When I find myself awake and aware at 3am, it’s usually clear I’ll be up all night. Sometimes I can fall back asleep but these days it usually means I used some drugs too late or too often for sleep. At this point in the early morning, the effects of my Paxil have little effect, so I tend to start thinking about not sleeping, and that keeps me awake.
At 3am on weekdays, he wakes up to ready himself for his long commute. He has to take the dogs out, refill everybody’s food dishes and do whatever else he has decided is a morning task.
I have to stay quiet. I have to pretend to be asleep and motionless in the dark from 3am till whenever he leaves which is usually after about 5:20 but can run up till 6am if he falls behind. I don’t know what he’s doing this morning but it was quite loud for a while.
House noises all seem pretty loud in this house. There are a lot of noises all day and all night thanks to all the cats. They knock things over almost as frequently as he and I do. We all have that in common, although part of the blame goes to the house. Everything on it seems to rest on the edge of something else, and it wasn’t there yesterday.
I lay still but my bed has critters that make me want to scratch. They’re worst at 3am. At least I can’t see them. They’re done fearing on my blood by the morning and scatter. Right now, I want to scratch 6 different places on my body… Quitely.
My drug use is still a rule breaker so I need to be undercovers all night or he may ask questions I don’t want to answer. I even get paranoid about the lighter click, so these hours don’t get any extra boost.
There is very little to do except use my phone silently and try not to sneeze, fart, or knock things over. I have already knocked over 3 things tonight. That seems inevitable most nights like this. Whether the phone charger snags something or I pull something trying to get headphones untangled it’s hard for me to stay still. Harder still when spun and awake.
It’s 5:02am now and quiet. The two hours went by faster than expected. Now I begin the game of motion detection. Is he still here, or has he left?
Two tools I use to assist are on my phone. First I can monitor his bedroom light from the Google Home app. Most of this home is configured for voice commands and the on/off status of those devices is in an app.
I also have an app for the pods that distribute wifi through the house, and as a side effect, detect motion in each room as well as active humans using wifi. If it’s 1 person, it’s me. If it’s 2 people, he hasn’t left yet. Technology can be helpful. Since I’m not even a little tired now, turning on the lights to do stuff is something I look forward to, so keeping track of the soonest possible time is a fun time waster at this point.
While I wait, I write this blog.
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