In the Middle of the Night

By design, I got up at 215am without the aid of an alarm, though I had Mindy set hers just in case. She disabled it once she knew I was up. She was having trouble sleeping like me. I’m guessing her issue was the Sunday hangover and being too tired. That happens, you know.

Downstairs, I poured myself a cup of Sunday’s leftover Starbucks then just as I had promised Mindy I would, I started a fresh pot so she’d have it come 6am when she got up with the kids. My plan was to head into work, come home, sleep more then get up and go through my usual morning routine, including a run. I ate half of a banana too, then left for the DR test.

I did the same testing almost a year ago to the day. Hardly seems possible. Next to no traffic that time of day (245am). Arrived a couple minutes after 3am. The customer’s contact was already there and waiting for me. We wasted little time getting situated and set-up. I activated my conference bridge then began the testing which took about 75 minutes, which was spot on with my prediction. The testing went well. I was on the road for home around 450am.

I took care of a couple emails then headed back to bed. Mindy shared that she was still struggling to get to sleep. And just as one might expect, it took a little bit of time before I fell back asleep. Next thing I knew Mindy was getting up with the kids, helping them get ready for school. She was excited to see her brand new school building for the very first time. She planned to head there sometime around 8am.

I got up from bed about the time the kids were heading out for the bus. Mindy, I think, returned to bed in effort to get more sleep before heading into school. Not really sure the time when she finally left. I poured some coffee then finally got around to calisthenics. I kept a loose eye on work, too, but planned only to be in reactive mode should I be needed. My boss pinged me at some point asking if I was coming in to the office. Before I could respond he sent another message remembering that I worked through the night.

I ended up doing more work than I hoped and didn’t head out for a run until almost 10am. By then the sun was higher in the sky than perhaps I am used to thus quickly broke into a sweat. I could feel how tired my body was. Not only did I get only a couple hours of light sleep, but that was after a poor night of sleep Saturday night too. I gave myself a break and trimmed my run to just three miles.

Home near 1030am, once I was cooled off I made some breakfast for the pug and I. As planned, I did little more than simply keep an eye on work. I never did lie down and try to fall asleep. I was way too wired for any of that. I did take a few minutes to head out and water all the deck flowers.

It must’ve been around 3pm when I decided to be constructive – literally – and headed to the basement to at a minimum, install the outlet boxes in the new family room. Once that was addressed, I moved on to drilling all the holes through the studs for the wiring. I wisely chalked lines across all the studs to keep my holes in line with one another. I had to drill a few holes in floor joists too, and one of those was somewhat tricky, in that I needed to match the hole on both sides of a double joist with a 4 inch gap between them. It was too far for my bit to reach from one through both and that was with my handy dandy Dewalt bit extension attached. I had no choice but to eye ball it and then come in the other side at a steep angle due to the next joist being too close to allow room for my small but mighty driver drill.

Mindy and the kids were home while I toiled in the basement. I thought about keeping on but last minutes opted not. I was hungry and tired. I had a lot of sawdust from drilling to sweep up too. Mindy shared how beautiful her new school building is. She gushed about it numerous times. Little wonder, she’s been in old buildings without even A/C pretty much her entire teaching career, which is now in its 21st year. She also shared just how tired she was. We agreed that dinner was going to be extremely simple. She made cream of chicken over rice while I opted for my leftover jambalaya. Yum!

Not sure what Bella had. Jacob, however, was at a soccer game, one of three this week. Jimaken was kind enough to attend and then bring him home. The players stay after school as a team, do their homework and then dine together thanks to the contributions made by the parents ($40) per family.

Didn’t do a whole lot. Manually ran the irrigation system zone #6 to water the new grass seed. Once Jacob was home from soccer, Mindy made him a couple grilled cheese sandwiches. By then it was after 8pm. I called it a night early and headed up to bed. Mindy said she’d be up shortly too. I slept for a couple of hours but once again woke around 10pm and couldn’t readily fall asleep again. I headed downstairs where I had two bowls of Fruit Loops. Headed back to bed 30 minutes later.