A restless nights sleep

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Sleep is a time for your body to relax and rejuvenate itself for the next day. It's graceful and peaceful and pictureesque. Except not for me.

Sleep is a time for me to be in about as much physical motion as I am awake. Let's just say I'm like a weird zombie when I sleep. It's probably one of my most embarrassing traits because I have no chance of controlling how weird it gets. At least when I'm awake and being a creep, I know it's happening and can mitigate it. So with a bit of shame, here's a list of things I've done in my sleep that are bizarre. And I'm sure it's not an exhaustive list because someone has to be awake to tell me it's happening for me to know it happened.

Let's start off mildly and work our way to the extremes. When I was younger, I used to share a room with my sister, so we can thank her for the observations she's collected over the years.

You sound like a beached whale.

Ahhhh, what a compliment. It takes me awhile every night to find a comfy way to lay, so as eloquently as my sister said it, I sound like a big dying fish out of water.

And if I couldn't find that comfy way to lay, I'd shake my legs because I'd be getting annoyed that I could not fall asleep. So let's call that my restless leg syndrome.

Then, I'd eventually fall asleep, wake up again, and convince myself that I had never slept at all. So then I'd go downstairs to tell my mom about it. Or better yet, I'd wake her up to tell her I wasn't asleep.

But what can be even worse than that? Oh, just me sleepwalking downstairs. Then I'd wake up mid-way through some mumbles to my mom and get terribly freaked out.

Or I'd wake up sitting in my closet.

Or in the middle of the floor.

Or sitting in between me and my sisters bed on the shag rug.

And then it'd be really dark, so I'd just lay back down and sleep on the floor until it was light enough to be able to see my bed again.

So THANK GOD I stopped sleepwalking in my later years, but I'm not totally out of the woods yet. I'm still a creepy sleeper from time to time.

I talk in my sleep pretty regularly, and then have to remember to warn people that it'll probably happen. I grind my teeth, and I'm somewhat convinced I snore a little when I sleep on my back.

And oh yeah, I dress and undress myself. For example, I like to sleep naked a lot. There's just nothing like the feeling of sheets all over you. Anyways, if I go to bed naked, there's a pretty good chance I'll wake up with a shirt that I had put on at some point in the night.

And vice versa. Sometimes I wake up and I just so happened to be missing my shirt. Awesome.

But potentially the creepiest thing I have started doing is looking at my phone. This really should be a sign of the times. I shit you not, I've read and answered texts before. Nothing major, and most of the time I just instinctively read it and roll over, but this one time I looked at my phone and realized I sent a text saying "just don't even worry about it," to a statement that really did not deserve anything remotely similar to that response.

I no longer sleep with my phone within reach, but I wouldn't put it past me that it can happen again.

So now that I've shared probably the trait that I have that freaks me out the most, who wants to have a sleepover?

Ignorance Spreads Illness

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So typically I like to keep my work-blog life decidedly separate, but there's one topic that I find absolutely fascinating and want to talk about. It's scary. It's serious. And it's not talked about enough. It's Ebola. I am in no way an expert on Ebola, so there's my disclaimer, but I do know enough to write intelligently about it. And I brought a ton of linked sources into this post to back me up.

What I find most fascinating about Ebola is the ignorance that surrounds it. The ignorance causes it to spread, but it also hinders fundraising for it. By now you probably know that this is the worst Ebola outbreak ever, so what is making it so bad? See previous sentence for the answer (ignorance). And I'm not using the word lightly, and I'm not pointing fingers. It's a collective and problematic lack of effort, lack of awareness and lack of intelligence.

At the root of the problem is that the countries where Ebola is spreading, people believe it is caused by witchcraft, or that doctors are injecting people will Ebola. Try helping to stop the spread of a disease when people don't actually believe that the disease is actually a disease, or that going to the hospital will kill you. It makes treatment impossible. People are dying on the streets and not knowing why. Or blaming black magic.

Raising awareness is a key to stopping the spread of the disease. But so is treating the people that already have it. And protecting those that don't. Which leads to the problem that people stop the spread by blockading cities from each other. So then the blockade, which could potentially stop the spread of the disease, cuts off the entire economy of the segmented area. Which is deadly in the long run for the already fragile economies of these affected areas.

So there's the internal problems happening within the Ebola-affected countries. But there are bigger problems too. WHO admits we acted too slowly (because of budget cuts), which doesn't bode well for future similar outbreaks. We didn't take it seriously enough.

And the last bit of ignorance falls on the American perception of the disease. 40 percent of those polled say they believe we will have a major Ebola outbreak in the United States. Let's talk about this. We know it's a real disease. We have a solid health care system. We can easily contain it. Yet, when we think about ourselves and fear it here, that doesn't help those that are really affected by it.

And this last statement is purely what I think, so there won't be any links backing me up on this, but I believe we aren't talking about it enough. We're ignoring a pretty big deal. And that's a form of ignorance.

This land is my land

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One thing I don't hide about myself is how much I love where I live, which is the beautiful River City of Richmond, Virginia. To pay homage to my new(ish) homeland, here are some of my favorite #RVA landscape pictures. All pictures are from my Instagram and shot using my trusty iPhone 5.

Terrible Tact

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So I have a confession: I have terrible tact. And it's been this way for as long as I can remember. When I was in elementary school, I once ate one of those individually wrapped Mrs. Fields cookies before dinner. Being an ignorant chubster, I threw the wrapper in the trash and neglected to even wipe the chocolate fully off my face. Obviously my mother approached me, and asked if I happened to eat a cookie before dinner. I said no. A boldface lie.

Momma picked up on it, and told me not to lie. As some may say, be good or be good at it. So I decided to be good. I just wouldn't lie anymore, because I was so bad at it.

It was after this realization that a girl that I did not like asked me if I hated her. Don't lie, right? So I said yes, I did in fact hate her. She proceeded to ask me why, so I named off a few reasons I hated her. Then I thought nothing more of it.

That was, until my mom got called because I told a girl I hated her, which apparently isn't socially acceptable. So my mom naturally asked me why I told a girl I hated her. And I just said, "You told me not to lie!" and still couldn't figure out why this was my fault. On top of me telling the truth, I can't help if someone lobbed it to me. Don't ask someone what they think of you unless you really want to know!

Okay, okay, so these days I understand where I went a little wrong; that there are nice ways to phrase things, and then there are rude ways to phrase things. But I still sometimes find it difficult to answer those tough, direct questions with any amount of tact.

Do you really want to ask me why we are disconnected? Because I'll give it to you straight, despite you probably not wanting the real answer to it. Nudge me a bit more and you'll get an ear full -- which isn't what anyone wants.

 

Here's the key to making it through work today

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Cazey texted me a link to this album this morning, and it's been a stellar addition to my work day today. So stellar that I wanted to share it on here, which I usually don't do. I think I speak for both of us when I say it's highly recommended: http://www.mtv.com/artists/vance-joy/#vh1

My only real problem with this album is that I had a chance to see it performed live and I missed out! He was at Firefly it turns out, as was I, but I didn't know about him at that time. Such a moment of FOMO and a total bummer. Here's hoping Vance Joy comes to my town, or any town near me.

Let Cazey and me know what your thoughts are about Vance's new album in the comments. Any chance you'll be buying it? I know Cazey will be buying it and giving it to me as a gift. Well, maybe not that second part of the sentence.

Meet Vance Joy.

20 Times I Knew I Must be an Adult

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Here's a non-exhaustive list of times the thought, "So this is adulthood," struck me pretty strong. Without further adieu, in no particular order:

  1. Scheduling my own doctor's appointment and having to fill out all that obnoxious paperwork.
  2. Going pants shopping and purchasing them from the women's section instead of the junior's section.
  3. Buying the women's jeans and being excited about how well they fit and how much coverage they provide.
  4. Wanting sneakers at Firefly, despite them not going with my outfit. However, I still packed like a kid and went with the cute shoes instead.
  5. Having people trust me enough to work from home.
  6. Dealing with the bullshit that is car trouble. Times three.
  7. Having to request time off to go home (well, now my parent's house I guess) and not just being assigned a time to leave (like college breaks).
  8. Needing to recruit a chaperone when I needed my wisdom teeth out, rather than just having my mom around for it.
  9. Giving a presentation about my job and being thought of as the "professional opinion." Then doing a good enough job to be asked to do it several times more.
  10. Handing out business cards.
  11. Being included on a recipe email chain, and actually having something of merit to provide.
  12. Taking over the title on my car AND paying my own insurance for it, which is also in my name.
  13. Going to my mailbox to receive nothing but bank statements and bills, rather than care packages and holiday themed cards.
  14. Laying in bed all night stressing about work.
  15. Laying in bed all night and not being able to whine to my mother about it.
  16. Things breaking around the house and not being able to just leave it for my dad to fix.
  17. Missing holidays, birthdays and other social outings because of work.
  18. Spending money on things freely and not feeling terribly ridden with guilt for spending my parent's money frivolously.
  19. Filling out my own taxes (albeit with a lot of help from my dad).
  20. Having to pack my own lunch everyday.

Were there any times that you were ever overwhelmed by feelings of adulthood? Leave 'em in the comments! :)

My Unfortunate Handle on Pens

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You know that moment when you're trying to be a real, functioning adult, and then the end of the pen shoots off, making doing real work seemingly impossible? Well, that's what happened to me this one week. Twice.

Here's a recap (no pen pun intended):

The first pen-spolosion happened when myself and a friend went to our alumni chapter meeting, where we represented our entire school's chapter. So I was sort of shambly to begin with, because my shoe had broken, I had forgotten any sort of paper and could only find a pen in the tray in my car. So the day wasn't starting off the best it could be, and then this happened.

I went to go click my pen to write down the set-up time, and the entire tip of the pen rocketed off, right at the head of an elder man sitting across from me. He took it well, made a joke and the meeting continued.

But without that damn pen tip, I had to write with that dinky little tube from the center of the pen for the rest of the night. My hand writing looked incredibly similar to a four-year-old's.

Then- I kid you not, two days later, I'm in this meeting with some pretty important people from work, and I rocket the end of another pen off right at the pregnant lady.

That time, no one even seemed phased by it. People are starting to expect this shit from me, I guess. I'm not sure if that's a win or a loss.