` Even my earplugs are ineffective against this menace, especially considering how much sleep I keep losing.
It also doesn't help when I come home late at night with something unusually expensive for keeping my blood sugar up at school the next day, and by the next morning there isn't even enough to fill my little jar!
I don't know who did this, but I know where they live!
BTW, the slapstick is a bit farther down, but first, back to the fan noise: Hearing it upon entering the living room leaves me with little time for reflection on my own behavior, much less my daily plans, that I'm starting to have noticeable lapses in judgment.
` One such lapse was when, for the first and last time, I stomped on my office floor when my roommate in the room below was blasting his music. Why? Because I was so anxious I didn't want to actually knock on his door like a normal human being.
` This only resulted in him calling me a bitch and me apologizing -- and my calf muscles being cramped for days. Also, instead of my office being quiet, I was treated to his ranting about how other people telling him what to do is "bullshit" and that he's going to have to get his own place.
If he wants to live on his own, fine, but he's going to also have to clean up after himself:
At this point, I figured it was about time that I cleaned the kitchen that day and went about washing all the dishes that were stacked on the counter as well as clearing all the garbage off the counters -- much of it his -- because apparently some of the people I live with don't know what a garbage can is for, even though I have long since moved it up against the "garbage counter"!
` This is so dramatic that just before I got to this job, a friend's two young sons were commenting on how they wanted all the "food" that was sitting on the counter, so I had to show them it was all empty containers. So then they said we should hire a cleaning lady -- ha!!
` Although I still feel stupid over this stomping incident, at least I can say that I don't ever blast music because I use those rubber earbuds that go inside my ears rather than speakers. That's partly to block out other noise, but it's also partly because I wouldn't want anyone to hear or be annoyed by whatever I'm listening to.
` In other words, I like my privacy, and I like letting other people have theirs.
Anyway, Lou Ryan had originally told me that the constant, high-pitched whine would be going on until tomorrow, so I began just putting a lot of things off until then. Well, imagine my horror when he told me the fan wouldn't be removed until May!
` However, judging by the way I've been slowly emotionally and mentally deteriorating to the point where I'm having trouble forming coherent sentences when I speak (and often, when I write), he told me yesterday that it would only be until Thursday.
I cannot tell you how relieved I am.
A much more bizarre and entertaining story, however, concerns my difficulty sleeping, which has been robbing me of my own time and ability in conjunction with the noise. First, let me revisit a hilarious and very derp-like event that took place in December:
Unlike the December before last, there have been no ghetto trash roommates up here cooking and talking after midnight each night (despite constant reminders not to). Instead, Lou doesn't seem to have much problem sleeping, and this actually causes problems for me.
` First off, Lou doesn't require blankets even when all the heat is leaking out of our large, single pane aluminum windows, lest he sweat to the point where he leaves a large puddle on the sheets. I kid you not.
` I, on the other hand, find that although I can easily overheat when I'm moving around on a cold day, as soon as I've been sitting still for a while my feet turn purple and hurt so badly that I can't sleep, even when I'm sitting on them, with two blankets pulled around me.
So, while he's asleep, and I'm shivering and trying to un-purple my feet, he also snores, which is why I wear earplugs to bed. For the longest time I had just tried shaking him and saying "You're snoring."
` He would answer with, "I'm stirring?"
` And I would say, "No, you're snoring!"
` And he would say, "I'm shoring?"
` And it would go on like that for a few minutes until I would lose my patience and say, "Think about it! What would you be doing when you're asleep that I have to wake you up over?"
` Then he would roll over and immediately start snoring again.
Often, though, I wouldn't even get to that stage because every time I would shake him, he would grab my hands and hold them until I stopped struggling to pull them away.
` The only way that I could really wake him up would be to wedge my elbow under him and lever him back and forth, his head lolling until he snapped into consciousness and would say, "Easy, easy, there!"
` I had assumed this was because it was painful for me to wake him up this way. "Sorry," I would say, "Anyway, you're snoring" -- and he would say, "What?"
What always perplexed me, however, was his occasional commentary that I should stop trying to pretend that I'm not some horny beast because, he claimed, my wild masturbation was always waking him up. I had, at first, thought it was a joke.
` When I would ask him what the hell he was talking about, he would just tease me for being insecure and say, "I know what you're doing when I'm asleep!"
I never could figure out why he thought that I'd spent the night pleasuring myself instead of my actual miserable state of never being able to get him to stop snoring until one day in mid-December:
` I was mentioning to him my difficulty in waking him up to tell him he was snoring on the previous night, and he said, "I don't remember that at all, but I do remember you waking me up because you were playing with yourself."
` Staring in shock at him, I asked him what he meant. He explained to me that whatever technique I was using, it involved my elbow stabbing him in the ribs.
Oooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
When I told him that this was actually my way of waking him up, he told me that I should use my hands to shake him instead. When I explained that doing this only resulted in his grabbing my hands, he said that I should be more persistent.
` That did actually work, but it hasn't been recently.
Meanwhile, as you may also recall, there was that huge blizzard in January, during which time Lou would also wedge my purple-cold feet between his thighs where it was nice and warm... and sweaty. That was nice, because after a couple of hours they would actually thaw enough so that I would actually be able to get to sleep.
` However, when it was snowing at the end of February, I had tried to get him to take my feet, but instead he kept saying, "Br! Get your feet away from me!" After unsuccessfully trying to warm my feet, even with the cat's help, I found myself bugging Lou again at nearly four in the morning because dammit, I needed to sleep!
` Finally, this alerted Lou Ryan's protective instincts and he jammed my feet in among his hugely muscular legs. At last, I finally got a few hours of sleep in that morning.
` I resolved that this would never happen again, so as soon as I woke up, I took the electric mattress pad my mom had sent me for Christmas out of the box and actually put it onto the bed. Best part is, I can turn my side on only while Lou continues to sweat without any help.
Why didn't I do this before? Because with the electric heaters on and whatnot, our old circuits (designed for a much smaller house) tend to short out, leading to my UPS bleeping in the night, and since the breakers are in Brianade's room, we don't want to risk using any more electricity than usual. Since that all has just been shifted around again, it is no longer a problem.
Even so, I haven't been sleeping well. Every time I fall asleep, Lou's snoring still wakes me up, and once again I find myself shoving him back and forth for some time until his eyes open and he looks at me, whereupon I say, "You're snoring again," and then he says "Oh, okay," rolls over, and starts snoring once more.
` At one point last night, I woke him up to tell him that he was snoring and he said "Oh," and actually got out of bed for a while, but then came back and immediately started snoring again. Then, I got on with the "Lou, you're snoring," routine not working until one thirty in the morning.
` It must have been the desperate tone in my voice that got his attention, because he finally did actually wake up to ask why I sounded so exasperated with him, as this was only "the first" time I'd woken him up all night!
` I explained what had been transpiring without his awareness, and he argued that when he had gotten up earlier I was asleep, so I told him that not only was I not asleep, but that I had been the one who had woken him up!
` Although he didn't snore much after that, this exchange had rattled me so much that I couldn't sleep until probably four in the morning once again.
And so, today, I am really dragging. Even more annoying, the breaker in my office keeps going out for some inexplicable reason, so I can't use the heater in here, and all the heat keeps draining out of the large, single-pane aluminum windows, even though I keep them covered unless there's sun shining on them.
` And, without an office partition blocking out one of my windows anymore, the heat drains even faster than it has been -- although I sure would appreciate the rest of the furniture being cleared away so that I can finally finish getting my office to the way I'd imagined it a year and a half ago when I'd just first gotten my desk, and then a few days later had to start sharing the room!
Arrrrgh!
To think, I've had a desk all this time, but no room for my other furniture, which has been taking up space in the living room and kitchen and getting in other peoples' way! It's about time I get my own office to myself, and all my belongings in place, and this final step is what I have been waiting on for the past fifteen days.
I'm not even going to bother putting my stuff back on the shelf that I've been planning to put up against the wall until everything is out of the way so that I can move it there! So at the moment, my office is in shambles, with a pile of my stuff on the floor, and a pile of not-my-stuff on the floor where my stuff needs to go.
` Also, for no apparent reason, the breaker with the wireless hub keeps going out, so the internet is sometimes frustrating to get around on.
` This won't be going on for long, though, but in the meantime I'm going to stop trying to blog in here, where my many layers of clothes and blanket aren't doing enough to keep me warm, until Thursday. I think my office time is better spent doing internet homework and checking my email.
I'd take my computer into my bedroom, now that I have a way of keeping warm in there, but the electricity is so iffy that it's unreasonable to risk plugging it in. I'd use the battery, but it is so shot -- even though I swore I wouldn't use it, I have about a hundred times! -- that I would rather reserve it for emergencies.
` Instead, I'll be reading my library books in my bedroom or else cleaning the house, two activities that are sure to keep me warm.
Actually, I just-now had to bring my laptop into the bedroom -- even though I swore I wouldn't! -- because my roommate started playing his music and, although with my earplugs and all I didn't really notice at first and was wondering where all the words on the screen were in such a hurry off to. Such is having a serious attention deficit!
For now, I'll just be jealous of people who are able to blog on a regular basis, like Jen McCreight, here, whose talk on genetics I went to last month. Here is her slide about fictional genetics that don't make sense, but are cool anyway:
She is blogging all the time, and you can see for yourself at her blog, BlagHag. Anyway, as Lou is trying to get me to unleash my inner horny beast at the moment, I had better go. Be back online by Thursday!
(This blog post, BTW, took me about five and a half hours, including all the interruptions.)
careful with the electric blanket in the sweat puddle. Thanks, I enjoyed the read.
ReplyDelete