Maybe I Should Start Making Soap

I'm envious of children for a lot of reasons: They're honest to the point of being offensive, they're rude in public, their clothes don't have to match, and they often don't bathe for days on end. Okay, so admittedly I have all of those same traits on a pretty regular basis. But another thing they do is they SLEEP. They sleep so easily. I know some parents will disagree, but I'm not talking about babies. Here's a trick you can pull on a toddler; Challenge them to a contest of who can close their eyes the longest. The little buggers will straight pass out on you! It blows my mind.

I have had insomnia for over ten years now. Fifteen? Who knows. When I tell people I have insomnia, I have to stand there and smile and listen when they tell me that they also have insomnia (no clue why, but everyone LOVES to tell me that they have it). What they mean is that they have had "episodic" or "transient" insomnia. I have "chronic" insomnia (I know a handful of people with chronic insomnia). There is a major difference. Its not that I have trouble falling asleep, its that my brain has simply decided that it doesn't want to do it. If I do not take some sort of medication (vodka is a "medication" in some countries, so I'm going with that as a viable option) I will simply not get tired and not be able to sleep. Its not uncommon for me to be able to go over 50 hours without sleep before my body finally just shuts down. And when that happens, the sleep is garbage and I feel like crap when I wake up. 

Have you ever been really hungry but you were caught up in a task and you forget about being hungry and before you know it you hadn't eaten in like ten hours? Thats me except with sleep. Oh, and its usually about 3am when I realize that its really, really late. (Its 4:06am as I type this). The best thing I can compare it to is "sleep constipation". You want to do it. You need to do it. No matter what you try, you CAN'T do it. This doesn't stop people from doling out advice. And MAN do they love to give me advice. Its always the same stupid shit too. 

• Do you drink caffeine really late? 
• Have you tried reading?
• Are you getting enough exercise?
• Just try lying there until you're asleep

Albert explains my response to these people

The thing is, not only does everyone offer the stupidest advice ever (over and over again) but then they have the balls to tell me I shouldn't take sleep medicine (despite the fact my doctor thinks I should). And they get JUDGMENTAL. Like I'm some sort of crackhead. I'd love to hear these people tell a diabetic to stop taking insulin because its wrong to inject drugs with a needle. The thing is, I've tried it. I've tried all of it. Over and over again. I've changed my diet to everything imaginable. I've taken up meditation, breathing exercises, I've eliminated caffeine entirely, I've added more caffeine. Nothing works. Laying there trying to sleep is excruciatingly painful. I'm not saying that as hyperbole. It's literally painful.  Its often a problem in relationships when my lady friend can't grasp why I can't lay down and go to sleep with her. Laying in bed and doing nothing is maddening for me. My brain simply doesn't shut off. It makes for some fairly poor quality of life at times.

"When you have insomnia, you're never really asleep... and you're never really awake."

The good thing about insomnia is that I get to play with mind-altering drugs (this isn't really a good thing, but for the sake of my already deteriorating mental health, let's pretend!). My doctor gives me all kinds of fun drugs that have warning such as:

• you should know that some people who took medications for sleep got out of bed and drove their cars, prepared and ate food, had sex, made phone calls, or were involved in other activities while partially asleep. After they woke up, these people were usually unable to remember what they had done. Call your doctor right away if you find out that you have been driving or doing anything else while you were sleeping.
• you should know that your mental health may change in unexpected ways while you are taking this medication. It is hard to tell if these changes are caused by this medication or if they are caused by physical or mental illnesses that you already have or suddenly develop.
• Tell your doctor right away if you experience any of the following symptoms: aggressiveness, strange or unusually outgoing behavior, hallucinations (seeing things or hearing voices that do not exist), feeling as if you are outside of your body, memory problems, difficulty concentrating, new or worsening depression, thinking about killing yourself, confusion, and any other changes in your usual thoughts, mood, or behavior.
• Be sure that your family knows which symptoms may be serious so that they can call the doctor if you are unable to seek treatment on your own.

Those are all 100% real (I would have been much more clever had I written them myself). And yet the option of NOT sleeping is worse.

Most of my Rx Bottles look like this

Let's look at that last warning again. "Be sure that your family knows which symptoms may be serious". Are you f'ing kidding me? Which of those symptoms are NOT serious? "Hey dad, if I call you at 3am to tell you I'm having sex while driving on my way to make mac n cheese, please don't worry about it. It's probably just my Ambien." 

Nothing good can come from this and I think we all know what the eventual outcome will be:

Pictured: Me and Bob in our support group (shout out to MO)

I guess the good news is that according to my warning labels, I probably wont remember anything anyway. Next time my dad throws up a high five for no apparent reason, I'm gonna have to assume its because I made the above phone call.

Sleeplessly, your humble narrator

-NM

With this coin, I thee flip...

Our brains use logic to mess with us. We attempt to find patterns in randomness. If you flip a coin you have 50/50 odds. If the coin lands on heads twenty times in a row, guess what your odds are that it will be tails on the next flip? 50/50. The odds don't change. We want to believe that the more we do something, the better our odds but its the same event repeated with the same odds. Every person who plays the lottery and says "This time I HAVE to win." is fooling themselves (you know who you are). The odds are against you EVERY TIME you play because the odds haven't changed. Dating is the same way. Sending out one message or a thousand messages. Each one is a coin toss. The odds are no better or worse with each message. This is what keeps me from being discouraged as I send out tons of messages and receive minimal response.


As I attempted to try different sites to see what they had to offer, I came across some information which will surprise some and come as no shock to others. InterActiveCorp owns Match.com...AND OKCupid, AND Singlesnet.com, AND Chemistry.com, and many others, including my two last ditch sites SeniorsMeet.com and BlackPeopleMeet.com... (don't judge me).


All this dating started to hurt my brain (and soul) so I escaped the scene last weekend and attended a beer festival in BFE* (footnote for my grandmother) . The event was scheduled to run 5:30pm until 10:30pm, but the city of BFE apparently hates planning. Despite the 700 pre-sold tickets and the additional 300+ tickets sold at the door, the festival ran out of beer by 9pm.  But I'm getting ahead of myself. 


I went with a friend who is a self proclaimed beer novice and she was excited by the possibility of me teaching her about beer. I'm always excited to teach and I love beer, so I was game. $50 at the door got me in with a 4oz glass and four food tickets. First booth down and I teach my friend about appearance, aroma, first taste, mouthfeel, and finish (or aftertaste). We run into some of her friends and the guys agree to stand in line for pizza while the girls go to the bathroom. So me and my new guy friend have been in line for at least twenty minutes before we notice, we haven't moved. Word trickles back from the front of the line that the pizza place ran out of pizza and went to get more (see above note about poor planning). More pizza finally arrives and we are moving again and all is right with the world. That is until we are literally next in line. They ran out again. Now we've invested 45 minutes in line for something and we can't simply walk away now. Damn! Two very talkative women behind us in line ask what has happened and following the rules-of-the-line we pass the information back and explain that apparently, they're out of pizza again. One of the two women says "What kind do they have?" I say "Well, right now none. But it looks like cheese or pepperoni and sausage are your two choices." Without missing a beat, the woman says to me "I don't usually even eat meat, but I'd like to try your sausage!" Oh BFE Beer Festival, I do enjoy your drunken strangers! I choose to sort of ignore the comment but I have no wingman. My new friend looks at me, but our relationship is not yet established enough for him to know what sort of move to make. 


Remember in TopGun when Maverick calls "On the count of three, break hard right. Three... two... one... break right!!"? If you didn't know Maverick, you probably would have gone on THREE. You know, because he said so. But lucky for Iceman, he knew to wait not just until after THREE, but until after the whole countdown AND until he heard the words repeating the instructions "break right". 

                                                    (See, they "get" each other)


So with the wisdom of TopGun in my pocket, I don't fault my new wingman for not jumping to my rescue. It becomes quickly apparently that this was not a fluke joke this woman made. She's "in it to win it" as they say. I am stuck between the unattended booth that has no pizza and a drunken girl and her wingwoman. My exits are blocked by my new friend/unfamiliar wingman and the promise I made to the women of my group to get them pizza.
I assess my options:


a) stare blankly ahead at the empty booth


b) make small talk with my new buddy while trying to ignoring the women talking to me 


c) engage in conversation with "Sausage Girl" and her wingwoman

                             (Google Images says this is "Sausage Girl" Hint: It isn't)
                  


Before I have a chance to pick from some truly lousy options, the girls of our group return. 45 minutes in the bathroom you ask? NO WAY! 5 minutes in the bathroom and 40 minutes hitting up all the booths! Thanks ladies. "Noah! NOAH! Get me pizza!" Yeah, I've been standing in line to get you pizza. That's why I haven't been drinking. But I see the silver lining to this cloud. Even though my friend admits she only remembers "taste and that thing at the end" (she means aftertaste), I know she will wing for me and help me escape the evil clutches of Sausage Girl. Right? ...right...?  WRONG! After insuring that pizza is imminent the ladies leave again to continue drinking. At this point the pizza guy shows up sans pizza. He instead has Jack Daniels ice cream that he offers to the first ten people in line. Sausage Girl is attempting to eat this in a sensual manner (moaning and sighing included) but this just makes her inebriation all the more apparent. I attempt to ignore her which only strengthens her desire to capture my attention. I can't remember a time I was so happy to see pizza. Slice in hand and I'm OUT.


BFE apparently has quite a few beer enthusiasts. That's one way to say it. Another way, would be to say that there aint shit to do in BFE but drink. So the whole town has turned out. Its humid. There's so much dirt in the air that it actually shows up in pictures. And my chance to hang out with my friend, meet new people, and MAYBE meet a few nice ladies has quickly turned into me possibly being the only single guy in all of BFE. Its that moment in horror movies when the zombies realize that there is a living person amongst them.

                                                    (it looked something like this)


I don't know if it was the change of scenery or the fact that I went to hang out with my friend and NOT try to pickup ladies, but there was blood in the water (that idiom seems gross. I'm going back to zombies). They smelled fresh meat. I decided to embrace it and not take any of it too seriously. This meant that every booth was an opportunity to meet new people. I know drunks get a bad name, but there were seriously some friendly peps in BFE. Beer was spilled here and there. People were bumping into one another. But no feelings were hurt and a lot of good conversations were struck up through these events. One thing I noticed was that everyone I spoke to seemed to have a personal favorite and weren't shy about making recommendations. Another thing I noticed is that drunk people will hit on you in front of their spouses without hesitation or shame. A very flirty woman said that the beer I was drinking looked good and asked about it. I told her it was a honey blonde and she asked if I would show her where I got it from. I pointed to the booth but she said "Oh hun, I aint as tall as you. Would you walk me over there?" I start in that direction and she grabs me by the arm and I lead the way. She's cuddling into me with her head on my shoulder and stroking my arm as we get to the booth. She kisses me on the cheek and then bites me on the neck and says "Oh crap! Where did Dave go?"  
"Who?" I ask 
"The guy I was with....my husband!"


I decide not to stick around to find out where "Dave" went or who he might be finding to come help him get his wife back. I turn to leave this scene and BAM! SausageGirl and friend. 
"What's your name?" they coo
"Noah" I am immediately saddened that I couldn't think of a fake name and regret giving my real one. But their response surprised me.
"Noah?!  Thats not really a name you can scream out in bed!" 
WHAT? I'm momentarily insulted before I realize these women are distracted by their efforts to compare the names they find appropriate to scream out. I want to defend my name and its honor, but a bigger part of me just wants to escape. I opt for the latter. 


A brief moment of being alone and I find my friends again. Drunkenly right where I left them (50/50 chance, right?). I walk into the middle of their conversation and out of nowhere my friend announces loudly (not that she has a quiet voice)
"Hey! You have manboobs!"and then grabs my chest. This is followed by "Ha! You've got... um... those are actually really muscly. You ... um ... you ... You have nice pecs." This falls in with the double standard of acceptable for women, not acceptable for men. Like the time I wore a kilt to work (St Patty's day) and all the women kept making jokes or trying to look up it. How would it have gone that situation been reversed? [sigh] That's a story for another time. 


There are more people in the little group of friends and I'm excited to meet them. Three cute girls with one of them clearly being the alpha of the group. The moment either of the other two shows any interest, she steps up to assert her dominance. Its a small group of peers, but I admit, its a turn on and she has my interest. After about ten minutes of talking to her an incredibly drunken man stumbles over and address her by the wrong name. He then asks, "Is this your husband?"  She just keeps smiling. Was he just talking about me? Everyone is ignoring the comment. Was I the only one that heard that? I look around for anyone to make eye contact with me and confirm, but no one will. Why do I have no wingman!? A moment later he points right at me and again asks her "Is this your husband?" She just keeps smiling and ignoring him, but without saying a word she reaches out and takes my hand. Still smiling and nodding. Not a problem. I've been left without a wingman earlier, so I'm totally on board to help my new friend. And I mentioned she is adorable, right? Cause she is. The guy says to me "Well, nice to meet you!" and reaches out to shake my hand. I break my handholding with her and shake his hand. I go to reach back for her hand and its gone. "Wow! Creepy. That's my BOSS!" she says to all of us. "Wait. So do you have a husband?" She just laughs and says "I think I saw corn dogs. Does anyone want to get a corn dog?"  Hmmm. Maybe I AM her husband. Or maybe she has some sort of selective hearing disorder. Its hard to say. 

                                           (Maybe she just loves corn dogs)


But now I've paid into wingman karma, so I hope this comes back to me. And lo and behold, its my old friend SG and her wingwoman. Her wing is trying so hard to help, that she is actually trying to pick me up herself. I'm surrounded by women who know what is going on and I'm waiting for one to jump in and help. They aren't. They are more than content to stand around and simply watch. Thanks ladies. In a moment of desperation I try the trick I just learned; Don't say anything just grab someone's hand. This apparently only works for the ladies. I went 0 for 2 trying this. Nasty/confused looks both times. I shoot a desperate look to my friend and SG sees this and pointblank asks her "Oh, is this your boyfriend?" To which my friend proudly responds, "Nope! FRIENDS!!" and then attempts to high-five me. FAIL


Avoidance isn't working. I attempt misdirection. "What are you up to after this? Are there any bars around here?" She purrs, "Oh yeah. We were just heading to the only bar in BFE. Its right across the street." I simply said "Cool." Then I left and went to Denny's with my friend to get some coffee.


In the end, BFE Beer Fest 2011 was a success. I doubt my friend can name a single beer she tried, let alone the things I attempted to teach her about beer. 

-NM




Let me know what you think of the new format changes. 


Big shout outs to MO (for inspiring me with our "second friend day"), KT (for making me try to make my blog be as witty as yours), EF (for taking two minutes out of her busy schedule to proofread this), and to CL (for getting on my ass about being lazy...which I am). Hopefully the extra long post makes up for it. As always, your feedback is encouraged




* From UrbanDictionary.com:
BFE -  abbreviation for "Bum F#&k Egypt" -- in the middle of metaphorical nowhere -- an extremely isolated, inaccessible, and inconvenient location.