Melatonin Assisted

Up slightly earlier.  Feeling more refreshed at day's start than I had been.  Don't know how much to attribute to a therapeutic trial of an OTC melatonin chewable at bedtime.  Since darkness had already appeared, my endogenous melatonin should have been synthesized and released.  Maybe it was.  After chewing the tablet, which invariably brings me to nap time on those Saturday afternoons when I've taken one, not a whole lot happened.  Falling asleep has never been difficult.  Staying asleep has.  Typically, my first middle of the night awakening will draw my eyes to a clock radio whose red numerals portray a time of about 3AM.  If that happened last night, I don't remember it.  Instead, I remember 6AM, using the bathroom, though not feeling groggy.  Next glimpse, 6:36AM.  Felt reasonably rested, so on to dental hygiene routine followed by coffee.  I'm definitely less than expected tiredness at first arising.  From the melatonin tablet?  Not what I expected but worth doing again.

Try the Recliner

A melatonin misadventure.  After several Shabbos afternoons of chemically prodded escape, half snooze, half stupor from chewing a 1.5 mg melatonin tablet, I thought I might try taking it the way it was intended for sleep.  So at twilight, I gave myself a head start with the tablet, got a little drowsy but not sleepy, and entered bed at the usual time.  I read a bit.  However, I did not fall asleep, which I likely would have from doing nothing but following the buzz on my iTouch watch.  

After no progress in a reasonable time, I headed to my trusty lounge chair in My Space, setting the TV to a pretty good show about bears.  Watched a while, dozed off for I don't know how long but eventually awoke to the modern version of Test Patterns that Netflix displays when the show has concluded without any remote commands for something else.  Back to bed.  Not for very long.  Back to recliner and an attempt to resume the show on bears where I think I nodded out.  Again to the end, clearly drowsy.  Bed got another go, a partially restful one but not for that long.  Back to the chair where the appointed time the wrist buzzer alerted me.  Not ready to get up, despite my commitment to following the dictates of that signal.  Arising only delayed about twenty minutes, then on to morning routine, not feeling particularly sleep-deprived but not in hot anticipation of the day's opportunities either.  Coffee as the next guiding chemical.

Do Nothing Shabbos

A day of rest, but really set aside Biblically as a day to do different things without distraction from usual things.  No commerce but appointment for worship.  No writing but listening to Rabbi's sermon scribbling the misstatements with mental red ink.  Planned dinner and lunch.  Be with different people that day.

In part because Covid closed in-person worship, in part because having done that I've established a clear preference for lounging at home than sitting and rising for two hours for a reward of 15 ml of Jack Daniels at kiddush when it's over, I allocated the day to the creature comfort of sloth, supplemented with some time to expand my imagination which has taken a bit of a battering in retirement.  Good Coffee.  See what's on TV but not watch.  Look at what I have and haven't done since my last planning session the Sunday before.  Imagine what I might do with better accomplishment at the next week's review.  Look at the six-month project titles on the whiteboard in My Space.  Admire what went well, is making satisfactory progress, and what needs either change in direction or better commitment.

I took a shower, a restful one, setting out clean lounging clothing to wear after drying off.  And then came the day's snafu.  While retrieving a bar of soap that had fallen to the wet tile floor, on arising I struck the very top of my head on the built-in porcelain soap dish.  A quick stun, quick neurological checklist OK.  Finished the shower as the hematoma followed its physiological response to injury.

For the last few shabbos afternoons, my treat into twilight has come with chemical assistance.  After lunch, I chew a rather tasty, sweet tablet containing 1.5 mg of melatonin.  In about an hour or so, reclining on the lounge chair in My Space, oblivion sets in for the next few hours.  No hunger, no desire to get up.  Not sleep exactly, but a pleasant stare with my mind sorting out what it wants to sort out until suppertime arrives.  Feeling refreshed with this not quite nap but mental distancing, maybe even reset, it's off to some light nutrition, then more lounge chair until shabbos ends marking the resumption of  cell phone's FOMO.

Head injury preempted that weekly chemical drift.  The weekly news included a celebrity just a few years my junior who died suddenly, thought to be an acute MI until it was determined that he had a head injury not that different from mine.  A lethal intracranial hemorrhage did him in.  Not a good idea for me to alter my own mind from its natural state following my injury.  Melatonin twilight got postponed.