14 posts tagged “sleep deprivation”

Saturday evening met friends for dinner.  As no one had brought sufficient cash to cover his or her share of the bill and no one wanted to put the total amount on his or her own credit card, we hesitated briefly over asking to split the check.  Management happily complied (as they often do in these parts) and all seemed fine.  Being slightly drunk during this transaction, I awoke the following morning with the sinking feeling that I might have left my credit card at the restaurant or mixed it up with someone else's.  Turned out (as do so many of my anxieties) not to be true.

Sunday afternoon had late lunch/early dinner at local Thai restaurant and used same credit card as previous evening to pay for meal.  Was stone cold sober the entire time.  Discovered at work the next morning (as I was buying something online during company time) that my credit card was not in my wallet.  Panicky, I surmised that I might have left it at restaurant (or that they might not have given it back to me with the receipt).  Tried calling restaurant, but, being early in the morning, they were not yet open.  Unexpectedly, I found that I had a copy of an old bill for that particular credit card at hand because I had used it connection with a travel reimbursement at work, so I was able to contact credit card company and get a 24-hour hold placed on card.  Tried to call restaurant at various points during the day when I remembered to do so, but only managed to get through once.  Person who answered did not speak English that well and told me to call back later when the restaurant opened (actually what she said was, "nobody's here now").  Called again after I got home and discovered that they did indeed have my card, which I picked up later that evening.  All seemed in order.

Today I switched bags and left my wallet in the other bag.  Called my boyfriend back at home to check my bag to confirm that my wallet was in fact there.  It was.  Deliberated about who among my co-workers I should ask to borrow coffee/lunch money, without coming to a definite decision.  Boyfriend turned up around 1:00 with my wallet.

He is returning to New York tomorrow evening.  During the day I will "work" from home.

I don't know about these multi-taskers.  People who are able to work full time, commute, raise children, coach soccer games, join reading groups, knit, garden, take their pets to the vet, travel to exotic places, sing in church choirs, deliver meals to the needy (simultaneously it often seems).  I can barely get myself dressed in the morning.

I am wearing new shoes today.  I thought I had broken them in slightly ahead of time, but I clearly am not used to them, which is forcing me to walk funny.  And my feet hurt.

Ate too much.  Drank too much.  Slept too little.  Got shit upon by a pigeon.  Typical New York weekend.

It probably was a combination of physical and emotional exhaustion, but last night's performance of NYCB (my last for a while) was very disappointing.  It should have been a great program on paper (all Tchaikovsky, all Balanchine), but when I saw the casting go up I was a little concerned.  Serenade looked a spiritless mess.  So strange, after such strong performances last season, but it came off really badly in comparison to a high energy performance by Pennsylvania Ballet I had seen just a few months ago. Mozartiana fared a bit better, but still was missing something essential.  Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No. 2 was the best of the lot, with the leads, Ashley Bouder and Jonathan Stafford improving upon and burnishing their already impressive debuts last spring.  I am puzzled by the continued prominence of Savannah Lowery and Abi Stafford; two dancers who make everything they do look the same.

Ah well, I wasn't much of an audience last night either.  Could barely keep my eyes open and was fidgety.

Today I spent a lot of time watching my boyfriend pack my boxes for the shippers, feeling unable to do much of anything practical.  I suppose I should enjoy the pampering while it lasts.  I will be thrown upon my own resources soon enough.

I did have a lovely time with friends Friday night.  But it felt very much like stolen moments.

On the whole, people keep acting as if I am just taking a long vacation or something like that.  A coping mechanism?  I'm not sure how I feel about anything anymore.

I managed to sleep about an hour longer today before the voice in my head started hammering away at all the things I need to do and I couldn't bring myself to stay in bed any longer.  I'm not feeling very rested.

Finally received my authorization to book my one-way (sniff) flight from New York to the new city through the official work travel agent.  Boy, did he/she (it was one of those unisex names and we only communicated via e-mail) rip them off on the airfare, but, as they say, it's not my money.  So, the date is set.  It still all seems so unreal.

I also contacted the shipping agency.  Again via e-mail because I couldn't bear the thought of speaking about it aloud.  And because I am a wimp.

Spent most of the morning and early afternoon yesterday going through papers and boxes.  Threw out a mountain of stuff and got the remaining things in better order, but still barely scratched the surface.

Met family and friends in Chinatown for dinner.  Less crowded and hectic than anticipated.  Everyone in a very festive mood.  I wish people would stop chattering so loudly about all the things they are going to be doing AFTER I'VE GONE.  But maybe it only seems as if they are chattering more loudly than usual.

I know, I know.  The approved coping technique would be to focus on something *I *have to look forward to.  So far, that's a brief weekend return trip to New York for a training workshop about ten days after I start the new job!  All in all, I'm having difficulty picturing what my new life will look like.

Back to the mess for now.  I need to get something done before I meet up with a friend later for some afternoon drinking.  We may stop in at Tea & Sympathy as well.  Aside from one breakfast, I don't think I had any "British" food at all while I was in England.  Then this evening off to NYCB to check out the new Wheeldon ballet, Rococo Variations (one of my favorite pieces of music, so I hope he doesn't fuck it up) and heartbreaking little Baiser.

Arrived back in NYC very late Sunday night (actually it was technically very early Monday morning by the time that I reached my doorstep).  Yesterday my mother asked me if I was “back to New York time.”  I don’t know what kind of time I’m on.  It feels more like borrowed time.  I am very disorganized and all over the place.

I did manage to get some sleep on Monday, but since then I have been waking up at the same ungodly hour that my partner gets ready for work, just lying in bed trying to get back asleep, but bothered by my little brain whirring away.  Worrying about all there is to do, but, aside from some frantic pretense at scurrying around during the day, doing very little about it all.

Amusingly, the in-flight magazine on the plane carried a typically fatuous story about yet another ailment for the over privileged: a condition known as the Post Vacation Blues (PVBs)—the inevitable letdown upon returning to work after a vacation.  Their prescription: more frequent long weekend vacations (unsurprising advice, coming from an airline).

These so-called PVBs are magnified when you are trying to tackle the chaos of “planning” a long-distance move, dealing with a probable separation from your spouse for a still indefinite amount of time, and confronting the anxiety of starting a new job, all of which is supposed to happen in the space of less than two weeks.  

Maybe I will just go back to bed now.

More about the trip to London itself (which was highly enjoyable) in a future post.

Well, I'm just about packed and ready to go.  Just a few more hours until I head out to the airport.  Overnight flights are pretty horrible in most respects, though they tend to be a little quieter and sometimes less crowded.  I'm so fucking tired, I probably would be able to manage some sleep if there's any room to spread out at all.

Bright and early this morning I had my last session with my therapist (here in New York).  She didn't pronounce me "cured," but she did manage to foster an uplifting kind of mood for my exit.  I even sashayed past The Source of All Evil on my way uptown without a care.

It's so nice to be away from work and almost frightening how easy it is to forget about it all.  The only thing I miss at this point is the high speed internet access.  My connection from home has been tortuously slow.

I wish I could get over these quasi-panic attacks I often have when I am nervous or under stress.  They usually involve convincing myself that I forgot to do something or did something incorrectly that I *know* I have taken care of.  Yesterday, for instance, I stopped at a bank ATM in my neighborhood (always a ridiculous experience) and found a receipt for a purchase I had made at the coffee shop earlier that morning in my wallet.  Seeing it, I of course assumed that it must have been a receipt from something that I had bought the day before and was upset to see that the date on top was January 27th.  I started to believe that even though I had reviewed the details dozens of times before and after I had made the airline booking, that I must have screwed up somehow and that the night of my flight, the 28th was really a Sunday, not a Monday, and that I would have to rush home, throw some things in a bag, and try to get a cab to the airport.  Of course I calmed down after a few seconds and figured out the "problem."  But why do I have to manufacture problems like that in the first place?

At any rate, I'm looking forward to some time to soak up things cultural in London (and add on to my cumulative sleep deprivation).  Looks like the weather might even be fairly decent.  Certainly a bit more on the mild side than it has been here of late.  It's not that it's been *so* cold, but it has been pretty relentlessly cold over the past ten days or so and I already have had enough of winter.  I just purchased a ticket to the Broadway show, Xanadu, for shortly after I return to New York.  I feel sure it must be a generational thing that I don't find the original movie itself to be quite the zenith of camp that many do, but it should be a fun show.

My advice to those new to the NYCB repertory.  Do not attend an evening performance of The Goldberg Variations (or even a matinee), if you are very tired.  As the program notes point out, Count Keyserling, "who was troubled with insomnia, asked Bach to write music he could listen to during sleepless nights, and it was Goldberg, a pupil of Bach's, who played the variations for him."  It is a very long ballet and, unfortunately, last night I kept fighting a sometimes losing battle to keep from nodding off in spite of some excellent performances (especially from the vets, Wendy Whelan, Maria Kowroski, Philip Neal, and Adam Hendrickson).  I knew it probably was a bad idea to go when I have been so very sleep-deprived, but I want to take in as many performances as possible before I have to leave (sniff!).  In spite of the fatigue, it still felt good just being there.

I should pick up a recording of Goldberg, now that it has proven its value as a soporific for those occasional insomniac episodes of mine.  I wonder if the music must be played live for it to be effective though?

I Wake Up Screaming titles

Not true.  I rarely scream (aloud).  But I did have another disturbed evening.  Exhausted, I went to bed ridiculously early last night, only to wake up a few hours later.  I then experienced a difficult time falling back asleep between the heat and my mind simply spinning overtime with Brilliant and Profound Thoughts.  Though neither so brilliant nor profound that I felt compelled to get out of bed and try to jot them down.  Now I've forgotten them all.  Not necessarily the thoughts, which were not extraordinarily new, but those clever words and phrases which were just pouring out of me like a cheap zinfandel (or maybe it was just the sweat).

I had come back home after catching an early screening of I Wake Up Screaming (1941) at Film Forum, where I seem to be practically camping out lately (in all senses).  It was being shown as part of the current NYC Noir festival.  One of the earliest of the true film noir films, it doesn't get quite the acclaim it deserves, possibly because its director, H. Bruce Humberstone, doesn't really fit into the whole auteurist infrastructure.   I hadn't seen it in years, but remember being floored by it the first time I saw it (which most likely would have been during either a Betty Grable or 20th Century Fox series at the Regency, I suspect).

I Wake Up Screaming

It would make a great companion piece to the later and better known, Laura (1944), reshuffling many of the same themes of class and gender, but from a more blue collar perspective.  It's yet another twisted Pygmalion narrative.  Hunky sports promoter, Frankie Christopher (Victor Mature) spies hottie hash slinger, Vicky Lynn (the tragic Carole Landis) in a greasy spoon one night and makes a bet with his equally crass pals, a broken down old actor (Alan Mowbray) and a sleazy newspaper columnist (William Gargan) that he can take Vicky (who each of them wants to make) and "put her over" in society.  Vicky goes along with the scheme and the plan is a success.  Until that is, shortly after the trio discovers that Vicky has double crossed them, by not putting out AND by negotiating her own Hollywood contract behind their backs, Vicky turns up murdered in her apartment.  Each of the three makes a credible suspect.

I won't spoil the fun for those of you who haven't seen it yet.  Unlike the real life psychotic who materialized more than half way through the film and plonked herself right down in the seat in front of me and proceeded to cackle, flail her arms wildly, and scratch her scalp and arms throughout the remainder of the film.  A bit of a distraction.  Better to savor this lovely screen capture from the dvd that some dude graciously put up on his site.

Carole Landis

Now I may have to get my own copy of the dvd to study the film more carefully.  I don't think I ever saw the 1959 remake, Vicki, though I doubt it is as good.  The titles for that film, however, certainly underscore the connection with Laura.  In my mania for source material, I already snagged the last copy of the out-of-print reprint edition of the book (the original story apparently is set in Hollywood, not New York) from Powell's.  Wish I could have picked it up in person.  Sniff.
 

Vicki