurt, it just feels kind of fuzzy.  My body feels kind of fatigued.  I drag around a little more than I should.

Fortunately by tomorrow I’ll be feeling back to normal.  Just in time to go back to work.