Unlocked

I'm normally relatively tired most of the time (I'm out galavanting when I should be resting so I think this is to be expected) and I nap in the afternoons. Especially when I work in the morning and at night. Today was one of those days. I worked from 6am-2pm and then went back in at 8pm to train a new employee.

To get a better sense of today's shannigans you'll need to visualize our living set up! Here's the best kind of description that I can give to the layout of our apartment.

When you walk in what we've deemed our primary entrance there is a vestibule of sorts that has three door ways.
To the right the first bathroom (the one where I keep all my primping supplies).
Straight ahead is the smaller bedroom which has been deemed the office.
To the left is a tiny hall way that has the entrance to the bedroom to the right and the entrance to the kitchen. Straight ahead at that point would be the front wall.
The kitchen is rather long and has ample space for our lovely art deco kitchen table and such and after walking through the kitchen you arrive in the living room.


Shell hurt her back and was laying in the living room crying/watching tv/reading/hanging out with Elsey. I had laid down for a nap in the bedroom. Normally when I take naps during the day I tend to stay in bed (YAY!) but today was different. How do I know this you ask? Well, when I was leaving the apartment to go back to work I noticed that the primary door to the apartment was unlocked (deadbolt and regular lock!) Most would say that this is no indication of sleep walking alone. However, Shell is OCD and one of her complusions is checking locks. Three times. So her and I can both say without a doubt that the door was locked before I went to sleep.

However, this is not the first instance of the door being unlocked. Unfortunately. I found my sleep journal so let's delve into some of the wanderings from the past few months.

september 6th- front door left unlocked

september 7th-Shell and I decided to block my exit, or at the very least make any exiting attempts result in a loudness that would alert Shell to my escape. Rather than fussing with the traps I went out the other door.

Unfortunately I wasn't the best sleep logger so I know there are missing entries. Before I started the sleep journal I know that there were at least five times where I at the very least unlocked my front door. On one occasion I
know I left the apartment. Shell, Elsey and I live on the fourth floor of our apartment building which means in order to reach the top of the tower we need to climb four flights of stairs. Well, one morning in front of the entrance to the apartment building Shell and I found an empty personal size cookie package. We would shrug this off normally, but we had just bought an economy size (who doesn't love wholesale clubs?) case of said personal packages of cookies. I hardly could deem that a coincidence. Especially since our apartment building houses under ten other people.

Overslept?

I doubt I'm the only person who has ever woken up to notice that it is light out [or dark] and panicked--thinking they've overslept some important event. Well, so between Monday and Tuesday my schedule was/is as follows: 6:30am-noon (then do a decent list of managerial duties) and 6-9:30 and then opening again on Tuesday morning. Well, I was taking an afternoon nap earlier today, Monday, and was awoken by the sound of someone saying "OH MY GOD". Shell definitively stated that not only had she not said anything, but she also didn't have the TV on so there was no one talking in our apartment. Well, apparently in my waking stupor I deduced that it was 9am on Tuesday morning. I have no idea how I reached this conclusion but I was dead set that not only had I slept through our night shift but we had overslept and had not been there to open the store! I leaped (literally) from the bed onto my feet, probably giving poor Elsey a heart attack. Moving forward I swung open the bedroom door and went barreling through the kitchen screaming. When I finally reached the living room in my deliriousness I began screaming about how we were late for work and it was 9am in utter terror.

I think I may have given Shell a heart attack too because she just stared at me in utter shock.

"Lindsey, It's 4:25pm on Monday"

"Oh."

I seriously think that my heart was about to burst from my chest at any moment I was so worked up. I have no idea why I thought it was 9am. But, this isn't the first time that a sound (from inside or outside the apartment) has aroused me from sleep causing a confusing and random reaction...

When Shell and I first moved into our apartment in June (2009) our side of the street had a very prominent sign that read "No parking between 7am-10am, 4pm-6pm Monday Through Friday". If you live in Baltimore City you are familiar with these signs. If you live in Mount Vernon you are probably familiar with the tow trucks and police cars that come slithering to the areas with these signs at 6:58 an 3:58 waiting to pray on the cars. Well, being that we had just moved in and were officially "apartment poor", I was very worried about waking up too late and my car getting towed.

We have several alarm clocks because I am IMPOSSIBLE to wake up. Well, we have one that we lovingly have named "Clocky". Clocky was introduced into our alarm clock family because we were sure that this was the alarm clock that I couldn't ignore. When the alarm goes off, the clocks wheels (yes, I said wheels) begin to spin and the alarm clock falls from whatever surfaced it is perched on (up to three feet safely!) and begins to roll on the floor below searching for a "hiding spot". All the while producing a very, very loud alarm.

Well, on this lovely June day, after Clocky went off-I did indeed get out of bed. And a little more...

As the alarm sounded I sprang out of bed and ran to a spot across from the room (with my eyes wide open) and began to strip my clothes off while screaming. Once in my birthday suit I began to run in circles. After a moment or two I noticed what I was doing and was both completely confused and dizzy.

Good news was that it was 6am and therefore my car wasn't towed...and I got a bit of morning exercise.

A little back story

So just to get the ball rolling, let's get into a little back story so you know what ride you've signed up for.

So up until about a month ago I did not know that my "wanderings" were nothing more than a bit of good 'ole sleep walking. Some quack-pot therapist had been rattling on about how this all had something do with some type of childhood catastrophe.

I was originally trailing along with this cute theory but there are some glaring flaws in this "diagnosis"...

1. I only do these strange things when I have been sleeping (and I have no recollection of them when I awake)

2. The frequency to which my "episodes" occured increased when I moved out of my parent's house ( a la major life stressor)

3.A psychiatrist definatively stated that this was either sleeping walking or drug use. Being that the only substance I abuse is a blended maragrita once every three months or so, we can pretty rule out a drug issue.

The sleep study is pending (I need to see my primary physician and fill her in on the fun).

Now since you've stuck in through some of the not-so-interesting banter, let's get to the fun stuff--the weird things I do in my sleep! The quack I was seeing, which is the nicest way I'll be referring to her, suggested that I kept a sleep journal so I have a dated list with some of the sleep shannigans. But since noone buys the cow if you give out the milk for free I'm only going to tell you a few (for now). The rest I'll sprinkle in later (with dates).


I don't have my "sleep journal" with me at the moment and the dates on these are a little blurry, but here we go!

So, my geriatric cat (Elsey) really loves her wet food. Being that I'm a vegetarian I am normally not the one to feed her. However, I am the person to go fleeing from the kitchen when the container is opened while gagging. However, one lovely night this scenario was quite different. In my sleep, I went reached into Elsey's case of wet cat food and removed a container. Apparently in my sleep I decided that it needed to be warmed. This is the only logical conclusion I could form because how else could I explained the following: waking up around 5:30am, going into the kitchen. Something in the kitchen looked different--the oven light was on! Before I switched the light off, I noticed there was something inside...an open container of cat wet food, on a baking sheet. I suppose this isn't the worst thing that could have happened. The night before there was an empty container on the kitchen floor when Shell and I woke up. There was a bit of confusion to who emptied the container--Elsey or me I'm just glad that the oven wasn't on. Afterall, nothing says good morning like the smell of roasting "ocean white fish with REAL gravy!"

Happy New Year!