The Lioness Sleeps Tonight (I hope!)

The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep

-          WC Fields

I'm only a little ashamed to say that I might be too contrary to write a blog this week.  I'm practically psychotic.  Nobody in our house is having a great week, as I seem to be determined to make everyone as miserable as I am.  I didn't go to sleep until 3:30 on Monday morning, and 2:30 on Tuesday morning.  I don't think I've ever hidden the fact that I'm a person who likes her sleep, and doesn't cope well without it. I am, as His Nibs would say, like a lion.  

Also, my hormones are at me.  They are making me contrary, which makes me impossible to talk to.  Poor His Nibs is going around the place submerged in a fog of fear and confusion.  He asked me, the other day, to pass him the salt.  Unforgivably, I instantly started shouting that I have to do everything around here, that it's not fair, that if he isn't willing to pull his weight why is he here? etc. etc. before practically throwing the salt at him.
It goes without saying that he has no idea what's going on.  He probably thinks I’ve had a complete mental breakdown. Maybe I have.

The difficulty that His Nibs finds himself in, in these circumstances, is that I'm so rude and horrible that he can't ask me what's wrong with me, without risking my roaring abuse and accusations at him.  And God forbid he ask me if I have PMT or if my hormones are at me.   A fate much worse than death.  Because even though I have, and they are, if he as much as suggests either he'll be eaten alive, the poor innocent sod.

I'd imagine one of the worst things, for him, has to be the unpredictability.
I flatter myself that I'm not the most demanding of wives.  I'm not a great fan of housework, and His Nibs is worse.  So we don't do it.  Until one of us is suddenly possessed with the need to live in a clean house again, (about once a week) or we run out of clean cornflake bowls - whichever happens first. I don't torment him about it.  Mainly because there's no point, but also because I don’t care about that kind of thing.
His Nibs and I usually have a very happy routine.  Because it's just the pair of us, we have a lot of freedom.  Not to run off with other people, you understand, or take up drug habits.  Just to do whatever we want, usually without question.  I can disappear for a nice night away in a spa hotel with my much loved friend Laura, or he can spend his time wandering off to hurling matches for endless periods of time, and nobody gives out. It all works out very well, usually.
But this week, I'd say the poor soul is afraid to even suggest he go anywhere. Or question my plans.  He's walking on eggshells, and I know I'm being a super bitch.  But I cannot stop myself.
The usual hormone swings are made much worse by the insomnia.  On Sunday, I was busy writing something, which caused me to spend the day thrown on our bed, surrounded by my laptop and various bits of paper.  His Nibs was in Croke Park at a hurling match, and in the evening gained almost
endless brownie points by arriving home with a chicken fillet burger for me under his arm.  I hadn't really had any lunch, being an undomesticated eejit, so I was delighted with him.

That night, I went to bed at my usual time.  Too late for a work night, but normal for me.  I lay down in the dark and waited patiently for sleep to overtake me.  Nothing happened.  So I moved around a bit, turned the pillow to its cool side, did a bit of kicking around trying to get comfy, all to no avail.  I tried meditative breathing, counting sheep, letting my extremities get relaxed and trying to let the feeling to spread, the whole usual routine.  Nothing was working.

I decided I'd watch some rubbish on Netflix.  Something silly, that would make me go to sleep.  Half an hour of trash television later I was more awake than I had been before I started.  I read a book for a while.  But I still wasn't sleepy.  Then His Nibs started snoring.  So I spent a happy few minutes waking him up and giving out stink to him while he blinked uncomprehendingly in the light.
By this time it was around half past one in the morning, and His Nibs was due to start his boot camp style roaring and shouting at me to get up and go to work at ten to six.  I was just starting to count down how many minutes and hours of sleep I'd get if I went to sleep immediately, when for no reason the Swiss Roll that was resting itself in the kitchen popped into my head.
I was lying in bed, His Nibs was snoring.  I couldn't sleep and there was cake in the house.  What would you do?  I stayed where I was for a while, telling myself that I'd already had a chicken burger, there was no excuse for adding fuel to the fire by adding cake to my daily calorie intake.  But nothing helped. If the cake had been performing a striptease at the end of our bed, I couldn’t have been more fascinated by it.  I couldn't stop thinking about it.  I finally decided there was no point lying there in misery when I could be downstairs, happily eating cake.

Up I got, and ate a slice of the Swiss Roll, and had a good look around in the fridge.   Happily, there was nothing in there to tempt me, so I had to settle for a glass of milk. 

"That’s it", I thought to myself.  "You've watched television, you've read a book, you've done a bit of giving out, and eaten cake.   All your favourite things.  It's time to go to sleep".
Instead, I lay in bed for a while wondering what kind of a savage gets up at half one in the morning to eat cake.  Did this mean I'm going to end up on one of those television shows where the fire brigade has to come and rip your house down to get you out?  This line of worrying went on for a while.  Then I started thinking about how unfair it is that society makes us feel so bad about eating cake, even though nobody, never mind society, even knew I had eaten it. 

I found a number of things to worry about for the next couple of hours.  What’s going to happen with the US and North Korea?  Will the cake settle on my stomach or my thighs? The usual late night worrying.  This went on until half past three in the morning, when I finally dropped off, only to be woken by a shouty His Nibs less than three hours later, and deposited in the car.  I stumbled around the office all day, moaning and looking for sympathy, and practically attacking people, until it was time to get back in the car in the evening, where I had a lovely car sleep.
Unfortunately, when we eventually got home, I was as fresh as a daisy from this nap, which kept me up until half past two on Tuesday morning, and so the whole nonsense started again.
I was psychotic with exhaustion before the hormones even kicked in.  Now I'm almost dangerous.
His Nibs is not the only one who suffers because of my mood swings.  We've been a pair for a long time.  He has fought like a tiger never to learn how to cook or to clean a bathroom, but proved a very quick learner when it comes to my bad behaviour.  He does not retaliate.  He just looks confused or offended and never shouts "Shut up you contrary old bag" at me.  If he did, of course, I'd probably burst into noisy tears and insist he doesn't love me and that we should get divorced.  No.  Instead he is kind and puts up with me until the storm passes.  Then he walks around looking innocent and relieved that he's no longer being attacked by the person he loves. 

But once the trouble is over my stupid conscience starts at me, and I look at him and think things like "I can't believe I called him a controlling pig and said I was leaving him,  just because he made me tea instead of coffee."
So then I have to go overboard being nice, and making meals and doing the housework without his assistance.  And it's all just a complete pain.  It takes me at least as long to make up for the bad behaviour as the time I'm actually unreasonable.