how many ways can i be woken up from my night’s rest:
sunday night: 1am – the neighbour kid starts drunken/angry yelling out his window to either someone outside or in the room with him, i couldn’t quite tell. it continued long enough that i was wide awake by the time it ended and took me forever to get back to some semblance of sleep.
monday night: 4:30am – the fire truck is attending something across the street. i didn’t realize this from sirens blaring, but from the low rumbling of its incessant motor idling. yeah, i understand that they need the engine running to power all their life-saving equipment, but at 4:30am? ugh.
tuesday night: 2:30am – a binner decides that it’s the perfect time to sort through all his recycled treasure. bottles and cans sure do make a lot of noise when being tossed from one shopping cart to another in the middle of the night. i’m all for binners, but really? isn’t he supposed to be sleeping under a bush at that hour?
i know i don’t live in the most peaceful of neighbourhoods. it’s the price i pay for the ridiculously central and convenient location. in addition, i have no control over the way my apartment is heated, so i tend to leave my windows open all year long, just to avoid living in a hotbox and cooking my cats while i’m away at work. i used to combat the noises with earplugs. they took some getting used to, but once i did, i would wear them pretty much every night to drown out the traffic, sexy neighbour times and the unrelenting gurgle of my energy-sucking refrigerator.
then i got cats.
turns out cats get into stuff when you’re sleeping. and, well, you kinda have to be able to hear the stuff they’re getting into so you can either: a) yell at them; ii) move them to a hard surface before they gack on the rug/couch; or, 3) monitor the situation but not do a damn thing because they’ve broken your spirit and you’ve reconciled never having anything nice ever again.
needless to say, since i got cats, i don’t wear earplugs. what logically follows that is: since i got cats, i don’t sleep. well, at least. while the cats themselves are now occasionally peaceful and go an entire night without trying to rip down or knock over something, i’m still subject to the noises of the outside world which are conspiring to ensure i have a mental break from lack of proper REM sleep.
i guess what i’m trying to say is that i’m tired and i don’t know what to do about it other than, you know, deafen myself to keep out the nocturnal noises which torment my slumber.
When I had cats I rarely slept too. Leeloo would wake me just from eating a few crunchies at 3 am.
We have an alarm clock that also just plays soothing sounds, from water trickling in a creek to new agey meditations. (You can set it to play all night if you want, or just a half hour until you fall asleep.) I find it really helpful and sometimes I’ll just leave it on all night because if I wake up at any time it helps me fall back asleep. I think something like that might be perfect for you! Because a sleepy Heather can be a cranky Heather! ;)
Wow, you’re able to move your cats mid-gack to a non-carpeted area? That’s impressive. My cat always runs under the bed when I move towards her, which makes the cleanup that much harder.
The one thing I worry about my new place is the noise, because I like to sleep with a window open year round, like you. And I face Granville Street. Perhaps I just won’t sleep Friday and Saturday nights?