Night Floods & Dream Scrabble
Tales from the Sleep Wars
“A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book.” - Irish Proverb
Crappy CPAP Mishap
At 4:47 am, I finally lost my shit.
My new CPAP mask went flying, and along with it, the pint of water that filled the tube leading straight to my face holes.
Get a CPAP, they said. It’ll be fun, they said.
Nobody told me the hurdles one must cross to reach the point of apneatic freedom.
Later, after I calmed down and found the lost shit, I called Dad.
How the hell do you sleep with this asinine mask?
His response…
Didn’t sleep on the first night either, huh?
Crap. I didn’t see this coming.
I’ve been working on convincing the insurance company to approve a CPAP since popping my sleep study cherry ten years ago, which makes me proud because I’ve never stuck with anything this long, not even a relationship. Wow, look at me.
Killing it!
After committing to the sleep apnea cause for a decade, I finally failed (passed?) the test that says my breathing stops enough times to qualify for a machine designed to keep the airway open.
Ten years.
What a country.
Get Your Eight Hours Before They Get You
When the world is crumbling, I try to find my Zen-my inner Buddha. There are still times I can’t, but considering I was once a wrench-whippin’, hole-punchin’ hothead, I’ve come pretty far.
But there’s only so much a person can take, especially when they don’t get their shut-eye.
Sleep is the cornerstone of a healthy life. There’s a reason educated folks like Andrew Huberman and Peter Attia produce countless hours of podcast material about its importance.
If you don’t believe me, take a look at somebody with a couple-three-year methamphetamine habit. Tweakers who don’t sleep for six days while consulting the squelch monsters and disassembling CB radios tend to follow a common theme.
Most look twice their age, proving that sleep is a big deal, just like a good set of tires and a jacket when it’s cold.
Without proper rest, the volume gets turned down on the important stuff. Routines get broken. Bills don’t get paid. Newsletters don’t get published in time, lol.
Rainout
When the ambient room temperature is cooler than the CPAP distilled water tank, condensation forms inside the tube, which fills the tube with measurable amounts of water, more than enough to fill the mask and simulate waterboarding.
In the snooze biz, this is referred to as Rainout.
At 4:46 am, I’m playing Scrabble with my grandfathers and local weather legend John Wheeler. I don’t remember who was in the lead, but I’m guessing it was the weatherman cause why wouldn’t he? The guy knows meteorological terms like Toad Strangler and Derecho.
Even though I don’t mind losing at Scrabble to a childhood hero, I still like to know the score, so I peer across the table at my Grandpa tallying the scores with that Zebra pen he always carried in his shirt pocket, but I can’t read the numbers.
For some reason, they’re blurry.
As my eyes were about to adjust, Clifford, The Big Red Dog (CTBRD), approached our table dressed in an apron and toting a pot of coffee.
Odd.
“Get you fella’s a warm-up?” CTBRD says as he begins topping up our cups.
He chuckles when I ask if he minds me calling him Cliff because Clifford The Big Red Dog is a mouthful, and CTBRD doesn’t roll off the tongue as a proper acronym should.
Now I’m wondering if I’m on acid or if they are on acid, or if we are all on acid because we’re all giggly and hysterical, and wtf is going on here?
Both grandpas have passed on, and aside from the time I watched him speak at a precision ag conference, but instead of introducing myself like a normal adult, I cheesed out and waved like a fanboy in the corner; I’ve never even met John Wheeler, so why am I playing Scrabble with the three of them?
And Clifford? That’s just weird.
Rainout seems like a strange term.
When you get rained out farming, you get to return another day to finish your work.
If rain postpones a baseball game, they reschedule with a doubleheader.
You don’t get that luxury with lost sleep. When that ship sails, it’s gone. There are no second chances. You can’t make it up and don’t get it back.
For some reason, I feel personally insulted when sleep doesn’t fall into my lap, like I failed as a human being.
As I pick up my phone to schedule an appointment with a therapist, CTBRD’s laugh turns maniacal and he starts drooling like dogs do and he’s so big that the drool washes us and the Scrabble board away.
I can see the ten-point letter Q that John Wheeler used to score 137 points playing Q-Vector, floating by me in the river of drool-the Drool River. For a moment, I envy John Wheeler because I have never scored over a hundred points on a Scrabble play. I wish I could be more like him.
Before I can worry too much about not being enough, not for John Wheeler or anybody, I wake up and find I am drowning, like in real life.
My new CPAP mask’s rubber flap with the two nostril holes, which my nose is supposed to be aligned with and gracefully resting upon, has shifted, causing the mask to suction to my face with each inhale.
I believe it’s called claustrophobic shock. If it isn’t, it should be.
And why is the carpet all wet, Todd?
I don’t know, Margo.
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Pandemonium
Curses about Triple Word Scores, John Wheeler, and my piece-of-crap CPAP mask fly across the room.
Sheri wakes up, oblivious that I’ve just been humiliated by my favorite meteorologist and a drooling canine, and attempts to calm me down.
Baby, just sleep without it tonight and call the doctor tomorrow.
We’ll find a mask that works for you.
Even as she’s sopping wet from the distilled water I just flung all over, and I’ve completely lost control of my emotions, she’s as chill as Jennifer Lawrence on edibles.
I love that about her but fail to remember that I do when I’m tired and in an uproar.
F That!
What a bunch of bullshit I knew CPAP wouldn’t work it works for everybody else why cant it work for me I must me cursed?
I’ll admit I tend to catastrophize… a bit.
I write about expectations a lot and how you should keep them under wraps before they lead you straight down the road of disappointment, but evidently, I don’t heed enough of my advice because the amount of disappointment from a CPAP machine does not alleviate all of my sleep problems on the first night sent me into a sleep-deprived pre-Christmas tailspin, so I’ll repeat it.
Expect nothing. Accept everything.
It's easier said than done, but still very much worth trying because life won’t stop kicking us in the proverbial crotch soon.
Things go wrong.
Sometimes, that party that we thought was going to be the best of the year ends in a gutache from the meatballs and spending the evening with crippling gas.
Sometimes, our crops fail. Sometimes, the weather forces us to leave them in the field, and we lose it all.
Sometimes, John Wheeler kicks your ass at Dream Scrabble while a big red dog drools all over you.
Whatever it is, we must not get too attached to the outcome.
If we expect too much, we’ll almost always end up disappointed.
Can pert-near guaran-damn-tee that.
Life’s letdowns don’t go on holiday. They don’t take days off, so we’d best be prepared to respond appropriately when things go sideways.
Whipping your crappy CPAP mask across the room while cursing meteorology doesn’t qualify as an appropriate response. Maybe it’s right if you’re nine and haven’t yet learned how to handle disappointment (or make your own nachos).
But if you’re nine, why on earth are you wearing a CPAP in the first place?
Maybe learn to make nachos first and try not to grow up so fast.
As far as the rest, keep your expectations low, and you’ll seldom find yourselves disappointed.
I wish you all the best of holidays, and thank you very much for reading. If you’ve enjoyed reading today, it would mean the world to me and be like the best Christmas gift ever if you shared it with your friends and colleagues.
Thank you again, and I hope to see you all next week for my review of 2023 and outlook for the New Year.
Take care of yourselves, and for Pete’s sake, be careful. It’s a jungle out there.