Image from Pixabay. Because I love Beagles and there’s very few things sweeter than a sleeping Beagle.

Answers today’s The Friday Five questions over at Dreamwidth.

1. How many hours a day/night do you usually sleep?

This wildly varies… 0-18 hours. I have waves of insomnia when I don’t sleep at all for up to four days, and then when I can sleep, I’ll sleep for close to 20 hours straight only getting up to take my meds and use the toilet. My sleep quality is bad; a lot of the time I have trouble falling asleep. And in any case, whether I do have trouble or not, I keep waking up at least every few hours, sometimes even twice an hour. I don’t ever wake up refreshed and rested. Sometimes it’s all due to Crohn’s Disease symptoms, other times due to migraine/head pain, and yet other times there doesn’t seem to be any reason that I can tell. I’m always exhausted.

I do know that I need 12 hours of okay sleep to feel somewhat rested and human. If I get less, I feel like a corpse. Also, when I sleep very poorly, I see lots of dreams and feel like I’ve lived another life in my dreams instead of rested. The dreams are always the kind I like to watch as tv shows and movies: action, adventure, scifi so at leas they’re fun to have.

I was tested for sleep apnea and I don’t have it, although the test was done during my worst time of insomnia and I felt like I maybe sort of slept for three hours that night, so I’m not sure how they could tell. But that’s what they told me.

I so miss the years (before I got sick) when I had no trouble sleeping, and always slept well! It’s been bad for more than a decade now. I’ve read that iron deficiency can cause sleeping problems, so I’m cautiously hoping the the infusion next week will help with this!

2. What do you do when you can’t sleep?

Depends – is it my first night? I might read or watch tv, maybe write thought dumps in my journal or paint with watercolors, or color in coloring books. If it’s been going on for a while already, I lay in my bed in the dark and quiet, and just rest. I’ve found if I do this, even if I can’t actually sleep, I’ll feel better the next day.

3. How often do you devote time to just thinking about something?

I suppose this happens naturally at some point every week. I don’t usually have to plan it since I’m just at home and can do whatever I want whenever I want to/need to. If it’s something with external pressure, like filling in a complex application for rehabilitation or something else that requires thinking of all the reasons why I should be approved, and how to word them most effectively, and how to show my motivation… those are the times I devote special times to think about and plan, to make a draft. I always try to do it with time to spare, so I don’t have to rush and because these days, due to the exhaustion, I often can concentrate on intense thinking only for a short time, like 30 min, before I’m wiped out. So I do it over several sittings.

4. If you had to choose one person to never talk to again, who would you choose?

There’s no one I know I’d be okay never talking to again without a reason for a break-up in the relationship. So it’d have to be someone I talk casually to but don’t know personally. Maybe a cashier in the shop?

5. If you had to choose one person, NOT your significant other, who you would speak to every day for the rest of your life, who would you choose?

My Mom!