Timing is everything

Let me start this post by telling you it's 5:19am and I've been up since 4:34. I woke up Friday night for work with a bit of a sore throat. About 5 minutes into my shift I was miserable. My head had so much pressure I thought it would pop. Luckily my sore throat didn't last but I've been unable to breathe ever since. I popped Dayquil at work Saturday night until I came home, took two Tylenol PM and was completely unconscious 2.73 minutes later. I normally sleep anywhere from 3.5 to 4.5 hours after working 3rd shift but yesterday I slept almost 8 hours.

The Gods of Urinary Control woke me up this morning at 4:34am and and an even more evil God decided more sleep is not in my future. I. Am. Wide. Awake. So, I popped some more Dayquil and I'm running with it.

Another reason I'm awake is because as soon as I finished my bathroom work and returned to bed I noticed that the upstairs neighbors were turning on and off their water. Over and over with the water. Over and over. Every time they turn their water off, the pipes rattle. Then I noticed it was very uniform--this on and off with the water. My Swatch watch is on my nightstand and it ticks very loud. Because I had nothing else to do as I lay there I started timing it. Sure enough the water is on for EXACTLY 20 seconds before it's turned off and it's turned back on EXACTLY 18.5 seconds later. After a half-hour of this I realized no person could do this so methodically. No way. Ain't happenin'. I'm going to call the office later, you know, after they open, and try to explain to them what's happening in a way that hopefully they won't call for the men in white coats that twiddle their thumbs and their toes.

What I'm really hoping with this new discovery is that it will make me a building hero. See, since before Thanksgiving everyone in our building has had problems with their hot water. As in we don't usually have any, or you have to work hard for it. If you would like to take a hot shower in our building you have to let the water run for ten minutes first. No joke. Sometimes if you turn your shower on and then the sink on full-blast-hot, then you can cut your waiting time in half. I like to call the whole process "going 'green' ". This is also the same if you would like to wash your dishes in something other than ice water. Our building has 12 3-bedroom apartments so you can imagine all the water we're saving by having to do this. Sometimes, if you're really, really lucky, once you've waiting the necessary 5-10 minutes for your hot shower, it will turn cold three minutes after you get in. It does it gradually, you know, over a 15 second period. That way you can beg and plead for it to stop. "Please, please don't get cold! Please!" Then the next thing you hear is, "Are you kidding me right now?!?!?" Then the painful screams of someone trying to wash their undercarriage in cold water as quickly as possible. This is followed with a lot of cussing. Now I'm starting to wonder if this on and off again thing has something to do with it. Someone call the CSI guys, quick.

I've decided to do NaBloPoMo for March. Maybe just to prove I can do it since I blew it back in November, what, three whole days into it? The theme is Giving (Up). Obviously you don't have to stick with the theme, but after all this, I think what I've given up is sleep. Beautiful sleep. Oh, and hot water.

By the way--the on and off with the water thing? Still doing it almost an hour and a half later. Wheird.